What's so good about dinosaurs?

September 29, 1993
Issue 

Jurassic Park
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Michael Crichton and David Koepp
Starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough and Jeff Goldblum
Reviewed by Karen Fredericks

Before the dinosaurs turn nasty in Jurassic Park, our heroes happen upon a triceratops laid low with a tummy ache and a nasty mouth ulcer. In a bid to find the cause of the creature's discomfort, palaeobotanist Laura Dern requests a look at the critter's droppings. In the scene which follows the screen is filled with a steaming pile of fresh dinosaur shit large enough to engulf a Toyota Landcruiser. This, to me, was the defining shot of Jurassic Park.

None of the genuinely scary shots and sequences (and there were some) could be said to define the film, because they were all stolen from other films — mostly from Ridley Scott's Alien flicks, both 1 and 2, but also from earlier, and superior, Spielberg critter thrillers such as Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

But what makes the massive pile of shit definitive of Jurassic Park was that it, like all elements of the film bar the merchandising franchises, was never concluded.

What did Laura Dern find in the shit? What did make the triceratops sick? What happened to the dinosaur embryos that the fat man dropped? Where did all the park staff go, and why? Who was the man who wanted to buy the frozen embryos? Naturally they're setting us up for a sequel, but you'd think you'd get at least some narrative satisfaction from part 1. I got the distinct impression that everyone in the production of this film, from director through cinematographer, down to continuity person, was too preoccupied with the marketing possibilities to notice that nothing about the plot made sense.

Michael Crichton's original concept was a good one. The rapidly developing science of genetic engineering has raised, perhaps more urgently than ever before, questions of who is to control this powerful technology and how it is to be used. But instead of exploring this question (a question which cannot afford to be looked at too closely without calling the capitalist system itself into question), the Jurassic Park script has a black-clad mathematician mumbling incomprehensibly about chaos theory, and Laura Dern whining annoyingly about "nature" and "following our feelings" when they pause for breath between chase scenes.

The dinosaurs, I admit, were pretty good, but I'm not big on dinosaurs, so that didn't save the movie. A straw poll of people I know who are keen on dinosaurs revealed one recurring reason for the fascination: "They're big".

Well, in Jurassic Park you don't get to see the big ones much. Most of the chase scenes involve little ones with gnashy gnashy teeth, sort of like a cross between an alien and a shark with feet. The film would have been more entertaining, to me, if more attention had been paid to the big beasties — perhaps working a few of their habits into the plot and letting us get to know them a little better. Once he'd finalised the computer graphics and settled on the T-shirt design, though, Spielberg clearly ran out of time to entertain his audience.

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