Why are there no good dinosaur films?
running on jurassic park's fumes for over 30 years
“Because the movie delivers on the bottom line, I’m giving it three stars. You want great dinosaurs, you got great dinosaurs.”
-Roger Ebert
In Steve Brusatte’s non-fiction book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, the self-described Jurassic Park fanatic discusses the ways that Spielberg and co. failed the reality of the T. rex. Brusatte writes that while a Tyrannasaur could indeed run quite fast, adults couldn’t move as quickly as their young. Therefore, an adult wouldn’t be able to speed up enough to match the horsepower of a Jeep like it does as it trails Ian Malcolm and Ellie Sattler in Spielberg’s film. Nor did a lack of movement from prey visually impair the great beast’s hunt for flesh, as Alan Grant repeatedly instructs his fellow park-goers when the Rex is near: “Don’t move. It can’t see us if we don’t move.”
These patent falsities can’t entirely be attributed to a lack of diligence on the filmmakers’ part. As Brusatte notes, a lot of what we now know about dinosaurs has been naturally accumulative knowledge spanning decades of ongoing research. Scientists and paleontologists like Brusatte are in a constant state of discovery and refinement, of unlearning old theories and unearthing new ones as technology improves and findings are made. At the time of Jurassic Park’s release, the meteor as the cause for the dino-extinction was still a nascent theory and more than a decade out from being cemented as fact. And, of course, there’s the most infamous revelation about dinosaurs, that T. Rex and many other dinosaur species were likely peppered in little tufts of feathery fluff, some eventually developing feathers. In the end, the fictional Alan Grant was not just vindicated, he was surpassed: Birds aren’t just descended from dinosaurs, birds are dinosaurs.
Like Brusatte, I’m kinda crazy about dinosaurs—though not enough that I wanted to stake my career in them. I have dinosaurs on my phone case, a dinosaur plush on my bed, I own two children’s XL shirts covered in dinosaurs and dinosaur fact; like Brusatte, Jurassic Park was a childhood staple. I read Brusatte’s dinosaur book earlier this year, a couple years since first tackling his follow-up, The Rise and Reign of the Mammals. Both books helped to reinvigorate my fascination with extinct creatures to heights surpassing that of my youth. As a kid, dinosaurs are just monsters. As an adult, they are monsters come to life in a world that once was but will never be again.
Jurassic Park is a work of fiction, but it left at least one child, Brusatte, with such a staggering impression that they sought a life devoted to its subject matter. Perhaps it’s because the film’s foundational material is based in fact, even if those facts are somewhat altered, bent, or have been otherwise discredited since the film’s release and by the very progeny it inspired. Yet in spite of what Spielberg gets wrong or right, his film crucially spends the first 15-20 minutes ruminating on history. The dinosaur DNA encased within fossilized mosquitoes, the work of paleontologists at a dig site. From the jump, we understand that these creatures are not just movie monsters—their bones, their remnants of life, are still in our earth.
Roger Ebert gave Jurassic Park a mixed positive review back in 1993, writing that it lacked “a sense of awe and wonderment,” “grandeur,” or “strong human story values.”1 The last bit carries at least a nugget of truth—the story is simplified from Michael Crichton’s original novel. The characters are familiar archetypes, nestled within ideas about mankind’s arrogant disposition towards playing God and how nature will always seek vengeance.
But Ebert’s opinion that the film lacks “a sense of awe and wonderment” is—I’ll say it—stupid and wrong, and to a puzzling degree. When John Williams’ theme swells as the Brachiosaur hoists on its hind legs in front of Grant and Sattler; when the newly freed T. rex bellows into the night through its hybridization of baby elephant, alligator, and tiger’s roar, as thunderstorm rain clatters onto its shadowy, animatronic head, Spielberg’s reverence for these grand beasts pulsates like a beating heart. Say what you will about what Spielberg did to Hollywood, say what you will about a literal theme park film’s contribution to theme-parkifying the blockbusters of decades to come. 30 years since Jurassic Park dominated the box office, the bottom line is this: The film still looks incredible, still feels incredible, is kinda the reason why we go to the movies in the first place. If Jurassic Park gave way to a graveyard, it was certainly a happy death.
Jurassic Park did its part in the slow demise of the American blockbuster ecosystem, but nobody talks about the thing that it didn’t do. In the 24 years since the original trilogy concluded (which got a bit poorer with each installment), we have never gotten another baseline good dinosaur film out of Jurassic Park aside from Jurassic Park. They patently do not exist, despite whatever Screen Rant’s list-makers want to convince you with to the contrary. And even though The Lost World and Jurassic Park III are not nearly as good as their forebear, they are still leagues better than everything else that came after them (or before; sorry, retro stop-motion of the mid-century doesn’t compare).
There have been movies with a paltry dinosaurs in them (Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), Night at the Museum, King Kong (2005), Land of the Lost), and there will always be animated dinosaur movies (Dinosaur, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The Good Dinosaur, and, of course, The Land Before Time). But nothing for a more mature audience that comes close to the scale or power of Jurassic Park. You can watch four shots from Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, you can watch Adam Driver “go girl give us nothing” in Quiet Place guys’ tax write-off, 65; you can watch any number of fake Tubi films called Triassic Attack and Dinosaur Hotel.
Otherwise, we are four films and a full decade deep into a stumbling, zombified resurrection of the Jurassic Park franchise that has been laughably bad and has only allowed for Colin Trevorrow to bedevil the world, and himself, with his dream project, The Book of Henry. Why is it so impossible for Hollywood—or anywhere, I guess—to make a competent dinosaur movie? Why is this, perhaps more-so than with any other disaster-type film, such a difficult task to accomplish? But more importantly: How did Jurassic Park get it so right?
In Michael Crichton’s original novel, Jurassic Park’s creator and owner, John Hammond, is an avaricious businessman, a far cry from the cuddly Santa Claus portrayed by Richard Attenborough in Spielberg’s film. Instead of a greedy tycoon, Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp (accompanied by Crichton himself) very intentionally rewrote Hammond as an idealistic yet well-intentioned showman. Who does that remind you of, dear reader? Attenborough, a director himself, portraying a naive impresario preoccupied by his visionary passion, who turns a blind eye to the destruction that his own wide-eyed romanticism may bring forth. Note, also, the surrogate daddy role that Alan Grant reluctantly takes on for Hammond’s grandkids. Sammy Fabelman is nothing if not consistent.
“But with this place, I wanted to show them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real. Something they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.”
-John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) or, Steven Spielberg, after directing Jaws
Spielberg is not just sympathetic to Hammond’s childlike wonder and worship for the misplaced creatures he’s brought back to life, and this suffuses the film with an important quality. Jurassic Park is deferential towards dinosaurs and their alien beauty, but also just as naive and careless in perspective as the film’s primary antagonist aside from the Tyrannosaur or velociraptors. The reframing of Hammond’s character conveys subtle but important new characterization, as well as subtext for the film: That a man who wants to make people happy with a good show cannot truly be evil at heart, even if the outcome of Hammond’s very idealism is carelessness and death.
Hammond is Spielberg, Spielberg is Hammond, and so Spielberg implicitly presents his film to us as Hammond presents the park to his doomed visitors. A utopian death trap, spared no expense.
Ebert had claimed that Jurassic Park lacks “strong human values,” and I will say again that he’s not necessarily wrong. Ellie Sattler, Alan Grant, and Ian Malcolm, are not what you might call “profound, thought-provoking characters.” Girlboss (who wants kids), unlikely hero, playboy. Yet 30 years later, we remember Laura Dern in her little cut-offs and pink flannel. We remember Alan Grant’s raptor monologue that he uses to scare a dumbass kid who pissed him off. And we remember infirm Jeff Goldblum, chest bared and reclined while smoldering. Regardless of these characters’ superficiality, they are iconic. But why? Why do we remember shirtless Jeff Goldblum, but forget Chris Pratt’s name in Jurassic World? Maybe you forgot Chris Pratt was even in Jurassic World at all. Here’s a fun game you can play right now: Can you remember the name of a single character that originated in the Jurassic World franchise?
For whatever reason, we used to be a lot better at making the archetypes of blockbuster films into fun, likable people. Compare Twister with Twisters: Do you prefer watching character actors Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt’s tantalizing and playful will-they-won’t-they that climaxes with a steamy kiss, or would you rather Glen Powell exude boundless charisma against a void named Daisy Edgar-Jones, that concludes in only chaste friendship?
There’s this ironic push to force more and worse characters onto us in the very modern high-concept films that Spielberg paved the way for, that were once saturated with his earnest synthesis of mid-century sci-fi pulp and messy feelings towards fatherhood and family. Now, we come to see dinosaurs, we come to see a twister, or a Godzilla and what have you, but we are instead saddled with labored arcs that are boring, driven by characters who are all written badly, with no stars to play them anymore. The very thing the audience is paying their money to see, the monsters and the tornadoes and the giant monkeys, are bogged down by sloppily written emotional stakes that only alienate and annoy. Why the fuck is Jurassic World: Dominion not about dinosaurs, but instead about INSECTS? And so much TALKING? Gene Siskel had claimed that Jurassic Park lags when the dinosaurs aren’t on the screen, but if he’d been alive to watch something like The Meg it may have bored him to death anyway.
Still, these disaster-monster films do need people at the end of the day. A movie with only dinosaurs is just a kids’ film and the dinosaurs are talking to each other. People and dinosaurs have never walked side by side in real life and yet they need to bridge 65 million years through movie magic2—so how do you do it correctly? How do you square away this delicate balance: You need people, but you can’t fixate on them too much and overwrite them; they have to be uncomplicated, but also easy to like; and not only can they not detract from the dinosaurs, they must be in perfect harmony with one another.
Consider this scene: When Malcolm and Grant are idling in the Jurassic Park tour Jeep while Sattler assists an ailing Triceratops, Malcolm uses the lull to his advantage. He inquires if Miss Sattler is single. Grant pauses, then replies, not without menace, “Why?” Malcolm gets the memo, the topic is dropped. It also doesn’t return—there is never a full confirmation nor outright denial that Sattler and Grant are either together or not. Yet there is this established notion that something is going on between them, either in reality or in their own minds. They don’t act like a couple, and the only thing that could vaguely imply any of Sattler’s returned affections for her colleague is one playful referral to him as “honey.” Otherwise, the two only treat one another like friends. While more pronounced on Grant’s part, any harbored romance between either of them is buried.3
I believe the correct takeaway is that they are indeed not together, that Grant has a crush and only wants to ward Malcolm away. But my point is this: Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are a curious depiction of a will-they-won’t-they in that it doesn’t even really exist. It’s almost like the film is gaslighting us. There is no unrequited yearning, only vague undertones that are barely remarked on. This small aspect alone makes the film—as well as Sattler and Grant’s dynamic— much more interesting and endearing.
Compare it to Jurassic World’s stale Owen Grady and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), hollow husks labeled “Beefcake Hero” and “Sexy Careerist” who pander in the kind of hacky, quippy-flirt dialogue pioneered by the demon Joss Whedon. It doesn’t hurt that Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum are all much better actors than Howard and Pratt4, but characters don’t need to be empty shells filled only with one-liners. Don’t just give them stereotype traits, give them color! Alan Grant hates kids in a grumpy uncle sort of way! Ian Malcolm is kind of a pervert! Ellie Sattler just wants to play around in poop! Bringing the trio back in Jurassic World: Dominion solved none of the franchise’s issues; with Colin Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael at the wheel5, these characters are just recognizable puppets.
And then there are the dinosaurs, who are not weightless CGI phantoms dropped into a frame, but personalities whose presences have distinct set-ups and payoffs. This establishes their unique textures in the film even more-so than the use of animatronics to give them tactility. The threat of the velociraptors’ growing intelligence is established in the first scene of the film, when they seize on an opportunity off-screen to slaughter a park worker. We learn more about the threat of the raptors’ mental acumen as the film goes on, even before we’ve met them. There were eight velociraptors until the leader, a female, systematically killed off all but one:
When she looks at you, you can see she’s working things out.
-Muldoon (Bob Peck)
This danger remains dormant while Grant and co. fight off the larger, more pressing threat of the T. rex, previously forced to feast on dispensed goat platters and now suddenly given its first opportunity for a real hunt with these defenseless humans. You almost sympathize with its transition from captivity to freedom, which comes full circle when it is the T. rex who saves Grant, Sattler and the kids from the raptors at the film’s conclusion. Both the T. rex and the velociraptors have a fully realized arc, but you can also watch Chris Pratt put his hands up and do interpretive dance at a bunch of cartoons.
Shortly after Grant, Malcolm, and Sattler arrive at Hammond’s park, they tour the hatchery facilities and witness the birth of a baby velociraptor. While Grant and Sattler are overwhelmed by the inception of an extinct being, Malcolm’s mind is elsewhere. He pontificates against Hammond’s creations:
“I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: It didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now…you're selling it, you wanna sell it.”
This quote could be used to accurately summarize the existence of Jurassic World, which already makes a banal attempt at meta-textual commentary to justify its own existence like all the soft reboots/sequels do (a film about how the park has been successfully reopened and operating for years, until its executives want a bigger, badder dinosaur). It collapses in part because the film isn’t any good, and that has everything to do with what Malcolm proselytizes. Jurassic Park is based in history; everything else is just based on Jurassic Park. From design to sound, from King Kong (2005) to Land of the Lost (2010) and 65, cinema’s T. rex’s take cues from Spielberg’s. All of these films stand on the shoulders of a genius.
Perhaps, part of the issue is that there are limitations to the success of dinosaur films. This is in the sense that dinosaurs are real, but humans will never interact with them, and there doesn’t seem to be a market for “silent CGI dinosaurs-only film that isn’t for kids.” So, what else can be done that isn’t just dinosaurs talking to each other, if not a story about these creatures somehow being brought back to life? Or about time travel, like 65? Or perhaps one in which Whoopi Goldberg teams up with an anthropomorphic T. rex to fight crime? Or whatever the fuck is going on over at Tubi?
But what sets Spielberg apart from Hammond, what sets Jurassic Park apart from it’s imitators—and why the film industry now paradoxically needs Spielberg after he helped to weaken it—is that Spielberg had the discipline. The theme park films of today are not the same ones from the 1990s because studios are just overtly running on Spielberg’s fumes in their attempt to keep cashing his checks, hiring pliable, bland filmmakers as they fail to reverse engineer Spielberg’s magic. Jurassic Park handily surpasses every blockbuster/disaster film of now, and part of its enduring and masterful spirit is that Spielberg is a better and more honest filmmaker than fucking Colin Trevorrow or Ben Wheatley. I don’t like any of the Indiana Jones movies, but even Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is obviously superior to James Mangold’s noxious slog, Dial of Dunceity. The Meg can’t exist without Jaws, Stranger Things can’t exist without copy-pasting half of Spielberg’s filmography. J.J. Abrams is a corporate stooge. Everyone wants to be Spielberg, but none of them have the sauce.
This alone isn’t a novel observation. But Jurassic Park is also unique in that it boasts an unreplicable tone; this synthesis of naive awe and fear born from Spielberg’s self-insert as Hammond. With Jurassic Park there is emphasis on not just history—on grounding these monsters as not monsters at all, but animals—but making the viewer constantly aware of how incredible it is that they really existed, that they were really so enormous, that they once ruled the earth; that they took giant shits. Like Hammond, Spielberg childishly indulges in this grandeur, wielding it carelessly. It makes the ultimate manifestation of the film’s premise, of doing the impossible, allowing humans and dinosaurs to merge, feel like sacrilege, not just a cheap thrill. As if Spielberg’s own creation is just as blasphemous as Hammond’s, and maybe somewhere deep down, he realizes it.
Dinosaurs aren’t supernatural beings, they aren’t aliens; they were animals that we will never get to experience face-to-face aside from their ghosts, their fossilized remnants protected behind glass. Jurassic Park may simply be the one true, good dinosaur film—and the Park/World franchise as a whole the only premise that gets any mileage—because it’s the only premise you can execute between dinosaurs and people that encapsulates the perversion of nature inherent to such an idea. Entertainment value, definitely, but there is no emotional power in a schlocky direct-to-streaming flick about dinosaurs hunting people down in an underground game show, or a half-assed, time-travel sci-fi about a futuristic astronaut who crash-lands on prehistoric earth.
But there is both power and horror in humanity’s futile pursuit to extend influence over that which it cannot contain. It’s simple, it is timeless, and it is unflinching 32 years since Jurassic Park helped to alter the film industry forever. Dinosaurs will never be brought back from the dead, but humans will continue to exploit the earth for profit at the expense of everything, including themselves. Jurassic Park masterfully blends the fantastical with the real, illusion with history; profit with discipline. In the end, Spielberg’s illusion was just as effective, his theme park just as destructive, as Hammond’s.
Siskel and Ebert called the film a “missed opportunity.”
I do kind of like the idea of a silent CGI dinosaur film à la that one sequence of Disney’s Fantasia. This could be done! I’ve got ideas, Hollywood!
You know, like fossils.
The kids who play Hammond’s grandchildren are better than both the Jurassic World kids and also the adult actors.
Carmichael’s only other screenwriting credit is on Pacific Rim: Uprising. Lol.
I just saw Evil Puddle - great performance!