I hate Jurassic Park! Is it just me?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by head_unit, Jul 6, 2015.

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  1. head_unit

    head_unit Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Los Angeles CA USA
    I can tell you exactly why, in two scenes that just Spielbergianly killed it for me. Spielberg touches at their worst, what do I know, he's made billions, but still sickeningly saccharine and predictable.

    1) The young boy is climbing up a fence, the electricity comes on, he is jolted off the fence by huge electricity, takes a big fake-looking fall to the ground…and is fine! OMG, what BS, he should be dead. Fake-o-meter pegging at 11!! In the future, when we can make our own versions, my cut of the movie will have that kid barbequed and RIP.

    2) The young girl is in the lab and a raptor looking for her, she ends up getting pulled up through the ceiling tiles as it reaches up to bite her leg…and SO SO SO PREDICTABLY just misses her foot. Argh. My version, leg is now a stump.

    I'm not predicting good reviews or box-office for "my cut" but maybe it will become a midnight classic :p

    Also due to the bonus closing scene:

    3) After mad dash to helicopter to avoid super fast killer raptors, the old scientist STOPS, and looks around with a wistful/sad expression. Oh God, what happened to the huge hurry y'all were in? What, the raptors hit their union break time? My version, you can predict: he still stops like an idiot and is standing there looking all sad but then WHAM a raptor slams into him making carnage-just like the car accident in Amores Perros. Maybe for good measure the raptor grabs a helicopter skid causing it to crash and split open, letting the following raptors gorge on all within, nobody escapes, all die. :yikes:

    I liked the books, however. For the intrepid among you, they haven't made a movie of quite all of his books-no Airframe movie yet, or State of Fear (wouldn't that be delightfully controversial? Maybe Al Gore could be cast in the movie :laugh:). Also Next, Pirate Latitudes, Micro appear available.
     
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  2. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    This post would've been more useful 22 years ago... ;)
     
  3. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Your versions are no fun!

    Go read the Crichton books if you want something more serious. Crichton famously did not have a big sense of humor, particularly in his novels. It's fair to say there's three versions of the original Jurassic Park: the novel, the Crichton script, and then the script used for the actual film. All three tell slightly different versions of the same story, and it's fair to say that the final had all the "Spielbergian" touches you cite.

    You can argue that those changes were trite and cornball, but they made over a billion dollars -- the biggest Universal film of all time through the 1990s.
     
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  4. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    The bigger mistake is that would be AC current running through that fence, so when it was turned on it would have held the boy frozen to the fence as he burned alive. DC current is the type that throws you...and he'd be dead as a doornail before he ever hit the ground.
     
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  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I'm the first to admit it's not a perfect movie. I particularly hate a lot of the "computer shortcuts" they do with the little 12-year-old girl instantly knowing how to run the entire park because "she knows UNIX." ???!!!



    But I think the film has a lot of charm, it has that hard-to-define "sense of wonder," and I think the music and cinematography overcome a lot of logistical problems, plus the actors' performances are great, despite the "Spielberg Face" close-ups and the formulaic (yet classic) cutting style. I also like the constant kvetching from Jeff Goldblum's character, talking about the precariousness of Chaos Theory and how things can go south very quickly in unpredictable environments. His observation "nature will find a way" struck home with me, and much of what he said made sense.
     
  6. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    it's you... as I love the franchise!
     
  7. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    who cares about the plot! just gimmie lots of Dinosaurs! Carnage!
     
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  8. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    Is it possible you don't know Unix?

    If she said she knew MS-DOS, then you'd have a point. :tsk:
     
  9. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I've only used Linux, but I've done a lot of Linux in my time.
     
  10. It's not a film that stands up well to repeat viewings, that's for sure.
     
  11. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Are you being serious?
     
  12. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I disagree all three do it for me! I'm just fascinated with the Dinosaurs...been a fanatic since I was a youngster. Have many books and movies on the subject.
     
  13. Absolutely! I enjoyed it the first time I saw it, but when I saw it a couple more times with friends some time later I just thought it was kind of dull. Once you saw the dinosaurs and took in the state of the art CGI, I didn't think there was a lot there to hold interest. Mind you, the last time I saw it was 21 years ago, but I haven't felt tempted to revisit it.

    I also saw the second one, and must admit I remember nothing about it other than the fact I did see it.
     
  14. progrocker71

    progrocker71 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I agree with that as well. When I saw it opening weekend it was impressive (even though I was still irritated by tonal changes from the book). When it came out on home video I rewatched it and found the things that irritated me about the movie were outweighing the sequences I enjoyed and I found myself asking questions like "is this REALLY the same guy that made Jaws?".

    I watched it again last year after not seeing it since the VHS days and while I still enjoyed a few of the dinosaur sequences everything else about the movie bugs me. I don't like any of the characters, I hate the kids, I hate the cutesy aspect, etc. I should just do an edit of the first 3 movies and just include all the dinosaur sequences and dump everything else. :D
     
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  15. Raylinds

    Raylinds Resident Lake Surfer

    I think there should be a forum ban on "Is it just me" threads. Masturbation should not be done in public. But that's just me.
     
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  16. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    that will work for me!
     
  17. Drew

    Drew Senior Member

    Location:
    Grand Junction, CO
    I remember seeing Jurassic Park for the first time and thinking that it took an awful long time for the chaos, carnage and mayhem to begin.

    Never read the book.
     
  18. audioguy3107

    audioguy3107 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, Georgia
    First of all, the book is excellent, much better than the film. That being said, sure there's some cheesy moments in the original, but taken in the context of the year when it was released, before CGI really took over, it was fantastic.

    - Buck
     
  19. rogerdodger

    rogerdodger Well-Known Member

    Love the first two films, directed by Spielberg. The 3rd and the latest one (not directed by him) kinda dissapoints me on the VFX department.
     
  20. audioguy3107

    audioguy3107 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atlanta, Georgia
    Jurassic Park III is still one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
     
  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    The computer stuff makes me crazy. Although I laugh every time Wayne Knight has the little icon that says, "ah-ah-ah! Ah-ah-ah!"
     
  22. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    From here:
    "When I was a kid that actually knew and used UNIX (AT&T and AIX at the time), I knew in my heart of hearts that there was no video-game-like flying graphical file manager for UNIX. A lot of us made fun of the computer scenes in Jurassic Park. Well, I was wrong. All of us were. Here's the 20+ year-old Fusion (fsn) file manager running on a 20-year old computer."

    [​IMG]


    And from here:
    "The UNIX scene evokes laughs today and even inspired an entire subreddit. But it’s not completely off the mark. That computer is a UNIX system. A Silicon Graphics IRIX system, to be exact. And that 3-D file system? That was real. It was called fsn, and you can still download an open source clone. The idea of organizing files spatially in some sort of 3-D system is an old one in the computer industry. Though it’s never caught-on, fsn certainly seems like something someone like Dennis Nedry would have installed. And since in UNIX everything is a file, finding and editing the right files would be a crucial part of controlling Jurassic Park’s security grid."
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2015
  23. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    “Jurassic Park” has a bunch of a “PG-13-style action/horror movie” tropes, no question. But seriously, the majority of non-documentary films, including many highly-regarded action films, have as many if not more nitpicky moments (those “Everything Wrong With….” YouTube guys have done their bit on both poorly-reviewed films and highly regarded films). Whenever someone is so greatly incredulous as to why a film like “Jurassic Park” could have these nitpicky moments, I’m always curious to see what movies *that* person does like and doesn’t have problems with. Chances are, those movies can be nitpicked to death too.

    Really, we’re lucky “Jurassic Park” was as grisly as it ended up being. This is the guy who less than a decade later erased the guns in “E.T.” and replaced them with walkie talkies. (In fairness, more recently Spielberg has admitted this sort of stuff was a mistake and the Blu-Ray edition has *only* the original version).

    “Jurassic Park” is about as good as a somewhat “family-oriented” PG-13 sci-fi/horror/action film can get. Seriously, numerous people *are* eaten in this film. And it has amazing practical, in-camera effects with the dinosaurs (and now 22-year-old CGI that holds up shockingly well).

    And I can’t invest a lot in any list of nitpicks that doesn’t include the most egregious nonsensical moment in the film: While the girl gets her UNIX hacking skills on, her brother just stands there instead of handing the gun to the two adults who are trying to get it as the raptor is trying to get in the room.

    It’s actually telling perhaps that the “Everything Wrong with” video for “Jurassic Park” is only three minutes long. Some of their other “Everything Wrong with” videos go on for 15-20 minutes, sometimes even more.
     
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  24. Metralla

    Metralla Joined Jan 13, 2002

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    They are seemingly being replayed every night on TV at the moment.
     
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  25. I've probably said it here before, but they lost me on the first movie, when the prehistoric reptile with a brain the size of a walnut figured out how to use a doorknob to open a door.
     
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