‘Jurassic Park’: This was the criticism that Fotogramas published in 1993

On the occasion of the premiere of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ (Colin Trevorrow, 2022)FRAMES celebrates a special tribute to the first film in the saga directed by Steven Spielberg. The gates of that Jurassic amusement park, halfway between unbridled fun and scientific sin, symbolized the transition, the threshold, between the feature films that gave birth to King Kong and Godzilla with cinematographic tricks as rudimentary as they were effective and influenced by the kaiju-eiga, and a visually spectacular and innovative cinema, never seen before, that revived prehistoric beings embracing the soul of the best and most passionate family adventure cinema. Three decades after its premiere, from the genesis of a franchise that would make history on the big screen, Our magazine goes back in time and recovers from its historical newspaper library the review written by Jesús Palacios in the November 1993 issue. A review that, unlike the current evaluation method and even other evaluation systems used by the magazine in previous decades (as in this review of ‘The Godfather’ of 1972), did not have the famous 5 stars with which Fotogramas scores the main box office releases.

Review of ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993): Much more enjoyable and fun than the theological excesses of ‘ET’

When such a phenomenon of expectation is created around a film, things tend to get out of hand. It may be that ‘Jurassic Park’ is not one of the 10 best movies in the history of cinema, but at least it is one of the most entertaining we’ve seen this year. And, in addition, it would be convenient to point out some things. Like, for example, that the novel by Michael Crichton, being as it is an excellent best-seller of SF and suspense, is not exactly the work of a Proust or a Durrell when it comes to creating characters. And that, by the way, his thesis is none other than that of the eternal “Victor Frankenstein syndrome”, which Crichton has been exploiting from ‘The Andromeda Strain’ to here, like the good reactionary that he is, for what if someone is surprised by the simplicity of the film’s message, or the simple -but effective- characterization of its characters, they are simply ignoring both all of Crichton’s work and that of Spielberg himself and, in general, the medium in which both move: the Fantastic for all audiences -which does not mean tolerated-, the SF written or directed for and towards the “mainstream”, with which I am not expressing, not much less, a negative criticism towards neither of them, but a simple reality.

It is true that quite a few details of the book have been changed -although in my opinion none of the fundamental ones-, some due to technical impossibilities and others due to commercial demands. It is not something new, nor of which Spielberg or today’s Hollywood are exclusively guilty. I don’t remember any SF fan registering their protests against the changes that Nathan Juran, Henry Levin, Richard Fleischer, Harryhausen, Cy Enfield and many other classics introduced in their numerous adaptations of Jules Verne, Wells or Conan Doyle, whose science fiction novels suddenly grew female characters, funny secondary characters, romantic episodes and unexpected morals. And, unlike in ‘Jurassic Park’, its authors could never participate in the script or collect a single royalty.

So far, I am afraid, it seems that I am excusing or defending something that does not need such a thing. Because in the two fundamental keys of the novel, and of every good SF thriller when it comes to being made into a movie, Spielberg’s film works perfectly. That is, in the reconstruction of the happy saurians and various FX -already sufficiently commented-, and in the fast-paced suspense that, with its intelligent, traditional and necessary tricks typical of the genre, drags the viewer, keeping him terrified in his seat all the time. That that, and nothing else, is what it is about.

Personally, I have not felt disappointed at all by this “Jurassic Park” which, whatever its detractors say -and there are many, although some are sneaky- neither lacks a script nor is it particularly unfair to the original novel. What’s more, it suffers in any case from the same defects -or virtues-, mercifully now forgotten by his pseudo-fans, than the rest of Spielberg’s literary adaptations (be it ‘Jaws’, where he already saved several well-chewed characters by the shark of Benchley’s novel, whether in the also misunderstood and excellent ‘Empire of the Sun’); And ultimately, I find it much more enjoyable and fun than the theological excesses of ‘ET’ or the even more unbearable ‘Encounters of the Third Kind’. Let’s make things clear once and for all: Crichton and Spielberg are two entertainment professionals -nothing more, nothing less-, something that is in itself an art form, and both have managed to fulfill their work perfectly. Now, naturally, it is the critics and fans who have to fulfill theirs: protest, complain, cry and yearn for times gone by, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, and they were young.