Jurassic Park Analysis - Themes, Tension & CGI

[@CDexie]

Speaking of great effects, obscuration is also used brilliantly. If you pay attention to the scene where the T-rex attacks the Gallimimus, when his feet touch the ground (arguably the point where most CGI stands out)it's always covered by something else . First it's from the falling tree, then dust and dirt, Dr. Grant's head and the T-rex's own head. It goes to show that it's not just the quality of the effects, but also the technique and trickery that goes into making it believable. Filmmakers have a ton to learn from this film

[@Leto85]

What I truely admire about the movie Jurassic Park is that almost everything is so incredibly iconic. Making a movie about dinosaurs outside of this franchise is one thing, and not even that difficult, but the moment you are going to put those dinosaurs in a zoo, or one of your characters is planning to do so then the audience immediately knows which movie your movie is trying so hard not to copy but will always fail doing so. The whole theme of a dinosaur park is in its essence iconic to the whole Jurassic Park franchise. Not only that, but the dinosaurs themselves are iconic on its own as well. Take the Dilophosaurus for example. The thing that the animal spits venom and has a thrill makes it unique to Jurassic Park. And the one death scene in the whole franchise so far involving this dinosaur is simply unique for this very reason. Then we have the park itself, with its logo, its gate, its automatic cars and its fences. They all scream Jurassic Park and are just as important to this franchise as that Pikachu is for Pokémon or the Darth Vader suit for Star Wars. Even the characters have iconic elements, such as John Hammond's staff. And all these things together makes not for not just yet another dinosaur movie back in 1993, but it opened up a whole new franchise the world hasn't seen before.

[@samwallaceart288]

I heard a comment somewhere about the importance of first establishing a realistic example of the dinosaur before cutting to the less-realistic CGI. So your human mind sees the animatronic eye of the raptor, followed by the wide shot in CGI, your mind projects the realistic mental image from the animatronic onto the CGI ... one importance of obscuring the latter so that there are more blanks for your mind to fill in, but equally important is the detail of the practically-shot scenes to fuel your mental image. Speilberg only lets you see the whole T-Rex in broad daylight after the more-realistic mental impression has been firmly planted in your brain.

[@JacksMovieReviews]

I've read that too, Spielberg disguised it very well

[@colmyers]

Awesome video! I remember seeing Jurassic Park in the theater when I was in second grade. It completely changed my life. Also feel that this movie has one of the best/most iconic film scores of all time. I used to watch even the end credits through the actors' names and then the main crew because the music was so good. It's easy to kind of pass of the characters because I remember reading or hearing about this idea that the dinosaurs were the real stars of these movies, but I think Jurassic Park had an excellent cast who made these characters more memorable.

[@JacksMovieReviews]

Thanks Colin! John Williams is a genius, there's no denying that!

[@JH-qy8no]

What I appreciate about Spielberg is that he does not insult the audience's intelligence.

[@morrius0757]

My favorite movie of all time! you deserve more subs by the way. lol

[@JacksMovieReviews]

+Morrius07 Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed!

[@ethanpollard1484]

Just wanna say I love your dissections, find them very insightful and pleasantly surprised that I have a lot of the same interpretations that you have presented in these videos. I appreciate your dedication to keeping film an art form, I think that is slowly creating the demise of film. Keep it up, you're educating people how it should be done,

[@JacksMovieReviews]

Thanks Ethan! I'm glad we see eye to eye and appreciate these videos!

[@burbanpoison2494]

Jack's Movie Reviews "I'm glad we see eye to eye" is a really weird way to accept a compliment.

[@NorthernHandle]

It’s such a great film. It shows that good characters and story does make for a fun time. The build up and slow start with the discussions about the (yet seen) mortality and danger of co-existing with dinosaurs, when the dinosaurs show up it brings the disaster home.

[@Rodrigo_Vega]

Hammond does literally explain his drive to create the park in the kitchen scene with Ellie.

[@Papillon234]

Very good points, it makes me look at Jurassic Park more objectively rather than too much nostalgia from my childhood. 👍🏼

[@anticarrrot]

There is a lack of distinction in this video between "Tech can go too far" and "People are frightened of tech going too far" There's a big difference there. Mostly because the latter invites people to ask "But are their fears well founded?" To which the answer is almost always 'no'.

[@alisonbreen4468]

Hi, love your work xx

[@KyleGauntReviews]

It's amazing how much your channel has grown man!! Great job as always with the analysis. How did you do it so quickly man?

[@JacksMovieReviews]

+Kyle Gaunt Reviews Thanks Kyle! I'm usually able to write the script during the week and edit the video during the weekend

[@KyleGauntReviews]

+Jacks Movie Reviews Oh cool. What I meant was how did your channel grow so quickly? You you like 200 subs in 2 weeks which is awesome

[@JacksMovieReviews]

Kyle Gaunt Reviews lol, my bad, my last 3 videos got a lot of traction on /r/movies. A couple of big twitter accounts wrote about them, I guess enough people were able to see my content, they saw what they liked, and subscribed!

[@KyleGauntReviews]

Jacks Movie Reviews Awesome! Glad to see your channel is going places. Did you see Captain America Civil War? If you did, can you check out my review?

[@samwallaceart288]

I don't know about /r/movies, but the first vid of yours I watched was "World-Building in Fantastic Mr. Fox" when I saw it on the "suggestions" sidebar. I thought "heh, that's an aspect of the movie I never hear anyone talking about" and decided to give it a go. Haven't looked back.

[@poorvaldhotre]

Hey Jack.. Just trying to understand. Wouldn't the credit for character development and using suspense (vs surprise) go to the screenwriter rather than the director? Thanks for the videos!

[@kthemaster1999]

Poorval Dhotre Character development sure but suspense is built up in the way it's shot. The director is usually the one that determines that, especially an influential one like Speilberg.

[@Alexandroslav]

sorry for being late by 2 years. there is a difference between novel characters and film characters, often directors butcher characters and ruin the movies and sometimes they maintain them and ruin the movie because they don't feet the medium. Spielberg changes the characters greatly, Genaro the lawyer was transformed from one of the main heroes of the novel to a greedy coward, while Ian Malcolm was changed from a coward to a hero - Spielberg changed them beyond recognition. same with Hammond, Spielberg changed him from the usual antagonistic greedy corporate in the novel into the naive yet caring grandfather with very good intentions.

[@stetsonstarkey]

I absolutely love your channel and your videos. Thanks for all that you do! I do have one small recommendation for this video, though. The music in the background is extremely annoying. It feels like a very short Loop, so the same part keeps coming up again and again. It would be better if that were less emphasized until the climax.

[@StevenVlogs]

great review!

[@lizaestevez6928]

can you do raiders of the lost ark I really hoping that you doing it

[@azv343]

It's not a virus, it's a disgruntled employee being undervalued

[@rogenaqshairy3097]

This movie change my childhood brain

[@chatteyj]

An major factor contributing to why CGI looked batter in Jurassic park is superior and more realistic animation compared to the way cgi is directed nowadays making it look like a cartoon characters flying around on screen.

[@gaigzean]

You deserve more views and subs wtf

[@TTillman3]

Great video, but frustrating. There's a whole additional layer to Jurassic Park and The Lost World that you haven't penetrated yet. Both films say some profound things about parenting and procreation, whether it's up to us to decide to be parents or not. For all its flaws, even Jurassic World seemed to be somewhat privy to this. Beyond the meta qualities, Spielberg's two JP films are expressionistic works, with the plot and the visuals reflecting the internal journey of the respective protagonists. Through both the film's plot and the character of Grant, the first installment seems to say how futile is to try to control nature. Just as the dinosaurs evolve to breed, so does Dr. Grant by being thrust into the role of surrogate. This journey, along with his stern disliking of children, is a 180-degree change from his character in the novel, and it's not arbitrary that he's the one that discovers the dinosaur eggshells. He and Ellie even wear blue and pink as if to reinforce their gender identities. This is present in the concept art as well. By the end, he's come around to the idea of creation not merely being an act of sheer will but one of biological instinct and necessity. The Lost World expands on these themes. It too is a movie about parenting and how it's impossible to control the autonomy of our offspring. The opening scene with the wealthy family, apart from drawing on Victorian adventure iconography, is a microcosm of this theme. Site B itself seems to be a foil for Ian Malcolm's daughter. As if to say that bad things will always happen when we inevitably have to turn a blind eye to our offspring, and yet life still finds a way if we we'd merely get out of the way.

[@JacksMovieReviews]

There's always more that could be talked about on any topic right? If you had to write a paper on a topic, I'm assuming you wouldn't cover every single nitty gritty detail, would you? I could have said more, but that doesn't mean I should have said more.

[@TTillman3]

No need for flippancy as I'm merely responding to your own call to action at the end of the video. Nonetheless, this isn't a trivial element to exclude in a dissection, but a vital one to its success. It's also a much more tangible reason than partially attributing the success to "Spielberg=really great." While doing the press for the 2013 3D re-release, Spielberg himself said directly that the subtext of the movie-a man not wanting kids realizing he does-is actually what drove its success at the box office by giving the audience an anchor through the FX and suspense sequences. It's worth giving the film a second (or 100th) look for. To your point, however, of course there's always more that can be talked about on a topic, particularly art. It's just frustrating to watch a well done video that misses the forest for the trees. The synchronicity between story, character, and visuals is what I suspect Spielberg means when he says, "I put all of my craft into 'Jurassic Park' and all of my intuition into 'Schindler's List'."

[@TheGeorgeD13]

There was no flippancy here? You're assuming his tone. In text, it's very easy to assume tone, which usually ends up being incorrect.

[@GrowlyCubNZ]

You're quite right of course, and the theme of divorce runs through all 4 Jurassic Park movies to date as well. Divorce brings Tim and Lex, and the boys in Jurassic World to Isla Nublar. Isla Sorna sees divorced parents searching for their kid in JPIII and a divorced father, Malcolm, building a closer bond with his daughter in The Lost World. That is also reflected in the themes of being disconnected from and trying to control nature which run through the movies as well, some more than others. I think Trevor is right to mention these as important themes because the video is meant to focus on themes within the films and these ones are major to all of the series.

[@drgrounder]

I don't like what happened to this franchise. In the Jurassic Park novel the lead geneticist Mr Wu suggests to Hammond that all the dinos in the park be killed and be replaced with a new, less accurate but more tame, slow moving and good looking versions of the dinos. Hammond is offended by this and says then they wouldn't be real dinosaurs recreated as accurately as possible. Wu says people don't know the difference and they want a product that's appealing rather than accurate. Cut to 2018 when we've known for over a decade all the raptor dinos are feathered but the franchise refuses to chance and fans defend it with vitriol because even though it's inaccurate, it's the JP image and product they've come to expect. Now one of the raptors is anthropomorphized and treated like a pet. I think Wu got his way. The original dinos were killed, and they were replaced with less accurate but more crowd pleasing by committee fakes

[@waqarqarshi]

Did you see the new Jurassic World dominion opening?

[@conradmacintyre10]

Atheism wasn't recognized until the1960s? How can you possibly make that claim. Athiesm as an idea is as old as religion is. The word itself comes from the Greek "a" (without) "theos" (god). As a term "atheism" first began to appear in the late 16th century. Hundreds of years before the 1960s.

[@dmark1922]

I think Mr MacIntyre is just commenting on the narrative that said "atheism wasn't recognized" until the 1960s, not whether he is atheist or not (not that it should be a problem whatever he is). I thought it was a strange thing to claim too. There were philosophers and whatnot that did not believe, and the Old Testament itself says, "the fool has said in his heart, there is no God" which must mean there were atheists in BC when the Bible was being written.

[@drgrounder]

If it's impossible for something to come from nothing then where did god come from

[@arkay238]

Yeah that comment in the video needs more context. Perhaps he meant atheism as a concept being acknowledged by mainstream culture? Atheism as an idea was certainly in the writings of Nietzsche, Bertram Russell, and more.

[@Azraiel213]

Ah, the "me am go too far" argument.

[@jurassicpark1fan920]

JP is a way better movie than JW but its CGI was better. JW is just a entertaining film while JP (book and movie) is more of a cautionary tale.

[@sirpepeofhousekek6741]

Wait what? I thought Michael Crichton was an atheist? EDIT: Nevermind, he was a deist. Huh, I never would have guessed.

[@thewhitewolf58]

This movie is good but it gets annoying when movies act like people are playing god just because they want to invent also i rather rely on invention

[@nine300]

What is there about resurrecting an extinct species with genetic engineering that DOESN'T have "playing god" written all over it?

[@speggeri90]

The theme of the movie is about the fear of starting a family. The dinosaurs, such as t-rex and velociraptor, are there as a representation of the inner fears of Alan and Ellie, which they have to overcome. To say that this film is about surviving dinosaurs in an island in a film analysis is downright embarrassing.

[@jjramos46]

Cgi use today is shit

[@dmtd2388]

That s what you call real designers and animators and was done on Silicon Graphics and pre render on Amiga workstation computers back when pcs where on stoneage and now days PCs they have 50.000 times more power to doit and precise physics with nVidia Quadro & Tesla Gpus but no many real designers,animators to do that so good technology is not always the point but talent to but studios are in such a rush to get it out