Screened at Cinépolis • ??? Viewing
Ugh, the musical score for this is like home to me. ️
Ahh, yes, Jurassic Park: one of my personal favorite “ok boomer” movies. We got the Jeff Goldblum (excellent performance by the way) philosophy of tampering with nature by pre-evolving it with a lack of adversity, and a theme-park-gone-wrong disaster full of nincompoops to validate that theory. This movie is kind of a “faith-based” statement now that I think about it, insinuating that we should trust God, Mother Nature or whomever is pathing Earth’s course in creation and extinction rather than bringing it into our own hands by reversing it all. It makes sense though; dinosaurs weren’t built to be a compatible species in an entourage of soon-to-proceed humans; it seems like there really was a reason for them to be replaced, and for us, the doggos & the rest of the animal gang to come in and give “life” a second chance. Sooner or later though, the Almighty will find out that we tampered with our privilege again by “recoding” and “reprinting” Jurassic Park essentially five (and soon to be six) more times, and will probably punish us for that crap too — IRONY.
It’s nice seeing independent personalities pop within these dinosaurs creatures unlike those abhorrently s****y reboot sequels which just keep upsizing the look of the species rather than the instinctive personas of them — again, catering to the public’s obsession for themselves, with ignorance for other species; if I remember correctly, Blue is essentially just a dog-like pet in the fourth movie despite being a Velociraptor. It seems bitterly contradicting too in a franchise that’s supposed to scare you with the thought of superior, prehistoric animals dominating in a world of humans who inspired them back. Anyways, what a feet the set designs and special effects of Jurassic Park still hold to be; it’s been said like a gajillion times already but we are slowly approaching this movie’s thirty year anniversary and the dinosaurs here still feel so real — this is why you place them primarily in a dark setting, people; it really does hide the flaws! The theme park feels so corporate legit too; it looks like a damn photocopy to me of Wild Animal Park or the San Diego Zoo with its tacky jungle backdrops and merchandising; I really hope the god-awful security stuff isn’t the same as in those zoos, however — a big yikes to that! Spielberg’s iconic film also truly thrives given how dilated its characters are, which helps with Jurassic Park’s secondary exploration: watching a timid husband warm up to parenthood is something quite cute that has this film at an advantage for me, advancing the idea of the “females” (the dinosaur ones, as well) helping men align to the right course of destiny for natural selection — “life, uh, finds a way”. It’s also there to be the example of nature flourishing, as opposed to the artificial park and the human world contradicting one another.
Look, I still love this movie, but there’s one particular thing that Spielberg does with it that I personally find ineffective, and that has to do with how openly contrived the movie can feel in its thrills. I’ve heard people complain about the kid’s decision specifically, but their stupidity to me makes perfect sense, well, because they are *ahem* kids. I’m rather less convinced by HOW characters survive or try to survive in this movie so that Spielberg can abusively wring out every last string of intensity available that you genuinely don’t need to impress; it’s distracting if anything. There are plenty of examples I could bore you readers to death with, but I think one good case of this is the scene where Alan has to get Tim out of the hanging car, and then out of the tree, and he accidentally pushes the steering wheel to rest his arm which causes the car’s front wheels to point downward; you could easily write this off as something a dumb person would do, but at the same time, in a tense and distracting situation like that where you’re focusing on the boy’s well-being, I could see myself forgetting such a thing when I wasn’t attentive of the car’s wheel placement in the first place. However, what comes after it is when they decide to climb straight down the tree super quickly because the car begins moving down, and the kid is too afraid to climb down, yet they decide not to just move swiftly to the side before it falls or at least move down diagonally; I mean, we understand how a tree works right, and Alan’s mistake by turning the wheels should’ve indicated to him that they should move away from the car, right, cause they may have messed with its positioning? They were also initially placed on the side of the car once they both got out of it and before the car started falling, so why would they also go back under the car to start climbing down the tree especially knowing Tim’s issue with climbing might take awhile and cause a f*****g car could possibly smash you?
Furthermore, you know for a fact the reason they do this is so that Spielberg could present not only a manipulatively intense moment where they force themselves to climb down before being smashed, but also so the car could coincidentally tumble over and land on them safely as a comedic moment. It’s kind of charming, but also very obnoxious in how blatantly contrived the entire thing feels. That to me is the difference between a dumb decision that seems reasonable and a dumb decision that just doesn’t make a whole lotta sense and is clearly there to give us an on-edge moment that then looses its edge because of that. Then again, I guess you could also argue the steering wheel incident is also there for the car to fall, but the vividly-a-mistake action itself is believable so I don’t mind it. Case in point, the WHOLE entire movie is full of this habit of writing where everything has to be boiled down to a last second sort of level of suspense or near death no matter how much it doesn’t make sense, so if that sort of thing especially pisses you off, you’re probably not going to fall head over heels for Jurassic Park. Anyways, bare with me on my last nitpick: the continuity here is actually pretty abhorrent sometimes too which adds, again, to the believability of the world I’m supposed to be immersed in; WRITERS what were you thinking? Okay, I’m done. Those are the only things that I don’t like about Jurassic Park. Everything else to me is pretty much untouchable though.
Howbeit, I think that I’m beginning to almost dislike revisiting movies I used to love as a child, because when seeing them through new, grown, adult lenses, I’m basically deflating the mindless yet blissful “awe” I had for them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still in “awe” of this movie and I definitely have a better grasp on its themes now — it holds up pretty darn well just in general too — but maybe I should start preserving my innocence a bit longer before slightly damaging it with my “matured” asshat analyzing. There are plenty of films I haven’t seen before that I could be watching, instead of wasting those opportunities by snobbing at the things that got me into cinema in the first place.
At least I can better understand the innuendos this time around, lol.
Verdict: B+
“Jurassic Park” is now playing in select Cinépolis locations.
Burning the Celluloid 
Published by