Back to the Jurassic
Back to the Jurassic
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
While I am on a roll, digging through my old Spielberg Film Society reviews, here’s one from issue #53, written a few months before Schindler’s List appeared, contemplating a very different beast that shook up cinema-goers earlier that summer:
Spielberg Rex – Downwind from Jurassic Park
by Joe Fordham (August 1993)
You know this already: His thirteenth feature, twelfth with John Williams, first action/adventure big-teeth monster thrill from a best seller novel since the phenomenon of Jaws eighteen years ago just crashed into movie theatres atop a tidal wave of T-shirts, T.V. ads and mammoth industry and audience anticipation -- all this, and Schindler’s List in black and white to follow in December. Has Spielberg finally flipped out? Did he walk into a studio trap? Can there be any hope that this his latest movie can live up to expectations?
Two years ago, Michael Crichton's bone-stomping adventure story, Chaos Theory run amuck amongst dino-clones on Isla Nublar, became the talk of the town in Hollywood. Inevitably the Steven Spielberg film (check out the possessory credit relegated to the end of the final credit roller) streamlines plot and rearranges themes. The bare-bones story is intact, ‘God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dinosaurs eat man....’ but the emphasis has changed.
The whole laying out of characters, dino-threat and thriller subplot slowly bring us to this point, as the huge Kong-sized gates swing open with their corporate JP logo. We all crane to see venom-spitting Dilophosaurus, roll those windows up.... nervous chatter in the control room.... ‘Quiet!’ hisses Muldoon (steel-eyed Bob Peck, superb as the tight-wrapped, reptilian park ranger, as lethal as they come; we see him, we know we're in for trouble... supporting-actor Oscar potential?) 'They're approaching the Tyrannosaur pen....’ But nobody's home...or so we think....
Without giving scenes away, Spielberg completely disarms us, playing with our anticipations, making us expect to see and be afraid, then bringing us face-to-face with the inhabitants of the park in a way we did not expect. Sure, there are scares aplenty with, brilliantly, very little gore (on a per gallon quota, far less than Jaws), but the unexpected impact is of a different kind, a visual net effect, the main difference from Crichton's book.
Crichton has pteradons, an aviary, a river raft encounter with T-Rex, an earlier scene with Ellie and the raptors, a different fate for T-Rex, a different fate for the dino-eggs, a different fate for the park creator Hammond. All praise should go to Crichton for his original and imaginative ideas, no doubt many changes were due to budget, pace and previews, but the main difference between his story and Spielberg's is its darker character entirely.
This is ‘a Steven Spielberg film,’ as noted earlier. For example of Crichton's films, look at Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery, all directed by him, or The Andromeda Strain for a Robert Wise version of Crichton's story. All are taut, chilling, cautionary, speculative tales, as is the movie Jurassic Park, yet one scene in particular in that movie marks a great distinction from Crichton's work: the Petticoat Lane scene. It's not in the novel, and here we learn why Hammond built his island. It's not for greed, as in the novel. He just loves these creatures and the enchantment they provoke.
We are reminded throughout the movie that 'dinosaurs' are still around today, ecologically speaking, in the form of birds. While the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park will surely perish, their relatives remain to remind us of their antecedents, keeping the dinosaur alive in our hearts and imaginations.
And that is why Spielberg made this movie. The great, ennobling beasts have come back to humble us and prevent us from becoming too cocky about our own great indestructible reign over planet Earth. We see it in the eyes of the brachiosaurus, hear it in the roar of the tyrannosaur. They're laughing at us from their fossils. Added to this, this movie is still one heck of a great thrill ride. See it and judge for yourselves -- before you too become extinct.
Editorial Post Script:
Imagery © Universal Pictures/ Amblin; except for ‘Jungle Johnny’ © Joe Fordham
Reprinted with permission, SSFS © August 1993
ISSN 0883-6094