The big picture
- Steven Spielberg was the perfect director
Jurassic Park
with his understanding of horror and his ability to build non-stop action. - Spielberg recognized the importance of the characters in the film, which kept audiences coming back for more.
- James Cameron wanted to acquire the rights to
Jurassic Park
but he realized that Spielberg was the right person for the job, since he made a dinosaur movie for children.
Over thirty years ago now, on June 11, 1993, one of the greatest and most important films ever made was released, when Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park hit theaters. The man who had already given us sharks jawsand aliens a Close Encounters of the Third Kind i ET the alien, now he was going to face the dinosaurs on the loose in an amusement park. It's safe to say that, with its nearly billion dollars at the worldwide box office, that Jurassic Park it was a success. Although it launched a six-film franchise, no entry has yet come close to the original. Steven Spielberg was the perfect director for the job. He understood horror, not only with jaws But Dueland the importance of the characters, but his Indiana Jones trilogy showed how well he could build non-stop action. Jurassic Park has all that Yes, there are dinosaurs killing people and intense chase scenes, but none of that would matter without the phenomenal characters played by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblumi Richard Attenboroughamong others.
Spielberg and Universal Pictures win bidding war to make feature film based on Michael Crichton's novel of the same name, and while we can be thankful for that, some other great names like Tim Burton, Richard Donneri Joe Dante make offers too. Another director who came close to acquiring the rights to Jurassic Park was James Cameron. He once said that if he had, the film would have been much darker.
Jurassic Park
In Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour a populated island theme park of dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park's mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they discover otherwise when several ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.
- Publication date
- June 11, 1993
- writers
- Michael Crichton, David Koepp
- study
- Universal Pictures
Steven Spielberg's 'Jurassic Park' is one of the most successful films ever made
As great as he still is now, it's almost impossible to put into words how great Steven Spielberg was in the 70s and 90s. Not only did he direct some of the greatest movies ever made, but he also he collaborated on other classics as an executive producer. Spielberg is the one who turned around gremlins in a family film, and he was the one who helped make it happen Back to the future off the ground Spielberg is a master of knowing how to take an interesting idea and shape it into cinematic gold. Take the one mentioned above gremlins, for example. The original Chris Columbus The script was an R-rated horror movie with an evil Gizmo. While this could have been interesting, Spielberg's claim that it needed to be toned down and with Gizmo as the hero was the right move. I knew you might be scared, but still hold back a bit to make the film more accessible to all audiences.
The same goes for Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton's novel, while great, has some differences from the movie. The highlight is that he dared killing off Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm character and made Jurassic Park creator Richard Attenborough's John Hammond a villain.. Spielberg recognized that he couldn't kill off the film's most popular character and still leave audiences satisfied when the end credits roll. He also saw past a shallow villain and found the intrigue to show us a good man whose bad idea cost him everything. While dinosaurs are exciting and terrifying, it's these characters that keep us coming back.
James Cameron says he tried to get rights to 'Jurassic Park'
It would have been interesting to see what the likes of Tim Burton, Richard Donner and Joe Dante would have done Jurassic Park if they had won the rights over Steven Spielberg. In an interview with the AV Club, Dante once said that he didn't like Spielberg's decision to change John Hammond from a villain to a good guy.
As talented and influential as these directors are, another even bigger name wanted their prey Jurassic Park too. In a 2012 interview with the UK's Huffington Post, James Cameron spoke of his desire to acquire the rights to Crichton's novel, but revealed that Steven Spielberg beat him to it by a few hours. He said:
“But when I saw the movie I realized I wasn't the right person to make the movie, he was. Because he made a dinosaur movie for kids, and mine would have been aliens with dinosaurs, and that would not have been Fair.
“Dinosaurs are for 8-year-olds. We can all enjoy that too, but kids have dinosaurs and shouldn't have been shut out for that. His sensibility was right for that movie, it would have gone above and beyond , nastier, nastier.”
What would a 'Jurassic Park' directed by James Cameron look like?
Although it is impossible to imagine Jurassic Park without Steven Spielberg, it's still fun to fantasize about what James Cameron would have done with it. If any director was capable of handling such a large project, it's Cameron. Not only did he make big-budget, effects-heavy films like The Terminator, extraterrestrials, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanicand the Avatar films, but he is also an equally beloved filmmaker. Titanic and the two Avatars after all they are three of the four best money makers ever made.
Spielberg knocked it out of the park (Jurassic) with the film's effects. Dinosaur movies of the past had seemed pretty cheesy. Bad effects, stop-motion, or in Godzilla's case, guys in cheap rubber suits, could take an audience out of a movie. Spielberg made the dinosaurs feel alive. All these decades later, it still holds up, thanks to the combined work of practical effects genius and CGI mastery of George Lucas' Industrial Lights & Magic. This same team worked with Cameron a few years earlier Terminator 2. Cameron later made a sinking ship look real and made us believe in a world of blue humanoids. He could have done what Spielberg did, no problem.
James Cameron could also have agreed with Spielberg in the construction of the character. Terminator 2 it is not a success without the chemistry between father and son Arnold Schwarzenegger i Edward Furlong. True lies is just another (albeit awesome-looking) action movie, minus the interaction between Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. Titanic it is a sinking ship and nothing else without Leonardo DiCaprioit's jack and Kate WinslettIt is the rose to care for. Then there is extraterrestrials. Ridley Scott made this first classic alien with Sigourney Weaver, and when Weaver returned for a sequel, Cameron didn't up the ante with more aliens, but also surrounded Weaver with more characters to back it up, including a mother-like angle. An R rating Jurassic Park it may have worked. There could have been more dinosaurs ripping everyone to pieces, heroes included, until there was only one left, but it didn't have to go any further and nastier than Cameron imagined. Steven Spielberg has always been able to hold back even when going further is an option. It made magic not only for eight-year-olds, but for the children inside all of us.
Jurassic Park is available to stream on Netflix in the United States
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