Jurassic Park

[poliphilo]

If you watch a sequence from a movie out of context (detached from the story and the characters) you can begin to see how it was assembled.

I just watched the climax of Jurassic Park that way and I was seeing it as a series of animated storyboards. 

Spielberg is a director who leaves nothing to chance. Eveything is calibrated to within a hair's breadth. Hitchcock and Lean worked the same way.

Not John Ford. He said he never rehearsed an action sequence because you couldn't anticipate what was going to happen when you had a whole bunch of horsemen charging down hill.

In my present mood I'm with Ford. Overprepare and you squeeze out the humanity.

Jurassic Park is a dishonest film. It's pushing this conservative moral line about not messing with Nature and yet every frame is screaming "I want the dinos back".

Suppose you had 20 billion to spend on either a new generation of independent British nukes or a real life Jurassic Park; which would you choose?

Comments

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

When my son, the scary mad scientist wannabe, first saw Jurassic Park, I was worried that he'd get scared. He was 6 and he gets scared of just about anything that isn't G-rated.

When the T-rex was trying to eat the children it suddenly dawned on me that he was rooting for the dinosaurs. When the dino got to that guy in the outhouse, Nick merely turned to me and said, "He's food."

At the end of the movie I felt obligated to have one of those parent-child moral issue discussions. I asked Nick if he thought it was a good idea to clone dinosaurs without knowing how they would react to the modern world or how they would interact with humans.

He said, "Yes, I do. Only I would have made human-dinosaur hybrids!"

This really has nothing to do with movie-making, but you just made me think of it. I guess I know my son's answer to the question in your last line. Personally, I wouldn't choose either. If I had 20 billion I'd be making sure people got fed and immunized and that their drinking water was clean.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was just that sort of dinosaur-mad kid.

I guess cloning dinos isn't the highest international priority right now, but I still think it would be cool.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I *want* to be on the side of moral caution, but honestly...if we could really clone dinosaurs and finally get an answer to all our questions about those fantastic beasts--who could resist that?

I guess when you get right down to it--I value lively curiosity and intellectual imagination more than cautious morality.

I love the look on the paleontologists' faces in JP when they first got to the park and saw the living, breathing dinosaurs. I guess I'm a nerdy sap, but that moment always makes me a little teary-eyed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That moment is the best thing in the film.

All the rest, with dinos chasing people about, is just standard Hollywood stuff, but the moment when they first see the Brachiosaurs- that's magic.

[senordildo.livejournal.com]

I'd combine the two: Dino-nukes! When the T-Rex opens his mouth, a thermonuclear missile shoots out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That'd teach Osama a thing or two!