Subject: REVIEW: JURASSIC PARK

From: [email-masked] (Albert Sze-Wei Wang)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 15:09:08 GMT

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			JURASSIC PARK
		 A film review by Albert S. Wang
		Copyright 1993 by Albert S. Wang

Starring: 
	Sam Neill as Alan Grant
	Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm
	Richard Attenborough as John Hammond
	Laura Dern as Ellie Sattler
Directed by:
	Stephen Spielberg
Produced by:
	Kathleen Kennedy and Gerald R. Molen
Screenplay by:  
	Michael Crichton and David Koepp 
Based on the novel by:
        Michael Crichton
Music written and directed by:
	John Williams
Film Rating: PG-13

     The film adaptation of Michael Crichton's best selling novel
JURASSIC PARK opened on June 11, 1993, to theaters around the United
States.  The film runs for a total of two hours and six minutes, but as
the story actually runs one can hardly notice the passing of that
time.  The computer affects, which were rendered on Silicon Graphics
Indigo machines by the folks at ILM, the full motion dinosaur affects
by Stan Winston, full motion dinosaur affects by Dennis Muren, and
special dinosaur effects by Michael Lantieri are a tribute to the
technology in movie making which have made possible the resurrection of
a form of life which has been extinct on this planet for over 65
million years.

     Based on sheer entertainment value, JURASSIC PARK does a
tremendous job by keeping the viewer expectant and on the edge of his
or her seat.  Even a person who has read the book will be kept tense
waiting for what will happen next.  Surprises abound in the film story,
and perhaps the most powerful and frightening element is the dinosaurs
themselves, a force of nature that was destroyed in a mass extinction
of life, only to be resurrected by man.

     But despite the phenomenal job the film does visually, it falls
seriously short in development of the characters and overall story.
Perhaps the first serious problem noted was the under-development of
all the main characters with possibly the exception of Ian Malcolm, the
mathematician, and John Hammond.  Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, Tim,
Alexis, and Gennaro were superficial in the film story, even possibly
knowing too much.  In Michael Crichton's novel, Alan Grant didn't
realize that the Tyrannosaurus Rex's vision relied purely on movement
until he actually stopped moving and realized the large carnivore
seemed to not realize he was there.  For Alan Grant, Jurassic Park was
a wondrous place that showed him whether or not all the hypothesizing
by paleontologists were right or not in determining the characteristics
of individual species and their behavior.  Things like the warm
bloodedness of dinosaurs had long been a subject of debate in the
paleontological communities.  Also, in the novel, Dr. Grant loved kids,
since he and kids had one thing in common: they both loved dinosaurs,
and their popularity kept funding for paleontological projects going.

     Ellie Sattler was a very strong willed and determined
paleo-botanist in Crichton's novel.  She was above all pragmatic, and
very sharp, overlooking nothing when presented with riddles.  In the
novel, the ill dinosaur they found was a Stegosaurus, one that had been
afflicted with a continual ailment in a timed cycle.  By examining the
Stegosaurus's diet, Ellie tried to solve the mystery of the ailment and
determined it wasn't in the food after a thorough examination of the
animal's feces.  However, she and the vet noticed small piles of rocks
that seemed to be deposited by the Stegosaurus and that was when it
dawned on her that the Stegosaurus might use the rocks for digestion,
depositing the stones in the dinosaur's crop to help crush food, and
then spitting them out when the stones are worn down.  She investigated
the place where the Stegosaurus got its rocks from and found that it
was a plant growing on the rocks that was making the Stegosaurus sick
when it went to get a new supply of rocks for digestion.  Ellie and Dr.
Grant are present early on in seeing the adult Velociraptors and
realize the hunting, intelligent, and destructive potential of the
animals when the raptors tried to attack the two of them through the
electrified fence holding chamber.

     Gennaro was a solid clear thinking business man in Crichton's
novel, not the wimpy thin superficial person portrayed on the screen.
Gennaro was a solid pragmatist and certainly not the coward he was made
out to be, since in the book, he risked his own life to help when the
Velociraptors were running around from the power outage.  In the film,
Gennaro's character was merged together with the character of Ed Regis,
the Jurassic Park PR man.

     Nedry's character was developed in the image of a professional
programmer in the novel.  In the film he was molded to fit a standard
stereotype for fat lazy programmer slobs.  Though he does betray
Jurassic Park, the knowledge of his betrayal isn't clear in the novel
until we see him with the can.  The exchange of the can and the coolant
was handled in the novel in an airport, quietly, and without anyone
knowing who was who.

     Tim and Alexis were the two Hammond grandchildren in the novel,
but their roles were switched in the film from Tim being the older one,
to him being the younger.  In the novel, Tim's knack for computers is
established, however, in the tense scenes with the multiple raptors
running around, he and his sister are kept moving, running around,
trying to lose the raptors as they tried to get the computer working
again through direction via walkie-talkie by Dr. Wu, a character which
was completely removed from the thrust of the film story.  Tim
gradually figures it out, but it was a difficult panicked process,
trying to figure out how the setup program worked.

     Robert Muldoon, the game warden was also under-utilized in the
film story.  His expertise with animals and their behavior seemed
portrayed little in the film, reduced to what amounted to the leader of
a security force.

     Ian Malcom was portrayed very well in the film story. In fact he
was turned from a rather unlikable rambling character in the novel to
a witty character in the film story which was quite refreshing.  In
between his discussions of chaos theory, he examines the role man has
in resurrecting a powerful life form, a force of nature, and asks
whether just because you have the technology to do it, whether it
should be done, and he does it with a witty and dark sense of humor.

     John Hammond was portrayed sympathetically in the film and I like
that a great deal better than the unfortunate and rather contrived end
he seemed to meet in the novel, getting eaten by Compys.  In the film
Hammond was as human as everyone else and had redeeming values.  He was
a person who wanted to do something real, to show the world something
wonderful in the film and not a money-grubbing businessman with no
sense of reality.

     Points in the film that were problematic:

     1) When Dr. Grant asks what kind of dinosaur it was he was holding
that had just hatched, he doesn't follow up Dr. Wu's answer of
Velociraptor with "Why are you breeding Velociraptors??"  In the novel
what dinosaurs they got were determined by what hatched and the
Velociraptors were one of them.  Dr. Grant knew how powerful the
raptors were and how deadly they are in their pack hunting behavior.
It was a natural question that went unasked in the film.  Dino DNA was
extracted from the stomachs of the mosquitos, but because the DNA there
would be incomplete, DNA sequences from similar animals, like
amphibians, were used to fill the void.  So in many ways, the animals
in Jurassic Park, aren't clones at all, but a new species of animals
created by man, without understanding what plugging of DNA from another
"similar" life form to fill missing strands can really do.

     2) How do the Park administrators make sure no dinosaurs escape
Jurassic Park?  This question was answered immediately in the novel,
but left out completely in the film.  In the novel, an electronic
computerized counting system was used that looked for an expected
number of animals.  Since the animals are all supposedly female, they
can't breed so therefore if the counting system finds the number of
animals simultaneously in various points across the park that it
expects, then no animals have escaped.  It was this flaw in the
counting system (a programming shortcut to look for expected number and
not for how many there actually are since it's easier looking for a
fixed number of animals) that resulted in the problem of breeding going
on undetected.

     3) Ellie and the Triceratops ... so what happened?  They introduced
a loaded gun in the film, Ellie trying to find what was wrong with the
Triceratops and just dropped it.  We never found out if she found out
what was making it sick.  It was something that was started and just
dropped.

     4) Rushed development of characters.  For two hours, I felt the
film needed another thirty minutes to properly develop everyone.  Most
of all, I found it almost unbelievable that Alexis figured out how to
use the computer's setup program that fast.  That entire scene seemed
artificially rushed.

     Summary:  Film character development was weak with exception of
Ian Malcolm and possibly the new and improved John Hammond.  Alan Grant
and Ellie Sattler had a great deal of potential for a lot more, but
failed to come through.  One can only wonder if important footage was
cut out of the original rated R version of the film, or if the
Hurricane had indeed cut filming short because of the extensive
equipment loss.  Story development was incomplete in a number of
places, leaving questions unanswered.  Sam Neill's character wasn't as
flamboyant as I had expected, and Laura Dern was 90% of the way I had
pictured Ellie the paleo-botanist, except that her character was so
under-developed in the film it left me disappointed.

     The deadly nature of the Velociraptors wasn't really made clear
early on at all.  They were portrayed simply as vicious beasts and not
as the cunning, intelligent, and organized creatures that they were in
the novel.  It wasn't just their viciousness that made them dangerous
in the novel, it was their viciousness accompanied by their
intelligence and their deadly speed.  They were pack hunters that
attacked large prey in groups, slashing their victims open viciously
and rapidly.  And worst of all, they had the capacity to learn.

     JURASSIC PARK succeeds however in one key aspect: providing
entertainment.  And though I would have to agree that JURASSIC PARK was
a missed opportunity for a great film, it is by far one of the better
films of all times.  It portrays the affects of playing with a powerful
force of nature, and how serious the consequences can actually be when
playing with that force without fully understanding it.

-- 
Albert Sze-Wei Wang