The Ultimate Dinosaur Movie

My Article on the most ultimate and influential dinosaur film of all time, Jurassic Park.
On
December 30, 2007
JURASSIC PARK: THE BIGGEST, GREATEST, MOST ULTIMATE AND MOST INFLUENTAL DINOSAUR MOVIE OF ALL TIME AND OF OUR LIVES

By
Timothy Robert McKenzie




PART I: About Jurassic Park: the Movie

Well folks, this is it. In 2008, Jurassic Park will celebrate its 15th anniversary. And Overall, Despite being bastardized by two pointless and mediocre sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (starring Spiny, AKA Spinosaurus), Jurassic Park is still one of the biggest, greatest, coolest, most awesome, most spectacular, most ultimate, and most influential dinosaur movie of all time and of our lives.

It forever changes my beloved movie and special effects industries with its awesome, realistic CGI and animatronics dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are my all time, most favorite animals, although they are extinct now. It is the first movie that introduces us to Dolby Digital's biggest competitor, DTS!!!! It also prompt George Lucas, creator of Star Wars to crawl back to his space saga with Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace (1999) (which, although it contains the most hated animated character of our lives, Jar Jar Binks, threw down the gauntlet among special effects and animation professionals for the use of computers and digital effects), Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) (both of which are shot completely on HD videotape.).

The plot is like this…Once upon a time, this guy named John Hammond spewing plans of cloning dinosaurs and building a lavish island theme park out of his mouth. He joined by these guys named Dr. Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, and among others, these two kids named Lex and Tim who claimed to be Hammond's grandkids.



As they starting that tour on Jurassic Park, which is Hammond's never-never land as well as his would-be hallelujah land, Some kind of security system goes up in smoke, leaving these guys fighting…among others…

Raptors…..



And, most famously…. My main man, T-REXY!!!!



Yeah, It really began with this guy named Michael Crichton writing a novel out of Jurassic Park, and he was really hired to write a script where much of its story is absent. Stan Winston built these robotic dinosaurs, and that ILM (aka Industrial Light and Magic) got to make and develop cutting edge CGI technology to portray my beloved animals, the Dinosaurs.

Yeah, it was well received by everybody who really like the special effects but thinks the film was bastardized by pointless and mediocre other aspects. In 1993, it grosses $914 million internationally. It really is the most successful movie yet released. Well, it's currently the tenth highest grossing movie at the international box office. It really, really, really, REALLY inspires a new breed of films that primarily used CGI for special effects.

This was followed by two pointless sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001) and the very long in development Jurassic Park IV, which is now set for 2009 or so.



Part II: How Jurassic Park, The biggest, greatest, most ultimate and most influential Dinosaur Movie of all time and of our lives is made.

It all started with this guy named Michael Crichton writing a script about a teen recreating a dinosaur. He wrestles and wrestles with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he really thinks he will make Jurassic Park a novel. Then, this guy named Steven Spielberg, heard about the Jurassic Park book while they're talking about what will become the TV show ER. Before Jurassic Park was published, Mikey Crichton start a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million and a substantial percentage of the gross.

Warner Bros., Timmy Burton, Columbia Tristar, Richard Donner (who had recently just completed his Richard Donner cut for Superman II which he got his ass kicked by Warner Bros. and Richard Lester during that film's making in 1977 or 1978.), 20th Century Fox and Joey Dante bid for the rights, but eventually, Universal Studios and Steven Spielberg prevailed in the end. The Universal Guys paid Mikey $500,000 to adapt his Jurassic Park, which he finished by the moment Spielberg was filming his own Peter Pan movie, Hook (1991).

Well, For Crichton, the book was so long, that he agreed for 10 to 20 percent of his book to be filmed, and all the rest, well, it's absent somehow, probably because of the budget and because of practical reasons. After Making Hook, Speilberg really wanted to film his first winner for Best Picture Oscar, Schindler's List (1993). Sidney Sheinberg, who once battle Terry Gilliam over Brazil (1985)'s content and release, believed Spielberg will first do Jurassic Park, and then, Schindler's List.


Stan Winston got to create animatronics dinosaurs. Phil Tippett, responsible for his 10 minute experimental film, Phil Tippett's Prehistoric Beast (1983—1985), got to make go-motion (which is hi-tech for stoppy motion, er, I mean, Stop Motion) dinosaurs for those longshots indeed. Also, Michael Lantieri and Dennis Muren of ILM is gonna supervise the on set effects and digital compositing.




Well, Jacky Horner, that paleontologist guy who had earlier discovered this good mommy dinosaur, a hadrosaur named Maiasaura in the year nineteen hundred and seventy eight (that is 1978.), supervised the designs, in the hope of portraying dinosaurs as animals, not but monsters, although he don't care about the Raptors' flickin' tongues in Phil Tippett's early animatics for Jurassic Park, bitching like this…"[The dinosaurs] have no way of doing that!" So luckily, Tippett broke the flicking tongues out of those raptors in response to Horner's bitching about that.

Stan Winston and his band of guys built dinosaurs in fully detailed models, and then, mold latex skin and fold them over the robotic dinos. Phil Tippett create stop-mo animatics of major scenes, but….guess what…time to switch to CGI!!!!!!



Mark Dippe and Steve Williams, two animators at the ILM, decided to make a CG T-Rex Skeleton walkcycle and well, they go ahead and do more. Spielberg and Tippett, although Phil's dinosaur animation was switch to CGI, knew the whole world will be changing, and Tippett said, “Do you really mean I gotta be extinct?!”

Another guy named Malia Scotch Marmo began rewriting the script in October 1991 over a five month period, merging Dr. Alan Grant with Mr. Ian Malcolm. David Keopp jumps into the script afterward, starting afresh from Marmo's draft, and used a cartoon called Mr. DNA. Procompsognathus is supposed to escape to the mainland and attack the children but, that was absent, ‘cause, as for me and Spielberg, that's too horrific!
Hammond was toned down to just a kindly old man. Tim was now 8 and Lex was 11. Grant now didn't like children so he flicks a Raptor's claw at them! A scene in the book where T-Rex chases Grant and the Children down the river was absent due to limits of technology and budgetary restrictions at the time of original production of Jurassic Park.

At long last, after two years and one month of Pre Production, filming has finally begun in a part of Hawaii called Kauai. Three weeks into the shoot involved daylight exteriors. Well, Because of Hurricane Iniki, The Gallimimus Sequence was filmed in Oahu (where the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, dragging the US to WWII at that time) instead of Kauai.

The Crew returned to USA to film Jurassic Park at Universal Studios Hollywood, for scenes involving the Raptors in the Kitchen for Stage 24. Stage 23 provided the shooting of scenes involving the power supply before going to Red Rock Canyon where they shoot Mr. Grant digging Velociraptor in the Wrong Place, Montana!!! LOL!!!

The Crew went to Universal to shoot Dr. Alan Grant's rescue of Timmy using a 50 foot prop with hydraulic wheels to represent the car's fall, also, the encounter with Brachiosaurus. The crew then film scenes for The Park's labs and control rooms, using animations and computers brought to them by Silicon Graphics and Apple Computers, future creator of the iPod and the iPhone. You can see it when Nedry, the guy who got p'wned by Spitter, AKA Dilophosaurus talking some dockworker.


And now, own to the shoot of the T-Rex attack on the tour cars at Warner Bros. Inc., in Studio Sound Stage No. 16. Shooting that scene pisses Steven Spielberg off because water is soaking on the foam rubber skin of the T-Rexy.



In Universal, Everybody was shooting scenes with Mr. Spitter at Stage Number 27, and at last, the shoot ended at Number 12 (well, I'm not talking about the Teenage Dexter in the Dexter's Laboratory Movie, Ego Trip, but rather a Studio Sound Stage at Universal) with the climatic chases with Raptor at the Computer Room and Visitor Center, where Steven Spielberg summons the T-Rex for the climax, doing away with that stupid ending where Grant use a robot to make a fossil T-Rex to bring down a Raptor.

Yeah, Jurassic Park finally wrapped 12 days ahead of its schedule on November 30, and very soon after that, Michael Khan got his rough cut ready, and at last, Speilberg will be able to make Schindler's List.

Special Effects work continued on Jurassic Park. Phil Tippett and his buddies adjust to new technology by introducing the DID (aka, Dinosaur Input Device), which are models which feeds info to Computer to allow them to animate them traditionally. Yeah, They even act out scenes with Raptors and Gallimimus.

In addition to these groundbreaking CGI dinos, ILM created elements, including splashing and digital face replacement for Ariana Richard's digital stunt double. Steve monitor the progress from across the Atlantic Ocean. John Williams work on the music in February 1993 with Alexander Courage and John Neufield conducting it in March 1993.

Skywalker Sound and some guy named Gary Rydstrom provided the sound effects. T-Rex's roar is a baby elephant mixed with a tiger or a Lion and an alligator and its breath is a whale's blowhole. Some dog was attacking a ball and Rydstrom used that for T-Rex's suppressing of a Gallimimus. Screams of A Dolphin, bellows of a walrus, hissing of a geese, African Crane callin' for a mate, and rasps from us humans are mixed to make the sounds that Raptors make. Spitter's voice was actually swan calls, and that of hawks, rattlesnakes and howler monkeys. Brachiosaurus himself had his singing represented by Whales singing and Donkeys going “Hee haw! Hee haw!” Or even braying.



And now, onto the release, reaction and legacy of Jurassic Park. Universal has just spent $65 million on the marketing campaign of Jurassic Park, and 100 companies agreed to market a house of 1000 Jurassic Park products. 3 Jurassic Park games were developed by SEGA and Ocean Software. Kenner produce a toy line distributed by Hasbro. A novelization was aimed for kids. The Soundtrack album has unused material. Trailers for the movie only have these fleeting glimpses of Dinosaurs. The movie was marketed as “An Adventure 65 million years in the making.”

The movie premiered at the National Building Museum on June 9, 1993 in honor of support of the charities of two kids. The film was released on VHS on October 4, 1994. It was released on DVD, October 10, 2000. Following its release, a traveling exhibition began working. Steve Engelhart wrote a series of comic books for Topps.

They acted as a continuation of the film, consisting of the two issue Raptor, and Raptors Attack, Raptors Hijack and Return to Jurassic Park, which were four issues each. Return to Jurassic Park has 4 more issues until it was done with. All published issues were republished as Jurassic Park Adventures in the US, and Jurassic Park in the UK. There are even two rides at Universal Studios Hollywood and Islands of Adventure.



Jurassic Park was a huge success at the box office, beating that E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, though it didn't beat E.T. domestically. At weekend no. 1, it grosses $47 million and it grosses $81 million by Week no. 1. The film stay Number 1 for three weeks, and eventually grossed $357 million in the USA alone. It also did well in foreign international markets, breaking opening records in the UK, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Taiwan. Steve had just earned $250 million from Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park's gross was then surpassed five years later by James Cameron's Titanic (1997), making that guy the king of the world!!!

There are modestly positive reviews. High praise was for the special effects, though there was a whole lotta criticism directed at the characterization and departures from the book. The New York Times' Janet Maslin commented on Jurassic Park, “"A true movie milestone, presenting awe- and fear-inspiring sights never before seen on the screen....On paper, this story is tailor-made for Mr. Spielberg's talents... [But] t becomes less crisp on screen than it was on the page, with much of the enjoyable jargon either mumbled confusingly or otherwise thrown away."

Peter Travers said that Jurassic Park was "colossal entertainment - the eye-popping, mind-bending, kick-out-the-jams thrill ride of summer and probably the year....Compared with the dinos, the characters are dry bones, indeed. Crichton and co-screenwriter David Koepp have flattened them into nonentities on the trip from page to screen."

Roger Ebert once said, "The movie delivers all too well on its promise to show us dinosaurs. We see them early and often, and they are indeed a triumph of special effects artistry, but the movie is lacking other qualities that it needs even more, such as a sense of awe and wonderment, and strong human story values."

Henry Sheehan argued that "The complaints over Jurassic Park's lack of story and character sound a little off the point," pointing out the story arc of Grant learning to protect Hammond's grandchildren despite his initial dislike of them.

Jurassic Park won 3 Oscars for Visual Effects, Sound Effects, and Sound Editing. And it even won a whole lotta awards which ranges from BAFTA awards to Saturn Awards. Even these guys on the internet found it great and influential. And I know why Jurassic Park is the biggest, greatest and influential dinosaur movies of our lives:

1. When many filmmakers saw Jurassic Park's use of computer generated imagery, they realized that many of their visions, previously thought unfeasible or too expensive, were now possible.
2. Stanley Kubrick told Spielberg to direct A.I. for him.
3. George Lucas started to make the Star Wars prequels.
4. Peter Jackson re-explored his childhood love of fantasy films, a path that led him onto The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, the 2005 remake.
5. Jurassic Park inspires films and documentaries such as Walking with Dinosaurs and the ill-received remake of Godzilla (1998).
6. Stan Winston teamed up with James Cameron and IBM to form Digital Domain.
7. And finally, Alex Billington said that it's ahead of its time and that "Even using the animatronics system that they did, this was a far step ahead of anything at the time. Then the stories surrounding how horrifically real the dinosaurs were fueled its popularity even more. And the best part is that they look better in this movie than any more recent CGI creations.”

Jurassic Park is really my favorite Steven Spielberg movie other than E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982).

I love Jurassic Park, and it, along with The Land Before Time and Disney's Dinosaur, among others, will so inspire me to make a dinosaur movie of my own, Dinosaurs: An Epic Prehistoric Tale (that's what I'll call it) and I'll release it on November 16, 2012.

I hope that mine will kick off the Jurassic Park 20th Anniversary on November 2012 and will expand the dinosaur mania sparked by it, the Dinosaur Renaissance, etc., forever for Dinosaurs: An Epic Prehistoric Tale (which I am going to make) is gotta be the biggest, greatest, coolest and most awesome, most spectacular, most ambitious and most ultimate dinosaur movie since Jurassic Park.

In 2008, get ready to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the biggest, greatest, coolest, and most ultimate, awesome, spectacular, and influential Dinosaur Movie of our lives and of all time...JURASSIC PARK!!!!!!!



This Article is from and is written by
Timothy Robert “Tim Box” McKenzie
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