What Makes Jurassic Park Special (And Where Jurassic World Went Wrong)

What is Jurassic Park? It is a cautionary tale of man playing God with genetics without the foresight of what they have done. It is as important a film then as it is now with GMOs in our food that leads to cancer and the sterility of our species. It is a film about the brutal force of nature in all forms that man cannot control.

What is Jurassic Park not? A film about dinos fighting dinos.

Jurassic Park is my Star Wars. It is perhaps the movie I have seen the most times. Lost World is perhaps the only book I have reread as many times as I have, and Jurassic Park was the beginning of Michael Crichton becoming my favourite author.

Let's go through the film to see what makes it special.


The movie starts out with the transference of a raptor into its pen, but immediately it shows almost an army of men with technology holding their ground against something moving in the trees. The movie starts off with the symbology of man's hubris against nature. It ends up being a forklift, but the imagery alone sets the tone of the film. Even with each planned motion, things still go wrong and a man is brutally killed. Furthermore, you only get to see at most the eye of the raptor during the entire scene. By Muldoon losing his grip of the man, he has lost control, and that theme continues to run through the film.

The next scene is a combination of many things. It introduces the lawyer, Hammond without showing him that sets up a scene later, InGen's operations around the world, and essentially propels the reasoning for the whole film only 5 minutes in. InGen's investors are worried the park isn't viable because of the death from the previous scene and want a complete evaluation before things move forward. All of this is tied into the tangible work the people are doing in the mines by showing the amber. The scene ends by setting up Grant's character by the simple line "he's a digger."

From there we move to a dig site which we find out later is funded by Hammond further showing Hammond and InGen's reach around the world. Even the radar technology is frowned upon by Grant as it becomes easier to dig up dinosaurs, removing the person from the digging. This is enforced by the kid who has no respect for dinosaurs and the danger they presented when alive. This scene is not about scaring a kid with a raptor claw. It is about the mentality of InGen's scientists being that of a child thinking that raptors are just a 6ft turkey. It further explains how vicious a raptor is especially as a pack. A lot of these scenes are setups for payoffs later.

Hammond's character was set up 5-6 minutes previously saying he was too busy helping his daughter through a divorce, so he's a family man. The conversation he has with Sattler and Grant is that of a child's wonder when visiting a zoo. Now that he has the resources, he can recreate that wonder for others. Still it is a child's mentality and naivety. When his offer fails, he has to resort to money to persuade them to come to the island. The amazing acting presented shows a clear change of tone in his voice when he has to use money instead of just the wonder.

From there we move onto a scene with Dodson and Nedry which serves two purposes: setting up corporate espionage, and other companies who are interested in genetically recreating dinosaurs, and Dodson as a character. When he exits the cab, he does not close the door. That minor thing shows that he does not care about other people, and only about himself. He represents these corporations. All they care about is stealing what InGen has. On the surface, it explores more exposition of what Nedry will do later to get the embryos out. The scene also brings up something interesting with Nedry. The most common line from Hammond throughout the film is "spared no expense," but Nedry ends the scene with "Don't get cheap on me Dodson; that was Hammond's mistake." In a way it sets up Hammond's mentality for the park even more where he is more focused on the creation of the park without showing appreciation for those who make it happen. I'll get into that more in a later scene.

The helicopter scene sets up Malcom's character within a couple minutes as well as Chaos theory, the underpinning of what goes wrong in the park. It also shows the ingenuity of Grant, and sets up that he is a capable person when he later has to look after two children.

The reveal of the dinosaurs is done through the characters, and the literal jaw dropping reaction leads into showing the dinosaurs. This further shows that the movie is about the people, not the dinosaurs. In this scene, Hammond feels he has won. He knew he had to use money to bring Sattler and Grant to the park, but once they saw the dinosaurs, their reaction of wonder is his real purpose and plan. Even the cynical lawyer is convinced, but he is still looking at it for the money. Remember that "wonder" is a bad thing in the Jurassic Park world. You lower your guard and stop critically thinking.

In a later scene, during the tour, they push the bar up and escape. This continues the theme that the park has no control over anything, even the people in it.

The scene with the raptors hatching says a lot about Hammond as a subtext. He "insists" he be present with any "birth" because the first creature they see helps to imprint and trust him. He really is a narcissist who sees all of the dinosaurs on the island as his children. It is almost an analogy of Dr. Moreau. It is also interesting to see a dichotomy of Grant's reaction of the knowledge that they have a T-Rex, and the horror of finding out they have raptors.

The following feeding scene continues to show Hammond's obliviousness to the dangers they have with a cheery "feeding them." Still nothing of the raptors is shown, only the viciousness of what they do as well as their intelligence and abilities.

The lunch scene goes into the philosophy of what they are doing, and Malcom brings up many points saying they have a lack of humility towards nature, and likens Hammond to a child who has found his parent's gun, again the child-like nature of Hammond. It is interesting that what Malcom says about standing on the shoulders of giants, doing things without consideration for the work done before them is exactly what was done in Jurassic World. They didn't think about what made this film great, and went with an empty shell.
Even at this early stage, the wonder of the island is beginning to wear off, and Sattler brings up the fact that they have poisonous plants in the building because they look good. Grant points out that they have no possible foresight on how these creatures will react to the world.

Jurassic World copied even the kids with the younger one being knowledgeable about all things dinosaurs, and they are basically being taken away while their parents have a divorce. Realizing this makes Jurassic World less of a sequel and more of a reboot in disguise. I don't know if it is the acting or the writing, but these kids are not annoying.

In the next few scenes, we see that Nedry feels he is being underpaid for what he can do even with some unknown financial difficulties he has. Hammond shows relief that the cars even moved when the tour started. The music score as they enter the park proper is more subdued, and the wonder during the first 45 minutes is almost gone. Everyone is super serious.

As shown before, Hammond relies on the dinosaurs to convey the wonder, so with all the no-shows, he is failing in the only card in his deck.

While they say the park has glitches or bugs, they are bringing these people into effectively the alpha stage of the park. Still the lack of control purveys as Grant opens the door. Muldoon says he repeatedly told them to have locking mechanisms on the doors; they have ignored this foresight, focused on the illusion of controlling the dinosaurs when they ignore the control of humans both as guests and the employees with Nedry.

The film is not bogged down with a love story. It is about family and friends. Grant only tells Malcom that he and Sattler are an item because of a previous conversation where Malcom says he has three children and he is always on the look-out for a future ex-wife. Grant is protecting Sattler from that.

A few last things about the film in terms of tension. The scene with the T-Rex breaking out is contained to 2 cars with the huge predator stalking around it. They have nowhere to go, combined with the practical effects makes for a scene a sense of real danger. Even the vibrations in the water preludes to the danger. As an aside, it shows the T-Rex swallowing the goat, and Jurassic World left a lot of violence out. It also wanted to have its cake and eat it too with a dinosaur that was faster, but then would stalk everything slowly for plot reasons.

When the T-Rex chases Muldoon, Sattler, and Malcom, it nearly gets them, and the tension ramps up when Malcom falls on the stick shift preventing them from going faster. Eventually the T-Rex gives up his prey which feels natural in terms of an animal outrunning it.

The tension ramps up again with Sattler running from the raptors combined with trying to get Tim off the fence. The scenes with Sattler really feel like something out of Alien. The very first trailer for Jurassic World had that same feeling; it's too bad that wasn't the end product.

Then there's the cat and mouse through the kitchen with the kids and the raptors. They go into the Control Room and try to turn the door locks on. Lex is able to turn the system back on because of a setup earlier that she is a hacker. The adults are trying to keep the door closed against one raptor. Then over the phone, Hammond hears them trying to get through the window, and you really hear true fear from him as the prospect of his grandchildren being killed. They crawl through the ducts to get out onto the skeletons, and the raptors jump on that. The people are being chased and attacked, and the final dino vs dino fight is brief and kind of after the fact as the humans had already escaped the building.

The film had interesting and compelling characters with development and arcs, especially Grant's aversion to children dissolving away. There was a deeper philosophical theme of control, hubris, and the dangers of genetic manipulation without foresight or oversight.

Jurassic World tried to include some of that, but it rode the fence on genetic manipulation because Jurassic World is essentially a reboot of Jurassic Park. Even the costume design for Claire is the same for Hammond. The design of the kids' being in a family about to divorce is the same. They continued to splice different animals into dinosaurs leading to unintended consequences (though maybe intended? like I said, it rode the fence). It is a shell of Jurassic Park without what really made it special. As Ian Malcom said, they stood on the shoulders of giants, and before long, they patented it, packaged it, slapped it on a lunch box, and now they're selling it.