The film is suitable for almost all the family and the science behind the story is explained in a simple, child-friendly way, and although having a cartoon explain to you what DNA is can be a little patronising for the adults, the three doctors acknowledge this allowing us to relate to them better.
Like with all Spielberg films, a deep and meaningful message lies beneath the action. Jurassic Park, like the original Frankenstein story, is the prime of example of the well known ‘just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should’. While it is obvious to the audience from the beginning that Hammond and his crazy schemes will surely spell disaster, his insistence of his parks success, even after the first fatality, makes the irony even more sweet in the end.
One of the things that made the film so popular was that it cracked open the Pandora's box of CGI; its computer-generated velociraptors and brachiosaurs inspired legions of other film-makers, including Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) and George Lucas (Star Wars Prequels). However as films like Godzilla later proved, creating a monstrous beast and releasing it in a blaze of special effects isn’t enough to create a decent movie. Spielberg’s sense of timing and tension creates an exciting movie that people still rave about nearly twenty years later.
Even so, the film has not entirely lived up to the book’s extremely high standard and has been greatly criticised thereof. Denis Nedry (Wayne Knight)’s embryo stealing subplot plays a major part in the books storyline but is very briefly brushed over in the film, without it mentioning why or who is he stealing the embryos for. However Spielberg didn’t change the film entirely for the worse as the revamped ending in which the T-Rex saves the day provided a more unpredictable yet fitting outcome as the T-Rex was really the true star of the film and left the film much more open to sequels, which the original ending of having the Costa Rican Air force blow up the entire island didn’t.
Throughout the film there are various scenes where Spielberg cleverly builds up the tension using a variety of cinematic devices to a dramatic climax. This is demonstrated well in the scene where the tyrannosaurus-rex is seen for the first time. Prior to this scene, all the dinosaurs in the film had been portrayed as wonderful magical creatures that could only bring positive things. This scene however marks the turning point in the movie, and now we start to see the true nature of these prehistoric beasts. Since this is such a significant moment in the movie, Spielberg really pulls out all the stops to make sure it’s as dramatic as possible. For the duration of the scene, only diegetic sound is used – there is no musical soundtrack, just dialogue and sound effects, normally a rarity in Hollywood blockbusters. However Spielberg uses this lack of music to allow the audience to focus more on other sounds in the scene such as the boom thunder or the T-Rex roar. Spielberg also uses the darkness and torrential rain to create an extremely foreboding atmosphere in which the audience knows right from the start that something terrible is about to happen. The three characters in this scene are all different from each other but still sharing the same sense of fear that everyone watching it also has too. The fascinated Timmy (Joseph Mazzello), confused Lex (Ariana Richards) and completely out of his depth lawyer Gennaro (Martin Ferraro) work well together to create a scene which is incredibly horrifying but equally believable. The editing also adds to the scene with no shot being longer than a few seconds. As a result of this, the pace of the shot is made much faster which helps to increase the sense of impending doom. The last shot however, which is the point that the whole scene has been leading up to is by far the longest, and this final view of the T-Rex is arguably the most important and memorable in the whole film.
