Welcome to today’s manic movie discussion. Today we are talking about one of the most famous movies of all time that influenced media and culture alike. “Welcome to ‘Jurassic Park!’”
“Jurassic Park,” for the very rare view that have not seen this movie, takes place in (you guessed it) Jurassic Park, a dinosaur-themed amusement park (think Animal Kingdom at Disney World) with one catch: the dinosaurs are real and alive.
However, things turn catastrophic in this film when industrial sabotage turns off all security in the park, letting all the dinosaurs run rampant.
This leaves all the human inhabitants to fend off the ferocious predators and restore order back to the park.
This film, like many others referenced in this column, was adapted from a novel by the same name (this one being by Michael Crichton).
In a rare occurrence, Crichton was approached and asked to write the screenplay for the film instead of it being a pure Hollywood product.
The film uses a combination of large-scale animatronics and Computer-Generated Imagery (commonly known today as CGI).
“Jurassic Park” went on to be the highest grossing film of 1993 and the highest grossing film ever made at that time.

My Take:

I’m just going to say it up front: this is a great movie filled with fantastic displays of awe-inspiring landscapes and creatures that have fascinated us for centuries – not to mention the emotion-driven scenes of the predatory dinosaurs stalking and attacking our characters that still leave you terrified.
One of the oddest things about this movie is that its success has nothing to do with the actual film itself, but the viewers.
“Jurassic Park,” like “The Thing” as mentioned weeks ago, has an inordinate amount of fan theories and speculations around it, from the backgrounds of characters to how they made the dinosaurs themselves.
While some might be perplexed by or even agitated that some viewers may look too deep into things, I personally find it heartening that someone can get that much enjoyment out of a property that they wish to explain it more, filling in all those small gaps of logic normal viewers suspend their disbelief over.
This speaks to the influence of “Jurassic Park” itself. This movie has directly influenced how we look at and view dinosaurs to this very day.
Not only that, but it has inspired countless people to continue to study dinosaurs and learn more about this world ancient past.
Heck, after the movie was released, Crichton had a dinosaur named after him in his honor for the shot of inspiration he gave to the field of paleontology.
“Jurassic Park” is one of those special pieces of media that not only entertains us but inspires us and affects our culture as a whole – now that makes for a fantastic movie.