TAKE ONE Presents... - The Dinopod 1: JURASSIC PARK (1993)

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

Welcome to TAKE ONE Presents... The Dinopod. Simon Bowie and Jim Ross are watching all the Jurassic Park (/World) franchise films in order starting with this episode analysing JURASSIC PARK. Simon and Jim get into the anti-capitalist and animal rights themes of the film, the underlying conservatism and anti-feminism of Michael Crichton's source material, and how Spielberg's flair for visual language elevates this formative blockbuster. Content warning: death and mutilation, birth, colonialism, misogyny, animal abuse, eye stuff. Our theme song is Jurassic Park Remix by Gabriel Filósofo available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/gfilosofo/jurassic-park-remix Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/I3ADHYX6

Hello and welcome to Take One presents, the Diner Pod, a podcast where we watch all the Jurassic Park franchise films in order. contextualizing them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie, and I'm joined by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello there. So this is a sort of sequel series to our Xenopod, which you should go and listen to, where we discussed all the alien franchise films.

Here we're kind of rebranding as Take One Presents and running into a different franchise headlong. We're going to be talking about the Jurassic Park slash world franchise films. Why, Jim, are we talking about the Jurassic Park films. I mean... Slash world. I'm just going to... It'll always be the Jurassic Park

franchise to me. I went to get the... None of this one old nonsense. Yeah, I only have Jurassic Park and Lost World on DVD, so I went to look at getting them all on Blu-ray, and there's a box set called the Jurassic World box set with all six in, and just

on principle, I feel like I won't buy it. Absolutely not. This is the Jurassic Park franchise. I think... Why are we doing it? I think in some ways, for similar reasons to the xenopod, right, and the alien films, but it does have a slightly, you can look at it a slightly different way, right? It's another franchise which spans kind of multiple generations of filmmaking, right?

So you've got the first one in the early 90s, and it's kind of, you know, and we'll get into this when we start talking about the first film, and it's kind of a, pioneers may be a strong word, but it set a lot of trends, right, in terms of effects work. bringing the whole Spielberg Blockbuster model to a new era of filmmaking and that sort of thing but then also it then proceeds in a similar vein to filmmaking trends at time

there was a sequel, there was an uptically well-received third one, it then disappeared for a while you have Jurassic World pop-up as this sort of like pseudo-reboat legacy sequel time thing. Yeah, we get into the kind of legacy sequel areas of this new franchise. You know, and what's interesting is in terms of like the legacy sequel reboot thing, like people think of things like, you know, the Star Wars sequel trilogy. But, you know, Jurassic World was 2015, right? You know, it was at the kind of the, not necessarily the start of that trend, but it was in their early doors, right? It's not something that's kind of like leapt on it afterwards. So it's interesting in that respect. And then how the different, how it's, maybe how the way it approaches its subject matter in terms of, you know, science and the natural world, like, how. it approaches that, it's ideas of

kind of like what makes for a good lead. There's a lot of interesting stuff to talk about and crucially it shifts as the films go on right? Yes. I think it's actually, you know, Jurassic World gets a bit of a kicking for being essentially

very similar in terms of events and what happens to the first film but it's actually a very different film and I'm sure we'll talk about that when we eventually get to that film. So some similar reasons to the Xenopod, very long-running TVs, which reflects the times it's made in, but it's also it's different, right? It's a different vibe of film to that film

that film, so you use, basically. With different filmmakers every time. Exactly. Almost every time. So you do get these different creators bringing their different perspectives to it, similar to the alien franchise. Yep, I agree with Evan you said. I think I've got in my notes, kind of Jurassic Park is kind of a year zero for modern blockbuster cinema, like 1993 begins something else and it's because of Jurassic Park and because of how it was the

highest grossing film of all time until Titanic came out in 1997 and I'd listen to a podcast called Scott hasn't seen where Scott Ockerman, the comedian watches films and he sometimes jokingly refers to 1993 as the first year of cinema because of the paradigm of Jurassic Park and what it does for Blockbuster cinema and modern blockbusters. So you've got Jaws, you know, that's generally seen as the first blockbuster, also by Spielberg. But it's kind of, Jaws is still tinged with a kind of new Hollywood, you know, it's, it's grittier than a modern blockbuster, it's less shiny, whereas Jurassic Park is a real patient zero for modern blockbusting and this certain style of filmmaking, which has now

blossomed into, you know, cinematic universes and whatnot, you know, everyone's talking about the dark universe. Is that making a comeback with Wolfman? Oh, I don't know. I don't know. Because I got Lee Waddle doing Wolfman after he did the Invisible Man. I'm just wondering if they're making the last ditch attempt at that. Well, once we're done with Duetic Park, we can do the Dark Universe.

Short podcast. Watch all two films or whatever. We could ape the new Dark Universe by promising eight episodes and then actually you only end up doing two that are on completely different things. Yes. Yeah. That's the way to do that. but yeah we're going to be watching the Jurassic Park slash World franchise so you know feel free to watch along with us

there's no director's cuts as far as I'm aware for any of these films so we're just watching the theatrical releases and we're going to start today with I think unambiguously the best of the franchise 1993's Jurassic Park directed by Stephen Spielberg Jim what's your what's your history with with Jurassic Park, when did you see this? I saw this as a very young kid in cinemas when it came out, actually. So it's quite funny you're saying you're listening to the podcast where, you know, the guy says it's sort of like year zero of cinema. Because I suppose in some ways, for me as a kid, it eats, right?

This is the first film I remember going to the cinema to see. The only one that I can remember going to see very young was probably Free Willy and the Powering. movie, and I've not looked up which of those actually came, which of those three came out first. I'm pretty sure it was Jurassic Park, but it could have been free willy. Yeah, I'm similar. I remember seeing Jurassic Park in the cinema.

I also remember seeing Twister in the cinema, but I think that was 1996. Another film written by Michael Crichton. But I distinctly remember seeing Jurassic Park in the cinema, so it must have been one of the first, if not the first film I saw.

I think it's probably it's probably the film I've seen the most times in a theatre as well, right? Because on its original run, so it is to do, so I would have been, when it came in the UK, I think when did it come in the UK, it would have been early 19994, so I would have been seven years old.

And to date, 30 odd years later, it is still the only film that I've seen on its original run three times in a cinema. So I took various different fans, various different family members I asked to take me and I ended up seeing it

three times in the cinema as a kid and to date that's the most I've I'm not one of these people who goes to see the same film like eight times at the cinema while it's on right I've seen plenty of films twice since then either because I wanted to or you know I've maybe gone with

gone with the partner after I've seen it on my own or something like that but I've never gone to see anything else three times I also had so for those who know the Dominion cinema in Edinburgh. My now wife kind of hired one of the really small cinemas in there and I watched it

in there with a bunch of pals for one birthday. So I've seen it four times in a cinema which I think for me is actually the most I think I've seen anything in a cinema. So I probably credit this with kind of, you know, awing me as a kid and kind of like

really getting me into kind of going to the cinema. I think you know, I mean we're talking 30 years on. I'm sitting here running a a film website and all that. Like, you know, my taste have evolved since then, but I think it's probably still one of my favourite films in the sense that I enjoy watching it, right? I can sit down and watch this quite happily. And when I watched it for, for this podcast, I think it's the first time I'd watched it in a few years, at least, and I greatly enjoyed it. Different things struck me

about it on this watch, which we'll get into. But yeah, I have a long history of Jurassic Park in terms of watching it, its place and kind of like, you know, me starting to love cinema and all the rest of it. I looked back on my letterboxed prior to this and realized I've watched this film every year for the past three years. So I watched it on DVD in 2022.

I went to the cinema with my friend Nick for the 30th anniversary to see it last year. So that was at the Glasgow Film Theatre. You know, first time seeing it on big screen since I was a kid, incredible experience. And I re-watched it for this podcast on my little DVD. But yeah, similar to you, I saw it as a kid and it had a huge impact on me. I had the toys and stuff, like the action figures.

I had the Jeep. Yeah, the red Jeep that I had the T-Rex. The T-Rex had a little, you could take off a bit of its skin to reveal bones and stuff underneath as if it had been bitten by a velociraptor or something. That was great. And I had the visitor centre full play set thing, which was a huge thing. I need to look on eBay to see how much it was after we finish recording.

Yeah, I definitely had a T-Rex. I'm trying to remember if I had like a wee Jeep or something, but I can't remember. But yeah, I mean, certainly, even if it wasn't directly Jurassic Park merch, it sparked many years of having dinosaur-based toys. I can say that much. well I remember I think I had the Ian Malcolm figure who came with like a gun and a flame throw and whatnot

you know stuff that's not in the film similar with the Ellie Sattler figure she had definitely had like a machine gun or whatever because that's what kids live but yeah Jurassic Park premiered in Washington DC on June 9th 1993 and came to an international release on June 25th

coming out in Brazil before rolling out in the rest of the world over a period running till October that year. I was also very interested to look at the home video release schedule because I remember as a kid thinking it had been years since I'd seen Jurassic Park in the cinema and I couldn't wait for it to come out on VHS. And in my head I thought, oh, I was a kid, it was probably like six months or three months or whatever.

But no, it was a calendar year before it came out on VHS in the UK Yeah, for long as it's We're talking about a proper different unit In terms of release patterns, you know Like even that pattern of it coming out And then like it rolling out international Like that would just not happen now

Like I'm willing to go look up But I'm willing to bet that like You know, Dominion or Fallen King Like the last two Jurassic World ones I'd be very surprised if it wasn't It was like a simultaneous release date worldwide Or that weird thing It came out in the UK

Carely or something Probably what a month, two months to streaming Yeah totally for Dominion anyway because that was post-COVID so yeah but yeah a full calendar year and a few months before it came out on VHS in the UK where it had an exclusive seven-week rental window before actually going on sale in November

like you say a completely different era to today's kind of rush it out forget about it kind of a vibe of cinema releases So the film is based on a Michael Crichton novel and I have more to say about Michael Crichton later on I think when we get into the kind of thematics of the film but Michael Crichton was a medical doctor

and a lawyer I think who helped write, come up with the show ER who's also a kind of screenwriter and other stuff and he had an idea for a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur so I don't know some PH student making a dinosaur as the Ph. PhD thesis, which I don't think you'd get past a thesis monitoring committee. But Stephen Spielberg heard about the novel fairly early in its writing

while he was kind of discussing screenplay stuff with Crichton, and Stephen Spielberg immediately seized on it. Yeah, Stephen Spielberg said, if a person can tell me an idea in 25 words or less, it's going to make a pretty good movie. I like ideas, especially movie ideas, that you can hold in your hand. So I see Bielberg being quoted by Robert Baird in an article

in cinema journal. And you know, you can hold this idea in your hand. It's a dinosaur theme park. It's a very kind of simple idea, but one that's very evocative.

So he sold Kreiton sold the rights. James Cameron bid for the rights, but Spielberg acquired them like literally hours before James Cameron. So a very different world

where James Cameron gets this. Listen to Our Aliens episode for my thoughts on James Cameron. Our thoughts on James Cameron. Fantastic filmmaker, maybe not a fantastic bloke. I also have questions about his filmmaking. That too, to be fair.

But yeah, Spielberg wanted to make Jurassic Park. He also wanted to make Shindler's list. I believe he was told to make Jurassic Park before Shindler's list. Because if he did it the other way around, he wouldn't be able to make Jurassic Park, you know, working on a Holocaust movie which fundamentally change him. So I was also surprised to learn that they spent 25 months in pre-production for this film. And I'll keep coming back to that figure, I think, because I think it shows in the final film.

But 25 months working through the script and thinking about how they were going to do the dinosaurs. Because, you know, they had this idea to do kind of stop motion, like Ray Harryhausen, kind of dinosaur. dinosaurs, and I believe I've seen some screen tests of that, and it simply does not look as good as the CG. So they were able to combine CG and animatronics to create these at the time, very realistic looking dinosaurs. I mean, we'll discuss it, but I think the effects still hold up. Phil Tibbitt was a stop motion animator of a famous stop motion animator. He recently did Mad God, which is a great film. But when he saw the CG dinosaurs, he famously said,

said. Spielberg said, you're out of a job, and Tibbet said, don't you mean extinct? Which is a line they eventually put in the screenplay of the film. Briefly, let's go through 1993 and what was happening in 1993 in film, because again, it does seem like a different era when you look at the highest gross in films of the year. Jurassic Park is obviously out in front with double look gross of the next highest film, Mrs. Doubtfire. Wow. Wow. Okay. you don't say I deliberately don't look these up before we do these poggers

so I can be kind of like surprised if you told me what was the highest gross in film in 1993 I would not guess Mrs. Doubtfire but there you go second place Mrs. Doubtfire followed by the fugitive followed by Shindler's List

which came out later in the year Spielberg's other film that year followed by the firm and indecent proposal followed by Cliffhanger Sleepless in Seattle Philadelphia and the Pelican Brief.

So, I mean, there's these kinds of legal thrillers and erotic thrillers that I simply do not think would gross nearly as much in today's cinema climate. Yeah, I mean, they certainly wouldn't be that high. I mean, I'm just, with the essentially, like, it's going through, what was it, but essentially Mrs. Doubtfire, we're kind of talking, these are all kind of films through adults. Yes. Like, like, if you were to make something, like,

like a decent proposal now. I don't think that would be getting anywhere near to top of that list. No, no, Lord now. And we're living in the aids that Jurassic Park us should in, as I think we'll discuss. So, yeah, let's run through Jurassic Park. The film opens with this Costa Rican construction crew and Muldoon, kind of putting a raptor into a cage.

I think this scene is immediately very effective. There's kind of 80s simph on the score that's not immediately apparent if you're not in a big cinema with a good sound system that I'd never picked up on before last year the light in the opening scene looked great there's deep shadows, there's bright lights

you know, it doesn't matter where the light's coming from it looks great, it's very effective and I was just struck by the sound effects of the raptor screeching which is just how raptors sound to me similar to the T-Rex raw

that is just how dinosaur sound in my head. It's just incredible sound design from the very girl. Yeah, which is kind of incredible, actually. I mean, like, re-watching, maybe not re-watching it this time, but certainly, like, watching it when I was a bit older. The dinosaur sounds are one of the things that absolutely kind of really stick with me. And it's amazing, you know, it's amazing, like, at a certain extent, particularly like with the T-Rex, right? And I've jumping ahead to the T-Rex, but, you know, just this is the first time in the

film, this opening scene where you hear one of the dinosaurs, and it's so fantastically well done, because it sounds very terrestrial, right? It sounds like something that could theoretically come out of an animal of some sort, but it sounds like nothing you've ever heard before. Nothing you've ever

heard before. And I think that, I'm sure I read somewhere, the T-Rex noise is kind of a blend of different animals like a lion in an elephant or something, and I don't know what they've done for the raptors but that's one of the things that kind of jumps out at you straight away is what this thing sounds like and it's particularly important this scene because he's taking a rather jaws-like approach to the raptor in this scene because you don't actually really see it

you know you get glimpses of it or bits of it i think you see an eye you might even see a claw at some point but like you don't actually see the full animal um so that you know the sound of it needs to make an impact and it really does so the raw of the t-rex is a baby Elephant Squeal combined with some alligator and crocodile noises as well as a tiger and a lion. Yeah. Okay. When it grunts and kind of breathes

on Grant later in the film, that's a male koala and a whales blowhole. So it's kind of combining all these things while we're on sound. The velociraptor is dolphins, walruses, geese,

an African crane, tortoises and some human raspy noises. So, yeah, it's blending things together. I think it won an Oscar for Sound Design. Yeah, it won an Academy Award for Sound Design. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. So the next scene is Donald Gennaro, Hammond's lawyer,

visiting an amber mine in the Dominican Republic to discuss a lawsuit about this construction worker who had killed in the first scene. Bold filmmaking to start your blockbuster with discussions about insurance underwriting. We cut to Montana, where Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler are excavating a dinosaur fossil in Montana. Dr. Grant is played by Sam Neal. Ellie Sattler is played by The Wonderful Lower Dern, but I read that Ellie Sattler was originally

one of the actors up for the role was Juliet Mnosh, and I dreamed of a different world where Juliet Binoz played Ellie Sattler instead. But Grant is introduced to a computer probe that can get radars of fossils from underground, and we get an introduction to the kind of anti-technology themes of the film, where Grant can't use the computer, hates using the computer. He also talked about his theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds, which is kind of common knowledge now, but was cutting-edge paleontology back in the 90s, and then Grant traumatizes as a child. Pretty severely. Yeah. Like, I'm pretty sure. Like, even like, the kid within the world of the film,

Yeah, I think he traumatized as that kid with this, you know, the description of how a velociraptor would spill his guts after the kid, something says, oh, it looks like a six-foot turkey. Frankly, I remember that scene as a kid. I think he traumatized me watching it, you know? Just like the image of, like, you know, the ridiculous kind of like, you know, raptor claw. It's quite something. I find this scene quite funny, actually, because, I mean, it looks like they're using kind of like, you know, ultrasound, which, I mean, that was pretty old technology by that point, I think. right? You know, so like there's a couple of, you know,

it's a well-made film, but it does take a couple of shortcuts here. I think like one that I could think of is it's reference, like when he's going through his description of how the raptor would kill this kid, he says something like, oh, you might stay still because you might think it's movement, its vision is based on movement

like T-Rex, and of course like my racist, well, where'd that come from? That's like a Chekhov's vision system, which gets deployed later, you know. There's a couple little short had things here. I think that's maybe one of the clumsier ones, but there are other things which are really pretty good. But, you know, it's a very memorable scene. I remember sort of like a mildly traumatizing

as a kid as well as the one in the film. Yeah, you know, we can talk about it now, but the T-Rex visual acuity being based on movement is not a thing that is based in fact. Some nocturnal owls have vision that's more movement-based than other animals, but, you know, all vision is based on contrast, whether that's a movement or of colour, and there's no reason to think that T-Rex had any different kind of vision to us. As I recall, Crichton even takes it back in the sequel novel, in The Lost World, where it's explained that the T-Rex didn't eat them, not because it couldn't see them, but because it had just eaten. As we'll discuss, it's Gennaro later. So Hammond arrives by helicopter.

John Hammond, played by Richard Attenborough, arrives by helicopter and helps himself to some train. He talks about this park that he's set up, how he wants to get Grant and Sattler's opinions. He mentions that he's giving them $50,000 a year in research funding, which doesn't seem like a great deal to me, even for back then. I'm glad you mentioned this, though,

because this is where I started to notice other things in the film whereas it's absolutely fascinating, right? Because I would say Hammond is he's not portrayed terribly in the film. Like, it's not completely lacking in, like, you know, sympathy and, you know, humanity for the character. But there's, even in this scene, there's, like, a hint of, you know,

quite how sort of arrogant this guy is, right? Because the thing that I find fascinating is he kind of, like, he goes on about kind of he wants them, he wants to bring them on board for outside opinions. outside opinions about the concert of park and of course I was watching this going but you've just said you came down to see how your money's been spent you're bankrolling these people

you know like you're asking for outside opinions to people who you're actually giving a load of money this is not an outside opinion at all this is like corruption corruption in conflict of interest 101 that's true and there's things that pop up later in the film where I haven't had the opportunity to read Jurassic Park

the book ahead of the podcast, which is something I'd be intending to do. And I'd be interested to know how much of it is kind of like filtering through from the book, but that's the first thing where it kind of like starts to come through is like, you know, Hammond is not this sort of like, you know, benevolent man with a dream, you know, it's like,

no, he is, he's trying to make a chunk load of money and he's perfectly willing to exploit people to achieve that, you know? So one of the things I have in my notes is a list of things that I remember being different from the novel, and chief among them is Hammond's character.

Hammond character is a lot more ruthless in the novel. He's not this cuddly entrepreneur, cuddly showman that Richard Attenborough makes him. He's a lot more ruthless, and he comes to quite a grisly end because of it, because he's very much exploitative capitalist. He does say, we spared no expense, where he's obviously cut corners all over the place. I read that Spielberg changed the Hammond character during the script process because Spielberg related to the Hammond character

and he's kind of showman-esque way of being which is interesting it's interesting to read that novel and identify with the Hammond character and then soften him up so he seems more palatable yeah we cut to the best of the best of seen in the film where Dodgson, who is a rival genetic engineering executive, meets Dennis

Nedri, played by Wayne Knight in San Jose Costa Rica. And they have a little discussion about Nedri betraying Hammond and breaching his NDAs or whatever to steal embryos from him at the upcoming park visit. There's little character moments in this, like Nedri putting the shaving cream on someone else's pie and what that says about Nedri, which are just great. Superb performance by Wayne Knight here as well. He's terrific. I could watch him all day, and I think what's interesting is I I saw this before I ever saw any of Seinfeld.

So when he pops up in Seinfeld, it was Newman. I was like, oh, it's Nedrae from Jurassic Park. But really, like, the kind of like just, the way he delivers some of his lines and the timing, it's like it's just inherently, inherently funny, you know. And he adds a lot. it's not the biggest role but it is a crucial really pretty memorable

one. Yeah, yeah, he makes the most of it and he does a really good job of portraying this kind of slimy character I suppose but also sympathetic in a way kind of an asshole but a relatable one. He's an asshole

that you meet in real life, you know, he's not a cartoon villain. Yeah, mm-hmm. He's the kind of annoying IT person that you meet all the time that I am. Approaching the island on a helicopter We cut to Grant, Sattler, Hammond, Janaro, the lawyer And Ian Malcolm

Played by the inimitable Jeff Goldblum Approaching the island, there's the first great music cue As they come onto the island And the helicopter sweeps over this panoramic vista Yeah, Ian Malcolm is a mathematician, a K-I-Tician We'll learn later Jim Carrey auditioned for the role of Ian Malcolm the casting director said was terrific too but they all loved the idea of Jeff

I think one thing I want to because this is probably the first scene where you've got the all of that kind of like core with the exception of the kids let's say the the core cast kind of together and I think it's worth I think it's really worth pointing out here quite how much is being achieved about communication of character with costuming here right this is one of the things that really struck me when I was watching it the second time right? Because you've got Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant kind of dressed as you might

expect, you know, paleontologists working in the desert to be dressed. It's a hugely remarkable way to it, but they're kind of like, they're very practical seeming. Well, on Ellie and Grant, interestingly their costumes are inversions of one another so Grant has a blue

overshirt with a kind of red cravat. Ellie has a pink over shirt and a kind of blue t-shirt so they're kind of reflections of each other which you kind of get subconsciously if not through dialogue so you've got them and then you've got

Ian Malcolm completely different completely different your leather jacket dressing black he's looking very kind of suave and not practical right you know and then the other one I find fascinating

and you can even kind of like bring in Muldoon here, right, when you, you know, the gamekeeper, when you're on the island, but you've got Hammond, as he is for the entirety, the film swanning around in this, like, straw hat, white shirt and tan trousers, like, he looks like an old, like, colonial pratt, basically, you know, like, and I find that, I, I find that, given some of the, the way this film plays out in terms of him trying to have dominion over something, which he clearly cannot, and the, like, and the, like, level of arrogance or something. That costume, I don't know how conscious it was and how he's described in the book, but, like, I found that fascinating, because the only other person who comes even close to being dressed like that is Muldoon, right? Where you've got a similar situation and, kind of, you know, and he's got this kind of, like, you know, I don't know, colonial gamekeeper type thing. Like, said, like, he looks, like, he looks like he's going on safari, basically, right? and I find that that costuming and then when you've got them all right

up against each other in that the helicopter, I found that kind of fascinating actually. Yeah, it's interesting that it's only the British and Australian Bob Peck was a British actor but he's playing Australian in this and Richard Attenborough was English but he's playing

Scottish. It's the Yeah, she sent me a text about it. The British and Australian characters are are portrayed in this colonialist way, you know? I think it would be reading too much into it to say that there's a real colonialist undercurrent here,

but I think it certainly influences the costuming, as you've said, and how they portray these characters as these kinds of colonialist capitalists, you know, taking over an island in the Caribbean and putting their park on it, putting, you know, taking over the land and putting in their park on it and taking it over, taking over nature as one of the major themes that we'll get to. Well, there's also a comment about, you know, once we, you know, once they land,

they start to kind of like, you know, make their way to the visitor centre, which I'm sure you'll go over in a minute. Even the comments about, like, whether this place is for the super rich as well, is the other part of it, you know, and there's a little debate around that. So, no, and I, it's interesting. I can honestly say on my first few watches of this that that's something I picked up on but it's when you focus on the costuming

in particular around about this point in the film it starts to jump out at you, I'd say. Yeah, yeah. Simon here in the edit. Before we move on to the next point, a few corrections entirely of me. I mentioned that Isla Nubla is a Caribbean island. That's not true.

It is specifically mentioned as being west of Costa Rica which makes it a Pacific island, specifically in the East Pacific Ocean. Also, I mentioned that Bob Peck playing Robert Muldoon is playing Australian. Now, this just isn't true. I don't know why I thought he was Australian. There's no reason to think the character as Australian. But in my defence, it is a widespread misconception. A lot of people think of this character as Australian,

even though there's no factual basis. Maybe apart from his hat, which looks kind of Australian, to think this. the character is more likely a British character transplanted into Kenya or a white Kenyan or a British Kenyan. Either way, the point about colonialism still stands and we'll mention later on in the episode about the Kenyan connection and the links with kind of African colonialism that come from that character. So it's still interesting that the two British characters, Hammond and Muldoon, or, you know,

British and British Kenyon, all the characters are dressed up in this kind of colonial cosplay. So I wrote in my reviews per minute review last year when I was reviewing every film I saw that year, that the helicopter descending and this wind shear thing, he's put a helicopter pad somewhere where there's wind shear, just indicates kind of Hammond's mindset around safety versus spectacle. It doesn't spell it out, but it does it in a very interesting way. way. You know, he's put the helicopter pad here because it's a spectacular view, but it's not

actually safe because there's wind shear in this area. They drive to the island, Gennaro is discussing some of his concerns, and we get to the iconic scene where Grant sees a brachiosaurus for the first time, and this is just a spectacular scene. This just works great. The music, the staging, the acting, the CG on the dinosaur, it's fantastic. So Grant sees a Bragosaurus for the first time and realizes what this park is, you know, what Hammond has a achieved, you know, he's made a park of dinosaurs, a Jurassic Park, if you will. Yeah, and I think this is, this is probably like the major, the first major effect shot as well, right? And what I would say is the, the shot of the, the shot of the, the brachiosaur, um,

in broad daylight, center frame, I would say that's probably, in my view, this is the point where the film's special effects are at, they're shonkiest, right? I think this is the one that has probably aged the most. Yes. But that speaks to the quality of the rest of it, frankly, because it's not bad. It's really not bad. Even, you know, even, you know, 30 plus

years later, it's quite incredible. And I think what's quite impressive about it is they've put all the effort slash money in the correct places, right? Because this basically establishes that, you know, particularly if you imagine you're viewing this in 1993, but even if you're viewing

it now, it's, it's impressive as as a piece of filmmaking in terms of how they structure that scene right you know in the unveiling of it right you know the very famous shot of like you know grant fumbling with his sunglasses and this sort of thing and then you know you pull back

and you see the herds and the lake and stuff like that and I would say this is probably it gets that in early right it gets this kind of like the census goes like we can pull this off it gets it on early in the film and then everything after that is a little bit craftier

right, you know, when you get to kind of like some of the shots of you know, because obviously there's animatronics in the film, right? So a lot of the close-ups are animatronics and, you know, they look tangible because they are, right? But then they're quite crafty about, you know, when the T-Rex

appears and stuff like that. And I'm sure we'll talk about that when we get to it, but it's just, I find that interesting. It's like they get a lot of the wonder and awe out quite early and then after that it's a lot more kind of artful in terms of generating tone how these things are

presented and it makes some of the effects work. Not easier right, I don't think that's the right word, but it certainly makes it more effective right. It's playing to the strengths of the time and what they knew they could achieve as opposed to trying to kind of you know, do everything and maybe

falling into the uncanny valley. Yeah, well I have a note here that at this point I thought how brisk the pacing of the film is. Because we get to this point of seeing an actual down dinosaur fairly quickly. And yet it doesn't feel like our time has been rushed, you know? It feels like we know these characters, because every scene does something while also building character in little moments, like the little moment with Nedri that I mentioned.

And then suddenly you're on the island, and suddenly you're pushed along on this kind of theme park ride, for lack of a better term, that gets you to the action later in the film. It's just, it's very effective. It's Spielberg. constantly using kind of visual and cinematic language to communicate things, these minor points as well as larger plot points. It's very effective. It means dialogue can be used more efficiently. I have more examples of this later on, but I just think it shows how much they prepared this film and how solid the script was and how much thought they had put into what scenes would intercut with other scenes. They're not building it in the edit. They have a full vision of the film even before they start shooting, the 25 months of pre-production really showing

itself to help the film. So the party arrive at the visitor centre. Spielberg is, again, using visual language to set up the environment where the finale will take place, but they get a little, kitsy little presentation from Hammond on Dano DNA. It's an exposition dump. This is another thing that kind of struck me a lot. yeah like just well just in like you know like i remember this bit obviously like you know like you know don't know oh of course the little cartoon figure yeah we all remember in your mind but like watching it again watching this scene again like with a with a view to kind of like being a bit more sort of like you know analysis minded on this film is this is

another striking demonstration of r of john hammond's arrogance right he's got you know a highly educated mathematician there and then two paleontologists and he's making these two paleontologists sit through a cartoon presentation starring himself explaining the concept of DNA like it like when you take that step by

it is absolutely remarkable right that this film was laced with just little little things that are not lingered on to demonstrate like how breathtaking arrogant the man actually is right and this is when the film kind of like starts to take a bit of a turn thematically right

Because something that I found interesting here is, you know, when you, immediately before this, we've got that scene we were talking about where, you know, kind of you see the dinosaurs and all their sort of like, you know, spectacular nature just before that. As soon as they're pulling up to the visitor center, the music as well, right, you say he's telling, telling the, you know, the story visually and he is, but the music changes immediately. it goes from kind of like the very famous kind of you know the very famous like one of the main kind of like Jurassic Park themes I think everybody thinks of to when they're pulling up in the jeeps to the visitor center it's all of a sudden sounds a lot more militaristic and ominous yeah do do do do do do yeah you know and that's that's that's that's quite sorry this is also the point where I think this this cut from one scene to the other is the one where you kind of get a feel for quite how all over the place Richard Attenborough's accent is in this film because basically you get the famous the famous light of the scene before

where he strides up to the camera and he goes, welcome to Jurassic Park you know, right? And he sounds like you know, yeah exactly, he sounds like you know, like he should be on stage at the Royal Shakespeare Company or something and in the very next scene as they're going into the visitor centre here

he says Peck. Peck. Yeah, like he's a It was at this point I realised that when I do a sort of pretentious Glaswegian professor voice I do to mock some people is basically the accent that Richard Attenborough does in this film when he's pretending to be Scottish. You know, you're a Scottish man. Is the erotic in Park? Do you roll it? Park. Park.

Not really. It's in the vowel pronunciation. I think, Park. Or park. Park. Yeah. park there's like a

you know when you're doing any English pronunciation it's like there's an imaginary h there in the middle park

versus park I see I see that's my take I have a friend I have a friend who's a linguist who will probably

shoot me for that explanation there's much more technical way of putting it but yeah yeah well we'll get the explanation

of how they've created these dinosaurs they have extracted dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes which were preserved in amb

They extract the DNA, they fill out the gene sequence with the DNA of that of a frog, and then they put the frog ovums that they, not the frog ovums, the dinosaur ovums that they put together into ostrich eggs to hatch. I'm sorry to say, based on an article in Plus 1, by Penny Etal from 2013, you can't get enough DNA from a mosquito preserved in amber to clone a dinosaur. They found that you could get more DNA by crushing the insect, you know, not getting it with a needle like they're doing the film, but by just crushing the insect and feeding it into the DNA thing.

I'm not a scientist. But, yeah, they say they're unable to obtain convincing evidence for the preservation of ancient DNA in either of the two cobalt inclusions that they studied. that raises further doubts about claims of DNA extraction from fossil insects in amber. It's a science-heavy article that I do not understand, but I admire their restraint in not once using the term Jurassic Park. Yeah, we've definitely not written this paper to answer this question that everybody has immediately upon watching the opening of Jurassic Park.

They do refer to it as Cobol everywhere else except that one sentence where they refer to it as amber, because they know why people are coming to this article. They break out of the ride and go down to the lab to meet Dr. Henry Wu and a newborn Velociraptor who is just being born. Hammond claims incredibly that he's been there for the birth of every dinosaur on the island, which seems extremely unlikely

even take into account that he doesn't know about the unauthorized breeding. The tiny velociraptoraptor puppet, looks great. It reminds me of the egg opening in Alien. You know, it's all goopy. It looks real. It's got tiny little bony arms that I'm not sure how they did on a puppet, but it looks fantastic. And again, these kinds of animatronics helps sell the more CG, less real-looking versions that we'll see later on. Also, the first appearance of Henry Wu at this point, is it not? Yeah.

We're actually, coming back to this, having seen the Jurassic World. films. I was shot by how small his rule that actually is. Yeah, this is it. I wanted to be sure to mention him, but he's really not in the film for much longer. He's going to get on a boat and go back to the mainland. He has a more extensive presence in the novel, as I recall.

But he's not in this film very much at all. He explains the population control, how there's no unintended breeding in the park because they have engineered older dinosaurs as female. Malcolm explains that the control that John and wooro intending is impossible.

Technology cannot control or constrain nature. He says life finds a way. For anybody who's listening to his podcast by some miracle having not watched the film yet. This is foreshadowing. They head to a small velociraptor enclosure and they see a cow being devoured when she used to Robert Muldoon,

who he talked about earlier. He's a game warden from Kenya. And he has a lot of respect to the raptors as animals as predators, almost to a fault. He can see what Hammond can't see. They then have lunch in the dining room, getting carrot with a lot of seabass, sorry,

with a lot of shredded carrot, and they discuss the ethics of genetic engineering and control. So here's where we get a lot of Crichton inserting himself through the Malcolm character, who is this kind of self-insert, certainly in the novel, if not in the screenplay. Malcolm's very peachy in the novel, more so in the Lost World, as I recall,

in the sequel, almost to a fault of the character. It really gets quite tiresome in the last world. How preachy is and how right all the time he is. That makes him fairly unattractive. Jeff Goldblum does a good job of softening the character

and making him right, but cool. And here's where we get into a lot of the kind of Crichton conservatism, I will say, the kind of Crichton conservatism conundrum of the film and the book. So a lot of the articles that I found,

a lot of the research articles, it's hard to distinguish when they're talking about the book versus the film, but I will say that I think the book is a lot more conservative than the film. And I think Crichton is a conservative, like straight up. Like, I've read his climate change denial novel, state of fear

I've read Jurassic Park I've read I don't know a timeline I think The Lost World I think he has a very I think he has a conservative approach that today would not be seen as

as conservative I think these days he'd be a kind of Democrat as a kind of an indication of how far the Republican Party has moved to the farther Yeah I think that's more of a comment on the Overton window

where we are today I would agree with that. I've only read two of Crichton's books, and I think they were the Andromeda Strain and Prey. Yeah. And I think Prey in particular has this same kind of conservative streak.

Yeah. You know, I mean, it's not a... Like, you know, because the thing is, I think you talk about any form of media these days having a conservative streak, and then people are expecting it to be like, you know, whoever, you know, the sound of freedom or something. Like, they're expected you know, but it's not. Like, you know,

know, like, it didn't used to be completely, complete nutbag stuff. Like, it was, you know, stuff I still deeply disagree with, but it was a lot more subtle, you know. Yeah, I think. Even if some of Crichton's quotes aren't, but, you know, the material in the books, I think, is a lot more subtly, so. Well, I discovered a few articles talking about this. So there's one on cinema and eco-politics from Mark Lacey in Millennium Journal, which makes a claim that movies such as Jurassic Park and the Lost World articulate what appears to be a countercultural critique

of anthropocentric technology advanced society developing a critique that resonates with arguments developed in more radical sectors but he is cautious to describe emancipatory significance to these cultural products which are designed by multinational corporations because there is a sense that these movies want to restore a kind of status quo they want to go back to a kind of pre-science idea of society they don't want cryton's very clear that he doesn't want scientists meddling in the natural world which can be seen as a kind of leftist thing with a kind of hippie perspective

but that's not the kind of perspective that Crichton brings to it. He's anti-science in a kind of, let's go back to natural ways of doing things, but his natural ways of doing things are not actually embedded in nature, they're embedded in society, they're embedded in conservative thought. So there's another great article by Laura Briggs and Jody Kelber K called, There is No One Authorized Breeding in Jurassic Park, Gender and the Use of Genetics in NWSA Journal, which talks about Crichton's,

anti-feminism. So Greiteness was an anti-feminist. I think straight up. I have seen, what's the, is it disclosure that he wrote where the whole premise is like, what if sexual harassment happened to a man? Wouldn't that be crazy? And, and kind of Demi Moore is shown as a kind of scheming woman trying to get ahead in the workplace. And it's implied that that's the kind of lengths that women will go to. The kind of good woman in that film is shown as the kind of quiet woman, the woman who is quiet, who stays at home with her husband and whatnot. But they make a very persuasive argument in this article that Crichton's anti-feminist. Crichton's quoted as saying there are victims of feminism. A lot of children are victims of an era where women declared

their independence from men. But they also say that it's a reliable feature of the movie versions of Crichton's work that Hollywood softens his misogyny. So I think that's what we get here. I think we go from a quite conservative novel to Spielberg softening this and making it more palatable for a mainstream audience. You know, not those novels, not mainstream.

Just that it has less conservatism in it. But I believe that the conservatism is baked into it. There's this idea that authorized breeding is an idea breeding shouldn't involve technology

which is a kind of anti-feminist thing. You know, because you cut out IVF and birth control and other aspects that allow women to control their kind of birth cycles, which is a kind of patriarchal idea. Yeah, and it's even interesting the, you know, so much haze made in those initial scenes of, you know, all the animals in Jurassic Park are female. There's no unauthorized breed, but then, you know, anybody listening to this will probably realize it later on in the park. Yeah, they do, right? covers that they do, right? And, you know, there's a reason for because of the shortcuts they took with the genetic engineering that happened. But it's even interesting that it's kind of, you know, I may be stretching a bit here, but it is interesting that one of the key issues, one of the

main problems with the park that manifests is female only breeding, right? You know, breeding where a male of the creature is not involved, right? That's a problem. That's a problem. right? That's obviously bad. It is referred to as unauthorized breeding. Yeah, exactly, right? So that's, so even that, just kind of like that being the mechanism through which you discovered, like, you know, they can't control what they've created. It's just interesting that that's the way that happens, really. Yeah. These authors write that this cultural text, they're also talking about Gattaca as well, which I haven't seen, but they're talking about Dressel Park and Gattaca, both making the gene a sign of male science and counterpoising it a against a natural, not scientific motherhood. It's also worth noting that Ellie Sattler is the only woman in the film. There's a little girl as well, Lex, Hammond's granddaughter, but there are only two women in the film. Ellie Sattler is kind of fought over to some extent by two men.

But yeah, you end up with a kind of portrait of good breeding and natural family counterposed against technology and science and genetic engineering as unnatural and wrong, which has this real conservative streak. But to talk to kind of like the way that viewing that as a conservative streak has shifted over time, one thing that kind of struck me about this, so the scene that we're kind of focusing on right now where they're in a like a boardroom type thing, you know,

and this is kind of like where it's the talkiest scene in the film, right? and I would say it's probably where it lays bare all of its kind of thematic content for all to see. I found it amazing how much he could take Ian Malcolm's spiel and apply it to some stuff from today, right? So, I mean, the bits that stick out to me are, you know, it's when he's going on about kind of like,

you know, criticizing Hammond and the scientists for almost being kind of like, you know, kids in a candy store with what they've discovered. So, you know, you're ready. what others had done, you didn't earn the knowledge of yourself, and now you're going to sell it, you know, and he starts... You're buying it on the table.

You're selling it, you're selling it. Right, and the thing that I find remark about is you could take that word for word and apply it to this whole kind of like generative AI debate that's going on right now. You know, you've read what others are done, you didn't earn the knowledge of yourself, and now you're going to sell it, right?

And it's, so it's interesting that... And if you look at that, I would say it's probably if you look at the breakdown of people's opinions on that model, on technology, I think it would probably break down as being a fairly left-wing perspective to be critical of that

technology, and it's a kind of you know, and it's, I find it interesting, kind of like this idea of like, you know, Hammond going on about discovery and it sounds so similar to when people talk about disruptors now, you know? Yeah, I mean.

This idea kind of like, you know, you didn't, you know, you were so preoccupied whether you could do it, you didn't think whether you should do it. and the echoes are quite interesting and the way that that has shifted on the political spectrum over time is kind of fascinating to me.

I think this is kind of why I've dwelt on this to such an extent because I think there is an easy reading that this film is straightforwardly anti-capitalist in a kind of left-wing way because, you know, Hammond is clearly the Uber capitalist who has commodified these dinosaurs,

these natural specimens and wants to put on a lunchbox and sell them. He's clearly positioned as the villain, certainly in the novel, if not in the film, the villain of the piece, who is a representation

of capitalism and commodification. And the film sort of stands against that and says, let nature stand on its own, don't commodify nature. We talked about the kind of colonialist undertones of Hammond coming over to this Caribbean island and establishing,

taking the land for himself and doing what he wants on it. So I think it's an interesting text that can be read, you know, in both these ways. I think there is a real streak of conservatism to it, but in a kind of anti-capitalist way that is kind of indicative of the 90s conservatism of Crichton, which wasn't the Uber capitalist conservatism of today. There was a space back then for conservatives who were critical. of capitalism and corporations

that I don't think there is nowadays or those people are sucked into different areas. You know, I'm thinking of Dick Cheney coming out just this weekend to endorse endorse Harris rather than Trump because the Overton window has shifted so much, like you said. I think it's not just that.

I think it's also, it's kind of, you know, it's compressed from, you know, kind of like a, know, maybe like a quadrant model where you, you know, you, you know, people have probably done these tests on life where kind of like, you know, you have kind of like, you know, being socially progressive or conservative and then economically progressive. I feel like that that's kind of been compressed down a bit. And I think kind of like, if you look at kind of like, yeah, if you look at Crichton's writing and this and some of the tones around it, like, there is criticism of capitalism in here. Obviously there is, right? It's definitely there.

But there's a, there is a strong social conservative streak there as well. And I think that's, particularly in American politics right and it's kind of like bleeding over into to here in the UK as well that's the bit that's kind of disappearing right it's becoming a lot more kind of like you know the people with socially progressive ideas are also the ones who have you know slightly more collectivist ideals on the economic front and then on the other side you know the social and um you know more individualist um perspective seem to be just compressing together there's less and less people that seem, either do break out of that mould or more accurately are willing to, right, for fear of kind of like, you know, alienating either a voter base or a party they belong to or something.

And so I'm glad you brought up. I think that's quite clear in the text here, once you start going looking for the politics of the supposedly politics free, according to Reddit film. That's what it is. It's like, yes, it is critical capitalism, but that doesn't mean there isn't a very strong social conservative streak here in terms of how it's structured. the ideas about what capitalism shouldn't meddle with. Yes. Yeah, precisely. Well put. But moving on, they move on from this dining room. When Hammond's grandkids arrive, Lex and Tim,

they are an older girl and a younger boy. The ages are inverted in the book. I'm not sure why they changed it for the film. The tour starts. They're getting these electric jeeps and the tour starts. God help us win the hands of engineers. as Malcolm has the car started to move off which is a line I don't think I'd picked up on before but I really enjoyed

we sort of intercut at this point between them in the cars going through the park not seeing any dinosaurs which is very frustrating same as when you go through to a zoo and don't see any animals and the backstage

where Muldoon and Ray played by Samuel Jackson who I never remember is in Jurassic Park who is a fresh surprise to me every time. Oh, I always remember it because of the Hold On to Your Buts line. I deployed that in day-to-day life

quite a lot. Yeah, I remember that line. I just can't remember him as Samuel Jackson. You know? I don't know what it is. But there's problems backstage. So Nedri is explaining how his automated systems work, how the entire park is automated,

and how he was the cheapest bid available for Hammond's tender. And we get some of this idea of Hammond's exploitative cameras. capitalist when we see that he's actually skipped out on a lot of expenses. And even the way he talks to, even the way he talks to the sort of the back of house staff in these scenes as well. Yeah, your financial problems are your problems, Dennis. It's not my problem.

But it's clear that he has spent money on the front of house to make it look as flash and snazzy as possible. But the back half, the stuff that is hidden that actually runs the park, the automated systems, is gone as cheap as possible. Just for me, there should be more than one IT guy there, as we'll see later. Nedri is a classic single point of failure. So I want to spend the rest of the episode really talking about IT infrastructure and how we set up to avoid these single points of failure.

Keeping some of your facilities wrapped her proof is probably, you know. Yeah. We definitely help. you're one remaining injured you're getting eaten don't run a tour when you're sending half the staff more than half the staff off to the mainland because it's the weekend and there's a storm coming

just have the tour a different day just keep them in the hotel I'm sure you've got a hotel on site just keep them in the hotel until the weather clears but this is Hammond's hubris you know these aren't plot holes this is Hammond's hubris which really starts to come through at this point

in the film you know You've had hints of it here, but the way he talks to his staff, and it's like, it's quite clear, particularly once it all starts to kind of, you know, just go completely off the rails. Certainly in the film, Hammond is not portrayed as, like, classically evil. Like, he's not sort of like a, you know, cacklingville, but he is portrayed, I would argue, as wildly entitled and arrogant. Yeah. You know, the idea of what he can control, what he wants to have dominion over, and what he expects to work and who he expects to make it work. You know, that really starts to come through in this point.

There's even hints of it later on in the film, little bits and pieces, even once the film kind of like shift gear into being a very much a action thriller set up, you still get that coming through. And by this point, you've been introduced into, I've actually got my notes here, Muldoon also dressed in colonial cosplay. here we have put it you know because throughout it

and you know so you really start to get a flavor of that now I would say yeah I've just said earlier he's a game warden from Kenya but if you drill down

on that Kenyan connection you again get to colonial kind of African colonial undertones so they're on the tour they drive past the Tyrannosaur paddock there's some

great design in terms of the Tyrannosaur paddock you know it looks great it tells you a lot about the dinosaurs and the park without spelling it out in dialogue. There's a brief sequence where Ellie Sattler talks about women inheriting the earth, you know, playing off their discussion of men inheriting the earth, which is a good reiteration of some of the gender politics expressed in the film,

which I've talked about. As they're going around, they get a little explanation of chaos theory and unpredictability in complex systems, which is Malcolm's field of study. and there is a lot more of this in the novel like chaos theory is a huge underpinning thing in the novel that is just hinted at here I found a lot of articles which were kind of interrogating

chaos theory through the lens of Jurassic Park and kind of using it to explain their field of study I don't know a lot about chaos theory I think it was fairly trendy at the time that Crichton wrote the book but is less trendy nowadays. For one thing, we have more computing power for modeling complex systems.

So it says there is inherent unpredictability, but we are a lot better at predicting complex systems and modeling them now than we were. Yeah. Because this is something that also struck me. And I wouldn't say the film the film leans on it too hard, right? but it is there

and I find it quite interesting because I don't think what happens here is a particularly good display of what we understand popularly anyway as chaos theory right? You know the thing that the thing that you and Malcolm outlines

it kind of like you know butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and there's you know it rains in New York I don't think the events of the film are actually particularly great understanding here. I think it's actually... It's better in the book, I will say, because the book has multiple things that go wrong simultaneously in the park. In the film, it's reduced down to kind of

Nedri turning off the power and the dinosaurs breeding. Whereas in the latter, the latter strikes me as maybe a better illustration. That's a better illustration. A lot of unintended consequences. Yes, but it's not dwelled on. it is a bigger plot point in the book there's also kind of more more kind of dynamic interactions with nature in the book so the film mentions the dinosaurs lysine dependency

they have read the dinosaurs to be dependent on this chemical lysine without which they will go into a coma and die that's more important in the book because the dinosaurs have learned to adapt the entire food cycle has adapted so that the herbivores are eating lysine-rich plants because they know

their bodies know they need it and the carnivores are obviously eating the herbivores so they have evolved out of this lysine dependency in a way that the scientist could not predict. There's also stuff about the number of dinosaurs

on the island and predictions so in the book they have a tracking device they have cameras set up that can track all the dinosaurs in the park and give a read out of how many dinosaurs there are. The problem is that they are looking for, you know, 230 dinosaurs. And when Malcolm says, can you take the cap off the software,

suddenly it finds, you know, 350 dinosaurs or whatever. And the scientists are like, what? You're so much smarter than us, Michael Crichton. How did you do this? But that kind of has more elements of chaos theory. I agree. It's not a great representation of kind of instability and complex systems. but it's more of it than we get in the film.

So Grant comes across a sick triceratops on the tour. I think this trisotops looks great, like this is another animatronic, but it looks fantastic. It's got a proper tongue and everything that looks real. The way it's breathing is beautiful. It's really effective. And you really get this sense of,

Grant's been quite a hard character, especially when he's traumatising that kid. But here you get a kind of softening of Grant that really makes him really speaks to his arc that he's going to go on later with the kids and how he's a nice character, a good character. Nedri begins his scheme, he shuts off all the park systems so he can steal the ambriots and get them to the dock. This brings the cars to a stop outside the Tyrannosaur paddock. There's the iconic shot of ripples on the water, which was caused by a bass guitar, not anything thumping.

The T-Rex escapes, it looks great. Like, I think this sequence where the T-Rex is at. out is just terrific, like it really still stands up, and I think it's because of the blend of animatronic and CG. So the animatronic looks so good that you buy the CG later on in the same scene, but flicking between them really works. Yeah, and I think, when I think about how well the effects have held up in Jurassic Park, right, I think the animatronics and the, you know, the practical stuff, obviously has extremely well, right? In particular, the scene when

the T-Rex busts out, like one of my favorite shots is when you know, it kind of, it bends down to kind of look in the car that Lex is in, she shines the torch at it, and, you know, the pupil contract, it's absolutely fantastic, right? It's just, it's such a small little detail

that just brings such, like, amazing kind of tangibility to it, kind of, like, you know, heightens your fear of it, it's like, you know, because it's responding. But, when it busts out and you kind of got the famous scene of it right like it's really a good example of working to the limitations of the time right because it's it's a night scene right you know like darkness has fallen by this point it's raining you know so like the level of detail

with which you need to render this T-Rex is not quite as much as it would have been for say the Brachiosaur in the first scene right you know it's dark there's you know it's occluded a lot there's a lot of kind of like specular highlights going on because of the rain, you know, it's extremely well, and this probably speaks to, you know, and obviously part of this particular part of it would have been done post-production as well, right? But the idea is by having the animatronics on set, you've got a reference to work with and you know what you're working towards, right? So this kind of goes back to your point about the length of time that this film's spelled in pre-production, right? It was well thought out. They knew what the limitations

were and they worked within that, right? There are a lot of films, within the past five years or so where the CG is a lot worse right and the reason for that is it's one of two things they're leaning on it too hard right or you know they haven't been given the time to do it

and not planning ahead so what I hear from kind of MCU visual designers and visual effects artists is that Marvel just don't give them what scenes they want they don't give them the list of effects

early enough for them to do an effective job and so they end up looking kind of sodgy. Yeah. Where, again, the 25 months in pre-production, thinking about how you're going to make this thing look and how you're going to put together every scene, I think really helps. Like, really

helps. Yeah, the T-Rex gets loose and eats Gennaro, the cheap-ass toilet block that Hound has made collapses straight away. It's not even brick or anything. It just seems to be palms. You know, like a bamboo hut or something And bamboo leaves A bamboo stalks, yeah

Ray is investigating Nedri's code While Hammond tells Muldoon and Sattlet to bring back his grandchildren We then get the scene When Nedri is trying to get to the dock To hand over the embryos To his spy On the boat

And Nedri gets killed by Adalaffis This was the scariest scene for me As a kid There we go This was the scariest scene for me as a kid I have written down because I always had to close my eyes when the Dolophisaurus spits at Nedri

I couldn't there was something about it spitting his kind of venomous goo into Nedri's eyes that I just couldn't watch as a kid but you know this is behind the sofa Daleked kind of stuff I just couldn't look at it

I think I could look at it I think it just kind of like really kind of struck it well there's two things here like one as anybody who knows me very well I ever think about eyes right you know I don't like eyes being fiddled with, so the idea of like some sort of horrible goo being kind of like spat into

I haven't made the connection but I probably had the same thing. I couldn't touch my eye for example. Yeah, I can't watch someone putting in contact lenses. Yeah, no, exactly, right? So when my wife puts contact lenses in or takes them out, right? You know, and every so often you get a situation where kind of like they don't come straight out. I can't watch it, right? So yeah, exactly, right? That's my reaction. So the idea of kind of like, you know, there's dinosaur speaking some sort of prehistoric vedibus goopid to my eye, it kind of freaks me out anyway. But then there's something about

that, like, I honestly think it probably kind of like, like, put me on edge when you kind of like come across small inquisitive animals. Because the first time you watch this, right, the Dolophist, like, I think you're kind of saying something bad is going to happen. But like, it's kind of like,

you know, it's like a curious little guy, you know, and it's kind of wait on, and it's meant to be a theme park, right? You know, like, not, not all of these animals are meant to be kind of like terrifying killing machines. So it starts out that way and it's just the way it turns and the way in which it turns. It really, really just kind of stuck with me for a long time. Yeah, I kind of wish there were more Dilafosaurus across the franchise because it does

have this kind of playful air to it. You know, it's an inquisitive little animal that is playful. It just seems like it's trying to play but gets frustrated and falls back on its natural instincts to consume and predate on on on on on nedri i i guess you kind of get this spot filled in the lost world by the compies the compies yeah precon subnifuses which will meet in the next film which are kind of the baby Yoda to the dilaphasosis Yoda but yeah i found this film this scene very scary as a kid the he loses the canister it gets covered in mud There's a kind of significant shot that I always read as a sequel tease that I know isn't,

and that I know other people have had the same interpretation, because I've seen other people have that same interpretation, where they're like, oh, he's focusing on the canister, because that'll be the sequel. It doesn't even make sense. Like, the embryos won't last long in that shaving thing. In another example of kind of visual design in editing, this shot of the mud flowing down is contrasted with the following shot of water, cascading into Grant's face.

It's this kind of visual language that Spielberg uses that really suggests he'd thought about this film way ahead of the edit. He'd thought about how to put it together. Grant saves the kids. They're now lost in the park and have to make their way to the visitor center. The dialogue exchanges between Grant and the kids are all really good. They're really smart. They further Grant's arc as coming to be a kind of father figure, I suppose.

I mean, he starts the film hating kids and he ends up liking kids. Again, I think he gets into the kind of social conservative streak. Muldoon and Sattler rescue Malcolm. They outrun the T-Rex and the gas jeep. Laura Dern is great in this scene. She's very good at screaming and good at the action when she gets the chance to do it. The Laura Dern scream in the Jeep when they're fantastic. Yeah, it's good, right?

Not just the audio, her facial expression as well. That woman looks utterly. just gripped with fear. It's absolutely fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She'll go on to do much better stuff with this in Inland Empire, where she just pulls some incredible faces. Very different kind of film.

But she does some great work in Inland Empire. Loverdern's great. She had a career lull for a while because she was kind of semi-blacklisted in Hollywood for playing. She was Ellen DeGeneres' partner in, the Ellen show, where Ellen came out as a lesbian. And despite the fact that Lourderne is not a lesbian,

she kind of got tarnished by playing this lesbian, in a kind of brave role for the 90s or whenever it came out, the early 2000s, and got blacklist, semi-blacklisted, you know, not picked up for roles and stuff, which I think is legit awful. So there's a nice scene where Grant rests in a tree and bonds with the kids and bonds with brachiosauruses and he gives a kind of thesis statement

for how the film has portrayed dinosaurs where he says they're not monsters lex they're just animals and this gets into another kind of thread I saw in some of the research for this so there's a article by Robert Baird called Animalizing Jurassic Parks Dinosaurs

that is about kind of how Spielberg said he wanted the dinosaurs to be animals he didn't want anyone to call them monsters or creatures, they wanted them to be animalistic, which I think, again, speaks to making them look realistic because they move like animals rather than monsters. You know, they're not lumbering about like Godzilla.

They are sniffing the environment, they are moving in certain ways, they're moving in herds, they do move in herds, but they're moving like animals. And the film is very clear on treating them like animals, which again gets into this kind of animal-rearrow. and capitalist exploitation of animals and kind of anti-Zoo sentiment, really, when you get right down to it.

That is kind of the more left-wing streak of the film. Which is interesting in the, you know, like I don't want to jump the gun on the discussion about the sequels, but this idea of presenting them is animals rather than monsters. And that's very clear here, right? I would argue one of the criticisms that you can level against the legacy sequels at least particularly I would say maybe Fallen Kingdom and Dominion is I think it maybe gets away from that a little bit and that's something that's maybe lost in some of these sequels and they you know we'll talk about

it in more detail and come to the Jurassic World episode but you know the main threats there they are presented as a lot more monster-like. I'm thinking of the Indominus rex, which is a literal monster that they make. That was never an actual dinosaur. Yeah, exactly. That, and then you've got the Indo-Raptor in Fonkin. It kind of gets away from that.

And I think that kind of, it does, for me, I think, dilute it a little bit. There's another couple of contrasts that's struck it. Because I've watched the Jurassic World films more recently. than Jurassic Park up until watching it for the recording of this episode. There's a couple of other things that I want to comment on that kind of like jumped out to me that we'll go into more detail when we get to that

those episodes but that was one that also struck me. This kind of like Monsters versus Animals thing. It does go away from that a little bit. You know it almost kind of like suffers from the classic Hollywooditis of needing to go bigger and badder. Right. And it kind of gets away from some of the core stuff that's in this first

film I think. Yeah. But But Spielberg really brings that kind of focus on, he was very clear that he wanted these of animals and to represent this kind of animal rights portion of the film, this animal rights film theme. And I think it's Spielberg that brings that gentleness and that humanity towards the animals. You know, if Malcolm is the Crichton character, then Grant, I would say, is the Spielberg speaking out the kind of, it's not a monster, it's an animal. you know, we have to respect it. Spielberg is also Hammond, as he himself has said,

which is a problem. But yeah, and the next scene is also very good. So Hammond is eating melting ice cream because the fridges have gone offline and he talks to Ellie about what he has tried to do with Jurassic Park. You know, he's tried to build, he used to have a flea circus,

he has tried to build something real. He wanted to get rid of illusion, spectacle and artificiality to make reality, to create something through an act of sheer will, he says. But Ellie points out that all of this is still artificial, which has been clear to us from the start, that he is focused on fake stuff, on getting in plants that aren't from the correct period,

you know, that putting together dinosaurs from entirely divergent historic periods and putting them behind bars, making them a theme park attraction, making them a zoo. in a way that just cannot be done for nature is the kind of theme and the thrust of the conversation there's a little turn of phrase here that I found interesting as well just to go back to kind of like the weird sort of British colonial

vibes as well I don't know maybe I'm just overly sensitive to the sort of thing because this is the only point where it's like becomes obvious that he is meant to be canonically Scottish here right because he says the phrase when I came down he talked about his first attraction as flea circus you just spoke about and he says when I came down from Scotland

came down from Scotland but you know when he descended from the yokels and the hills you know it's interesting it's interesting just that little turn of phrase and kind of like he specifically says he had the flea circus in petticoat lane

which sounds London-e I don't know if it's an actual all that. But it's just it's interesting. Oh yeah, Petitland is a market in Spillfields. Yeah, you know and it's the only part of

just that turn of phrase and you know the costuming and all the rest of it is the only part I mean that wonders whether this wandering of the accent was actually deliberate right? I'm not 100% convinced it was right? But I think you can make that argument right and it's just

when you're playing to this kind of like this idea this idea of somebody being British rather than one of the constituenties. This is all kind of like layered in a little bit with that Hammond character, so I found that interesting. I hadn't thought of it as deliberate, but now I'm thinking about those few instances

where he changes, he deliberately changes how he speaks and corrects himself to appear perhaps more high status or different. So he corrects himself in this scene on, I think he's about to say merry a ground and he says, carousel

and when he's said earlier is it schedule or schedule he's changed how he talks because there is a the Hammond character has a focus on how he is perceived yeah but you can make the argument at the scenes where he's trying to appear

more approachable and avuncular that's when he's deploying the Scottish accent right you know because it's very strong in that opening scene where he's trying to ingratiate himself to satler and Grant, but then

when he's kind of like castigating Ray Arnold or Nedry, then he really goes away. He's going for this more kind of like upper crust English sort of sound, right? So I'm not 100% convinced it is deliberate. It's possibly accidental, but I do think there is something there. I don't know whether it was explicitly so in Attenborough's performance or not, right?

But certainly that's kind of like the way it's come out to a certain extent. Yeah, yeah, I like it. So back in the park, Grant is moving the kids through the park, he finds the dinosaur eggs and realizes that the dinosaurs are breeding. So we've already said this, but for the benefit of the recording, the frog DNA, some some West African frogs spontaneously change sex in a single-sex environment, so the dinosaurs with the frog DNA to complete the gene sequence are doing that. In other words, they are transing the dinosaurs.

Back at the visitor centre, Hammond proposes shutting down the system completely, turning it off and on again. Now this is the kind of IT stuff that we really like, that we're here to watch, and he orders Arnold to do so. This works, but it traps the circuit breakers, so Arnold heads over to the maintenance shed to turn them back on. There's more gender stuff when Sattler proposes to go out to the maintenance said. She says, we can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back, because Hammond proposes to go instead of her, even though he's an elderly, elderly, the Lee Man. Who walks with a cane. Who walks with a cane? I think that's explicitly an affectation

in the book. I can't remember. But the raptors have escaped when they turned off the power, because they turned off all the power, which means the raptor fences, electric fences, went off as well. And so we get a great scene establishing the raptors as a threat and how they

hunt intelligently, in contrast to the more beastial T-Rex. Yeah, it's good stuff, especially when it Muldoon is kind of tracking the animals and exactly what Grant said would happen earlier happens and they swoop in from the side

and he says, Clever Girl. Yeah, which is kind of one of those iconic and the thing is whenever you think of that it's kind of like, you know, it's the line and kind of Muldoon's look that comes in your head. But to go back to like the filmmaking,

the thing that actually makes that makes that little sequence actually is the camera move right before he says Clever Girl, right? Because it's just, it's showing exactly sort of like what Muldoon is focusing on

and then what he realizes too late. You know? It's almost entirely silent and it swings around. Like there's not a cut. There's a brilliantly executed little moment basically. Yeah, it's quiet. You know, there's no dialogue apart from when he says Clever Girl.

And yet you know exactly what's happening through the kind of visual language of him placing the hat, of seeing the alpha velociraptor lowering him in, it works great. Again, it's this visuals and cinematic language that Spielberg keeps using, and that does so much so that he can use dialogue more efficiently. Yeah, and another thing that stood out to me in this scene, and also, I would say, because once we get, you know, once we kind of of go into kind of like the final, the final push here, right? We're kind of like, you know, we're getting into a lot more action stuff. Yeah. So the kind of synopsis that I'm giving

will kind of rattle through. Yeah, exactly. Because in terms of like what actually happened here, this is far more kind of like well-constructed action set pieces than necessarily kind of like much happening as such, right? But one thing that really kind of like jumped out to me, in particular in this scene, the clever girl scene, but also kind of everything that follows in terms of like, as the raptors kind of like start to close in on our, you know, surviving cast members. One of the really jumped tight to me actually is there's a real, and this probably comes from the fact that in a lot of, in a lot of places it's animatronics, right? You know, and it goes between the animatronics and the CGI pretty, pretty flawlessly, in my view,

during this stretch. There's an economy of movement to these creatures that is not there in some of the more recent sequels, you know? they go for far more of the raptors kind of like being characters in the recent films you know and kind of like you know so that you can relate to them

here they are animals right and there's an efficiency and an economy of movement here which I think maybe comes from the animatronic part of it that is really not there in later editions in my view and it really kind of like

gets across really well in my view how animalistic they are and how intelligent they are they're not inefficient these are these are killing machines they're hunters you know yeah I mean we've talked I mentioned the animalistic nature

of the dinosaurs in this and I really appreciate that I think for this film is that they do seem like animals they do seem like birds so in my spare time I do some birding so I know how birds move

and there's a you know I'm thinking of when you see a grey heron out on the river the grey heron will often just be stocked still so it looks like a statue of a heron you're not sure if it's a plastic heron deterrent or whatever

but a heron can stand so still and you get that kind of stillness from the velociraptors in the scene with Muldoon and later in the kitchen scenes you get that kind of bird-like stillness that really sells this

as an animal, as a bird, in a way that I hadn't thought about, but I think you're right, you don't get in the later films because they're so keen to show how the CG can work and how they can move and how dynamic they can be.

You know, we'll get to it. I don't really remember the later films that well, but I'm interested to see how these kind of animalistic dinosaurs move. It's not true across the board in the later ones, but there's less, for one of a better way, I think you're kind of wanting to show off the capabilities is probably a good summation of it.

It's less disciplined. Less disciplined is a very good way of putting it. And again, I'm coming back to this 25 months of pre-production and how disciplined they must have been to think of all these shots and how they tied together. As another little fact that goes towards this, the film wrapped 12 days ahead of schedule. And within days of that, the editor Michael Kahn had a rough cut ready.

So they knew what scenes would go into what. knew how this would come together. And he clearly knew what shots he wanted because wrapping 12 days ahead of schedule is, I think, very impressive these days. It's unheard of these days. And not going back from pick-ups.

Yeah, exactly. 25 months of pre-production I keep coming back to. And I'm just thinking of how long Blade has had in pre-production and how great it's going to be because of it. We've got Wesley Slipes coming back as Blade before we got a new

blade film. Yeah. Yeah. To speak to this again, the kind of preparedness and how they'd thought about the structure and the specific shots they needed. The climbing the electric fence scene is a great example of that because it's cross-cutting with Sattler, who is turning on specific things, and there is a clear intentionality in the shots of Sattler and cross-cut with the shots of Grant that speaks to, they knew

how this would be edited together, and they knew what shots they needed, and how they needed, and how they would work together. It really comes together really well. So as I said, there's a lot of action scenes. It's all great action. You know, I'm not trying to gloss over it. But it is action scenes of them escaping dinosaurs, escaping largely the velociraptors, which are the threat at this point? They're going to the visitor center. They get trapped by the velociraptors and they have to escape to the control room. The locks aren't working. So Lex has to go into the computer system and dig around and try and fix things, try and turn the system back on, essentially.

Lex says it's a Unix system. It's a funny interface for navigating files, but it is actually structured like a Unix system, which is very impressive. The IT cut of Jurassic Park, where we just focus on IT issues and infrastructure. It would only be five minutes long, but it'll be a good five minutes.

With the systems back online, Hammond phones the mainland for a helicopter, while Grant and the kids escape the raptors, which are still hunting them. they descend the kind of skeletal T-Rex that we saw in the Visitor Center earlier and Spielberg was persuaded to change the ending to bring the T-Rex back originally Grant was just going to use a machine to maneuver a raptor into the jaws of the fossil Tyrannosaur but Spielberg was persuaded to

bring the T-Rex back for one last climactic moment because you'd come to see the T-Rex as one of the heroes of the film. Where this is, like, this little Bobid actually is actually quite interesting, I think, for the future of the franchise, right? Because the T-R-X coming back. Yeah, the T-R-X coming back to kind of like save them, inverted comments, is actually kind of neat, right? I like that idea, it's like, you know, it's not like their own kind of man-made tools or

something that allows them to kind of escape the situation. it is nature interacting with nature, right? So in terms of like speaking to the themes of the film, I think it works quite neatly. And it also gives you a really good image. Yeah, in a kind of chaotic way that they couldn't have expected. Exactly. This complex system of nature is now fully let loose out of the fences,

and so the T-Rex has found its way back, found her way to the visitor centre. But if we fast forward 22 years, right, to Jurassic World, I would say. There's maybe a little bit of it in the lost world, the sequel as well, but I think if we mainly fast forward 22 years to Jurassic World and even some aspects of Jurassic World Dominion, but mainly Jurassic World, this sort of like casting of the T-Rex, and I mean that as in this specific T-Rex, not the species, Tyrannosaurus Rakes, right? No, I believe it's exactly the same T-Rex. Yeah, right. So, I'll be very specific about this, where I say the T-Rex, it's this specific one, right?

Casting it as like some sort of hero is kind of, the effect that then has on the franchise later, I think, is, you know, we've spoken about, like, aliens, right, in the previous series of podcasts, like, how it's a great film, we really enjoy it. It's probably to say that I think we both had it as our second kind of, like, favorite in the franchise, but we kind of dislike the impact that they have. HUD on it, there's something about this moment where it's like, it's one of these things where people have tried to recreate and focus on the wrong things from this film for some of the sequels, and this is one of them. Yeah, agreed. We'll get to it more when we get to Jurassic World, but yeah, it's a shame. Our heroes escape on a helicopter. Grant looks meaningfully out at some pelicans who are flying over the ocean and reflects on the dinosaurs that still exist among us.

and how nature found the way to these creatures so that we can exist peacefully cohabiting the planet alongside birds. And that's the end of the film. The end. No more Jurassic Park films ever. Yeah, and they never... Man lit...

In Jen and Richard Hammond and man lent their lesson. And the world was fine forever. So I think it's great. I think it's a terrific film, you know? I'm really focusing this time on the visual and cinematic language that Spielberg uses but I think the script is great the effects work really well they still stand up the action scenes are terrific yeah I think I think this is the key thing right the visuals the visuals of the CGI hold up better than they really hit I mean particularly

the CGI like I mean I think so like animatronics and stuff if they're done well they'll always hold up pretty well but like CGI holds up much better than it has any right to really you know so you don't get taken out with the film even, you know, 30 plus years later as a result of that. I think the themes also hold up. You know, there's a lot of things that have attempted similar ideas less engagingly, I'd say. Like, I mean, you know, I think if you look at this sort of idea of, you know, genetic engineering and messing with nature, there are other films that have tackled this, or other ones that have maybe gone deeper on it is the other thing. But the fact that this is wrapped into an extremely engaging action thriller, which basically, I would say, a huge sway that people can watch.

I mean, like, when this was released in the UK, it was a PG, right? Because the 12A certificate didn't exist. And I think the whole media release now is a 12A. But the point is, it's like, it's not, it wasn't like a gory film which only people over the age of 15 or only over the age of 12 could watch, right? There are bits, and if you go look at the, you know, the ratings, it's quite clear about the fact that, you know, I mean, we also, we get Samuel Jackson severed arm at some point, right? You know, it's not, it's not completely family friendly, friendly, but the point is, like, you can, you can't show it to somebody who's younger than 12 without traumatising them for life. And I was quite interested to read that. They did quite extensive test screenings with, like, kids down to, like, kind of, like, you know, eight years old or something at the time.

And, you know, they come out as more kind of, like, cheerful terror, I think, was the phrase the BDFC used, rather than genuinely, genuinely anxious, which I find fascinating. But the fact that this is all wrapped into one, you know, particularly palatable film is, is quite remarkable, really. And I think that kind of speaks to its popularity, because it hits all those kind of, like, blockbuster notes. but there is stuff to, you know, we're sitting here talking about the costuming and how it kind of reflects British colonialism and the sort of, like those ideas are there, right? We're not pulling these out of thin air. There's a lot to grab onto there when you go back and revisit it as an adult with a slight more critical eye as well. Other kind of academic research I didn't get the chance to bring up, there's a lot on this film.

Like this will be the most academic research there is on any film in the franchise, similar to Alien, having the most on the xenopod. But there's lots of articles on CGI and kind of the impact of Jurassic Park on CGI filmmaking. There's quite a few about science pedagogy and scientific literacy using Jurassic Park as a case study for teaching students about how to perceive scientists and how people perceive scientists, what kind of distrust this might have sowed of scientists, which is interesting to think about in kind of a climate change context. There's also a kind of rich vein of non-science professions who are looking for their Jurassic Park, the blockbuster film that will bring attention to their obscure field of study like this did with paleontology.

Most charmingly, I found an example from the Certified Public Accountant Journal who are waiting for their Jurassic Park to bring light to the good work that certified public accountants are doing. I'm sure they are, but it's simply not as sexy as dinosaurs and there's kind of a lot on kind of authenticity in a kind of bodriard sense of authenticity and spectacle and stuff like that

which is well worth reading but I don't particularly want to get into there's a Zotero library I've put together of the academic work cited in this episode that you can have a look at I'll put the link in the show notes but yeah that's that's kind of Jurassic Park and what people have taken from it and some thoughts on it. Do you have anything else?

We haven't mentioned, Jim. Not particularly, no. I think, you know, we've covered a lot of it. It's an interesting film to go back to. It's an interesting film to go back to also having read more of Michael Crichton's work as an author. I mean, I say more. I've only read too, but it's just it kind of informs that perspective a bit more. It's also kind of fascinating to re-watch.

it knowing that you know this kind of like failed theme park idea this was kind of his second bite at it almost because of course like I did Westworld directed Westworld right so you know it's interesting to it's interesting to come back to that knowing knowing the attempt of that and also maybe the way that kind of like the West World TV show played out there's a lot of strands going on here in terms of like yeah where Spielberg's career goes where this franchise goes Michael Crichton's history and where other adaptation of his work go. There's a lot of stuff here.

As well as kind of like the idea that it spins out into multiple media from this point in the same way the alien did, right? You know, I mean, when we were putting show notes together, I think we were both reminiscing on the fact that we played like Jurassic Park video games and things like that. You know, like it spins out in a lot of, you know, and there's things that we're probably not going to cover,

certainly not in detail during this series. You know, like there's animated series, one of which I think has only just come out. Like there was this Camp Cretaceous thing and there's a sequel to that. It's like, it has that similar. effect to the alien series and why we've picked it for this podcast, the way

it spins out and all the different kind of like strategies you could go down to understand the impact of it and where the ideas and learnings from this film are taken, basically. Yeah, I think that theme about theme parks and control, social control, control over nature

is a really rich and interesting theme for me. So I really liked Jurassic Park, obviously. It's a theme that now gets kind of lost until Jurassic World, which kind of picks it up, we'll talk about it, and it's a theme that West World, the TV

series, lost as soon as they took it out of the park. As soon as they left the theme park, I essentially lost it. It lost it pretty quickly. Yeah. There's a dresser. There's a whole thing you could do or die, because that first season television, I thought was super. That first season is great. It drops off.

It drops off very severely. Once you leave the theme park, once you leave the premise, once you leave the rich themes about social control and stuff, through spectacle and Euro-Griardian artificiality, you lose the point of the show. And I think some of the films we'll get on to lose the point of Jurassic Park.

The novel is great. The novel is terrific. So I was saying before we started recording, I must have read it about six times or something because it is an easy read. You can burn right through it. It's a page turner. With some interesting ideas about chaos theory and whatnot,

as we've said, with the proviso, that it is a more socially conservative book than the film. But, yeah, it's a great novel and a great film. And I think, yeah, I think much like when we're talking about Alien, the unambiguous high point of the films that were going to be looking at during this series, yeah. So, yeah, I think if you'll look at your podcast player, you'll see there's half an hour left. That's because it's a half an hour to discuss why the dinosaurs should have feathers. why all the dinosaurs in the franchise should have feathers and why this kind of lizard skin depiction doesn't work and is bad

and why palely dodgers have got increasingly annoyed with this series with each passing film yeah now we might discuss that more in future episodes especially because by the point they were making Jurassic World they knew what dinosaurs looked like which is not great big lizards

yeah No, but that'll do it for this edition. We'll be back next time. We'll be back in a month discussing the Lost World, colon Jurassic Park. Until then, it's bye from me, Simon. Bye from Jim. If you want to find Take 1, Take 1 is on X and on Blue Sky and on Mastodon, I believe. Take 1 Cinema.net is where they're.

the reviews are. It's where some of these podcasts will be compiled. This is on the same feed as the Xenapod, so do go back and listen to the Xenapod. And until then, we'll be back with another Take One Presents looking at Jurassic Park next month. See you then. You know,