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Jurassic Park
An amusement park in the making gets a visit from a group of experts to endorse it for public visit. But alas the main attraction of the park are Dinosaurs and things do go wrong.
To be quite honest this movie is not really that original if taken as a creature feature. T-Rex and Velociraptors are treated as antagonists. This is made from a novel by Michael Crichton. So, all this means is that this movie looks good on paper before camera starts rolling. But to take the magic from paper and put it on screen, we need a great director. The thing about Spielberg is that he is your traditional studio director. That should make him enemies in his competitors and fellow directors like it did for Ridley Scott. But the thing about Spielberg is the risks he takes with his name brand. Albeit they are calculated risks.There is certain inherent difficulty in staying consistent and surprising audience with each movie. You can't stay in the business for 30 or more years and still be able to make movies like Ready Player One unless you are some kind of genius. More than that he is consistent. He is making movies like Bridge of Spies in between. So the quality of the movie has to be mostly attributed to Spielberg. Without him it would just have been an okay movie with interesting ideas.It so evident in the way he carries out scenes and sequences. As I said in my Predator review, in movies like these that are set in an exotic location or a mysterious land, the most important thing is to not change the tone of the movie. The atmosphere of the movie is of the utmost importance to have maximum effect on the audience. This movie basically needs outsiders to come into the park to inspect and evaluate. So the challenge here is to make them feel like fully fleshed out characters without breaking the atmospheric tone of the movie. You can't do that unless you show them in their natural habitat. Main characters here are Sam Neil and Laura Dern. The movie specifically chooses to show them in their digging site and their trailer. So all we know of them is their profession and how they were invited to the island. So the choices in those scene beautifully maintains the illusion that we are still in some jungle like place. The meeting between employee who except bribes and his contact to competitor company also takes place in some Latin american restaurant close to the island. All these make audience feel like they are in Island even though the specific scenes takes place outside. There is no shots of cityscapes and buildings in the entire movie except the main building in Jurassic park which happens to be shaped like a dome and doesn't look like a corporate building.
The tone of the movie is so specific. It is not super serious and it is not slapstick. Comedy comes from the personality traits of characters. So you can't really blame to script or movie for trying out comedy. Its the characters that are comedic. These are commercial and entertaining elements. It deals with the 2 main adult themes similar to the second movie. The place of man in the species hierarchy and is it worth bringing these ancients creatures that has been extinct due to natural selection back to life. For some reason Spielberg can't do brood. However dramatic his movies are , they slant towards melodramatic than brood. One through-line of the movie is how clever Dinosaurs are and how seemingly safe situations can turn into incredibly dangerous scenarios. The death of the corrupt fat computer engineer is intriguing and scary at the same time. The way the dinosaur deals with this guy is kinda interesting. Of course I can't really say what the dilophosaurus might have thought and I am sure the scriptwriter and director must have contacted dilophosaurus experts to make it feel as authentic as possible. The reason for this scene being so intriguing is the fact that the engineer is so fat and large. If it were a goat the dinosaur would have killed it instantly. But since this guy is so large and almost the height of the dilophosaurus, it was testing and seeing what this large living being will do and once it figured out that the engineer is running away from it, it kills him. The whole scene is master class in directing. The building to tension mixed with character based comedy is kinda great.
The movie ends in a profound way. Nature can't be controlled. It gives the same feel as a hurricane destroying massive structures. Vast oceans that can swallow all the land. It is honestly a blockbuster masterpiece. Because it deals with high concepts in a masterful way and filmmakers avoided making it feel like a cheap cash grab.
An amusement park in the making gets a visit from a group of experts to endorse it for public visit. But alas the main attraction of the park are Dinosaurs and things do go wrong.
To be quite honest this movie is not really that original if taken as a creature feature. T-Rex and Velociraptors are treated as antagonists. This is made from a novel by Michael Crichton. So, all this means is that this movie looks good on paper before camera starts rolling. But to take the magic from paper and put it on screen, we need a great director. The thing about Spielberg is that he is your traditional studio director. That should make him enemies in his competitors and fellow directors like it did for Ridley Scott. But the thing about Spielberg is the risks he takes with his name brand. Albeit they are calculated risks.There is certain inherent difficulty in staying consistent and surprising audience with each movie. You can't stay in the business for 30 or more years and still be able to make movies like Ready Player One unless you are some kind of genius. More than that he is consistent. He is making movies like Bridge of Spies in between. So the quality of the movie has to be mostly attributed to Spielberg. Without him it would just have been an okay movie with interesting ideas.It so evident in the way he carries out scenes and sequences. As I said in my Predator review, in movies like these that are set in an exotic location or a mysterious land, the most important thing is to not change the tone of the movie. The atmosphere of the movie is of the utmost importance to have maximum effect on the audience. This movie basically needs outsiders to come into the park to inspect and evaluate. So the challenge here is to make them feel like fully fleshed out characters without breaking the atmospheric tone of the movie. You can't do that unless you show them in their natural habitat. Main characters here are Sam Neil and Laura Dern. The movie specifically chooses to show them in their digging site and their trailer. So all we know of them is their profession and how they were invited to the island. So the choices in those scene beautifully maintains the illusion that we are still in some jungle like place. The meeting between employee who except bribes and his contact to competitor company also takes place in some Latin american restaurant close to the island. All these make audience feel like they are in Island even though the specific scenes takes place outside. There is no shots of cityscapes and buildings in the entire movie except the main building in Jurassic park which happens to be shaped like a dome and doesn't look like a corporate building.
The tone of the movie is so specific. It is not super serious and it is not slapstick. Comedy comes from the personality traits of characters. So you can't really blame to script or movie for trying out comedy. Its the characters that are comedic. These are commercial and entertaining elements. It deals with the 2 main adult themes similar to the second movie. The place of man in the species hierarchy and is it worth bringing these ancients creatures that has been extinct due to natural selection back to life. For some reason Spielberg can't do brood. However dramatic his movies are , they slant towards melodramatic than brood. One through-line of the movie is how clever Dinosaurs are and how seemingly safe situations can turn into incredibly dangerous scenarios. The death of the corrupt fat computer engineer is intriguing and scary at the same time. The way the dinosaur deals with this guy is kinda interesting. Of course I can't really say what the dilophosaurus might have thought and I am sure the scriptwriter and director must have contacted dilophosaurus experts to make it feel as authentic as possible. The reason for this scene being so intriguing is the fact that the engineer is so fat and large. If it were a goat the dinosaur would have killed it instantly. But since this guy is so large and almost the height of the dilophosaurus, it was testing and seeing what this large living being will do and once it figured out that the engineer is running away from it, it kills him. The whole scene is master class in directing. The building to tension mixed with character based comedy is kinda great.
The movie ends in a profound way. Nature can't be controlled. It gives the same feel as a hurricane destroying massive structures. Vast oceans that can swallow all the land. It is honestly a blockbuster masterpiece. Because it deals with high concepts in a masterful way and filmmakers avoided making it feel like a cheap cash grab.