Imagine being so passionate about dinosaurs that you want to bring them back to life, study them and share your obsession with the rest of the world. Jurassic Park, the 1993 science-fiction and adventure movie directed by Steven Spielberg, shows us what would happen if somebody did just that. The movie is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film.
The action takes place on the fictional island of Isla Nublar, off Central America's Pacific Coast near Costa Rica. Billionaire philanthropist and dinosaur enthusiast John Hammond puts together a team of dedicated genetic scientists who are able to clone dinosaurs, and together they create a safari park that will hold and display them. However, industrial sabotage causes the sudden shutdown of the park's power supply, which in turn releases the security mechanisms that keeps the dinosaurs and the public separated. A small group of tourists, and Hammond's own grandchildren, are in mortal danger now that the dinosaurs are roaming free, and the film follows their attempts to escape from the island before it is too late.
Even as a book, this story made an incredible concept for a movie, and four studios bid for the rights to the book before it was even published. Although Michael Crichton was brought on board to co-write the screenplay, much of the violence of his book has been left out of the big screen version, which has been sanitized to make it a more palatable family film.
After reading the novel, Spielberg had very firm ideas about whom he wanted to cast. Originally wanting Harrison Ford for the role of Alan Grant, Spielberg also considered William Hurt before offering the part to Sam Neill, who had never read either the book or the script but who said "yes" to the project immediately and was rewarded with a lead role in an epic Spielberg movie the following day. Jim Carrey had auditioned for the role of Ian Malcolm, but the entire casting team felt that Jeff Goldblum, who came across in his screen test as less "nutty" and more "academically eccentric" was ultimately the better choice. Laura Dern had been Spielberg's first choice for the role of Ellie Sattler, although she was not the first actress offered the part (Robin Wright was offered it first, but turned it down.)
After over two years in pre-production, filming began on the Hawaiian island of Kaua'i. The entire shoot on the island was only three weeks and the remaining scenes, all of which involved raptors, were shot in California in the kitchen of Universal Studios Stage 24. Other peripheral scenes were shot in the Dominican Republic.
The dinosaurs themselves were groundbreaking (although many of the species included in the film were not actually from the Jurassic period, but many decades later). They were created with computer generated imagery by Industrial Light and Magic, with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs whose voices were added to their image using a specially created system of surround sound.
The marketing campaign for Jurassic Park cost over sixty-five million dollars, including licensing deals with over one hundred companies. The film was an immediate hit; it grossed $914 million worldwide, setting the bar at the time by becoming the highest grossing film ever, until surpassed by James Cameron's Titanic in 1997. Critics loved the film as much as the audiences did. The musical score by John Williams was also widely praised and credited with emphasizing the beauty of the scenery in the film. Jurassic Park won more than twenty awards, including three Academy Awards for technical achievements in visual effects and sound design. When it's 3D version was released in 2013, Jurassic Park became only the seventeenth film in history to achieve more than a billion dollars in ticket sales.
Although groundbreaking at the time, Jurassic Park went on to spawn four subsequent movies in its franchise, all of which have been box office and critical successes, but none having the cinematic impact of the original.
