So its one in the morning and I made the mistake of drinking a coca cola at nine and caffeine screws me up. I think its time to post my thoughts on Jurassic park book vs. movie. I know I'm a little late on the bandwagon but JP was one of the most influential movies for my childhood. Other then it being terrifying for an 8 year old it came a point in my life where the desire of my heart was to dig up dinosaur bones. Recently I got hired as a part time janitor at a medical building after hours. Luckily nobody cares if I have earphones in my ears the entire night and I've been trying to catch up on the books I have always wanted to read. I've read other Micheal Critchton novels like timeline and prey but jurassic park was always too long for me. So I got it in audio book from audible and decided to dive in.
First off lets talk about the movie. Yeah its a spoiler alert here but I figure everyone has seen the movie and since its been a few years I'll try and refresh your memory. The basic plot is that a dinosaur expert named Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) visits the brain child of an eccentric billionaire (John Hammond, Richard Attenborough) whose dream is to ressurect the dinosaurs no matter the consequences. Dr. Grant and his assistant (Dr. Ellie Sattler, Laura Dern) along with Hammond's lawyer, a mathematician who specializes in chaos theory (Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum), and 2 grand kids of Hammonds travel to the island to inspect and give the stamp of approval to the theme park. During the tour a computer programmer (Dennis Nedry,Wayne Knight) messes with the security system in an attempt to steal some dino embryos and make some quick cash with them. Unfortunetly for the tourists the system goes down right when Dr Grant, the lawyer, malcom, and the kids reach the most dangerous part of the tour near the T-Rex cage. Combine that with a storm and you get some of the best CGI dinosaur attacks money can buy in 1993. We all know the classic scene of the T-Rex attacking the cars and then heading to the lou to eat the lawyer. Malcolm runs off and Dr Grant and the kids attempt to make it back to the visitor's center, meeting many different dinosaurs and an electric fence along the way. Dr Sattler and other employees (including a young Samuel 'effin L. Jackson) of the park attempt to get the park back to working order by rebooting the system. Eventually they have to venture out into the park to turn the security systems back on. Dr. Grant and the kids make it back to the lodge and the kids go into the kitchen (because kids love food) and Dr Grant heads out and catches up with his assistant. After the kids avoid the raptors in the kitchen everybody heads to the control room to turn the system security back on. Just at the moment when you think they are safe the raptors get in and the group is cornered in the lobby. Lucky for them our old friend T-Rex comes barging in and scares the raptors away. Having just escaped death ten times in the last few hours they are saved by the mainland sending a chopper. Out of the 8 or 9 that entered the island only Dr grant, Hammond, Malcolm, Sattler, and the 2 kids make it just in the nick of time to the chopper and safely head off the island.
Surprisingly the movie was very accurate to the book for a large portion. It actually blew me away how close the movie was to the book. The main difference I found was the motivation of the group on the island. In the movie it was more centered on survival after the security systems go out. The book focuses more upon Mallcoms chaos theory and the implications that cloning dinosaurs causes. The book also paints a better picture of just how crazy Hammond really is. The movie painted the picture of the billionare as a gentle grand-father figure who blew his whole fortune on building the best theme park ever. In the book it is ultimetly hammonds narrow mindedness that leads the the destruction of the island. One of the many ways this happens is that one of the safeguards to keeping the population of the dinos under control fails and leads to the dinos being able to mate and produce offspring in the wild. The main geneticist made sure that every dino in the park was female to stop them from bredding. The problem that occurs is that they use some amphibian DNA to complete the fragmented dino DNA and as everybody knows amphibians sometimes switch genders spontaneously. It's Hammonds ignorance that lets this go undetected for years by believing that everything is taken care of. Although the action sequences involving the dinos in the movie were revolutionary for the time and even now seem realistic, if Spielberg would have include some of the other experiences Dr Grant and the kids encounter it would have been super epic. The biggest difference between the behavior of the T-Rex in the movie and the book is the latter seems to be obsessed with Dr Grant. It follows them all through the island seemingly addicted to trying to eat them. After escaping the rex in the cars the group comes to a river and find a raft in a maintance shed. It seems like all thier troubles are over until they come across thier enemy asleep on the shore. Tensions are high as they attempt to sneak by only to be thwarted by the little girls cough. What follows is an epic chase where we learn that T-Rex can swim. Like any epic river chase should end they come to a waterfall with our good buddy T-Rex waiting for the group to topple over. The group goes down the waterfall and finds a hidden maintenance shed and are saved only by pure luck when the tranquilizer put into the T-Rex an hour ago takes effect at the right moment. There are many other awesome experiences they have including an encounter with pterodactyl and those nasty poison spitting dinos. Just imagine how much more awesome it would have been... But then again it would have been at least another hour tacked onto the movie not to mention the millions of dollars to shoot those scenes. I won't spoil the ending of the book for you but I'll just say that only 4 make it off the island. So that's my analysis. Yeah that's about it. Overall a great book and surprisingly accurate movie. It would sure be cool to have one of those baby dinos though... Wonder how much that would cost?
 |
| Guess he didn't like the decorations. |
First off lets talk about the movie. Yeah its a spoiler alert here but I figure everyone has seen the movie and since its been a few years I'll try and refresh your memory. The basic plot is that a dinosaur expert named Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) visits the brain child of an eccentric billionaire (John Hammond, Richard Attenborough) whose dream is to ressurect the dinosaurs no matter the consequences. Dr. Grant and his assistant (Dr. Ellie Sattler, Laura Dern) along with Hammond's lawyer, a mathematician who specializes in chaos theory (Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum), and 2 grand kids of Hammonds travel to the island to inspect and give the stamp of approval to the theme park. During the tour a computer programmer (Dennis Nedry,Wayne Knight) messes with the security system in an attempt to steal some dino embryos and make some quick cash with them. Unfortunetly for the tourists the system goes down right when Dr Grant, the lawyer, malcom, and the kids reach the most dangerous part of the tour near the T-Rex cage. Combine that with a storm and you get some of the best CGI dinosaur attacks money can buy in 1993. We all know the classic scene of the T-Rex attacking the cars and then heading to the lou to eat the lawyer. Malcolm runs off and Dr Grant and the kids attempt to make it back to the visitor's center, meeting many different dinosaurs and an electric fence along the way. Dr Sattler and other employees (including a young Samuel 'effin L. Jackson) of the park attempt to get the park back to working order by rebooting the system. Eventually they have to venture out into the park to turn the security systems back on. Dr. Grant and the kids make it back to the lodge and the kids go into the kitchen (because kids love food) and Dr Grant heads out and catches up with his assistant. After the kids avoid the raptors in the kitchen everybody heads to the control room to turn the system security back on. Just at the moment when you think they are safe the raptors get in and the group is cornered in the lobby. Lucky for them our old friend T-Rex comes barging in and scares the raptors away. Having just escaped death ten times in the last few hours they are saved by the mainland sending a chopper. Out of the 8 or 9 that entered the island only Dr grant, Hammond, Malcolm, Sattler, and the 2 kids make it just in the nick of time to the chopper and safely head off the island.
Surprisingly the movie was very accurate to the book for a large portion. It actually blew me away how close the movie was to the book. The main difference I found was the motivation of the group on the island. In the movie it was more centered on survival after the security systems go out. The book focuses more upon Mallcoms chaos theory and the implications that cloning dinosaurs causes. The book also paints a better picture of just how crazy Hammond really is. The movie painted the picture of the billionare as a gentle grand-father figure who blew his whole fortune on building the best theme park ever. In the book it is ultimetly hammonds narrow mindedness that leads the the destruction of the island. One of the many ways this happens is that one of the safeguards to keeping the population of the dinos under control fails and leads to the dinos being able to mate and produce offspring in the wild. The main geneticist made sure that every dino in the park was female to stop them from bredding. The problem that occurs is that they use some amphibian DNA to complete the fragmented dino DNA and as everybody knows amphibians sometimes switch genders spontaneously. It's Hammonds ignorance that lets this go undetected for years by believing that everything is taken care of. Although the action sequences involving the dinos in the movie were revolutionary for the time and even now seem realistic, if Spielberg would have include some of the other experiences Dr Grant and the kids encounter it would have been super epic. The biggest difference between the behavior of the T-Rex in the movie and the book is the latter seems to be obsessed with Dr Grant. It follows them all through the island seemingly addicted to trying to eat them. After escaping the rex in the cars the group comes to a river and find a raft in a maintance shed. It seems like all thier troubles are over until they come across thier enemy asleep on the shore. Tensions are high as they attempt to sneak by only to be thwarted by the little girls cough. What follows is an epic chase where we learn that T-Rex can swim. Like any epic river chase should end they come to a waterfall with our good buddy T-Rex waiting for the group to topple over. The group goes down the waterfall and finds a hidden maintenance shed and are saved only by pure luck when the tranquilizer put into the T-Rex an hour ago takes effect at the right moment. There are many other awesome experiences they have including an encounter with pterodactyl and those nasty poison spitting dinos. Just imagine how much more awesome it would have been... But then again it would have been at least another hour tacked onto the movie not to mention the millions of dollars to shoot those scenes. I won't spoil the ending of the book for you but I'll just say that only 4 make it off the island. So that's my analysis. Yeah that's about it. Overall a great book and surprisingly accurate movie. It would sure be cool to have one of those baby dinos though... Wonder how much that would cost?
No comments:
Post a Comment