‘Jurassic Park’: Considering The Franchise History, Can ‘Jurassic World’ Offer Anything New?

With the glimpse given of the Jurassic World teaser over the weekend, and the promise for a full-length trailer on Thanksgiving Day, many movie-lovers have been reminiscing over the past few days about Isla Nublar, Dr. Grant, Ian Malcolm, all those wonderful dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park films. Jurassic Park and the technology it took to make it changed the theater-going experience. Most would say for the better, though the technology developed for Jurassic Park and used in countless movies since, does have its detractors.

So how did Jurassic Park — the film — come about in the first place?

The story that Stephen Spielberg has relayed goes something like this. Spielberg and Michael Crichton were working together on a screenplay. Spielberg recounted what happened in that meeting in The Making of Jurassic Park.

“I asked him [Michael Crichton], ‘What are you doing in the world of books?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m writing this thing about dinosaurs and DNA.’ And my eyes got wide and suddenly I wanted to hear more, and I coaxed it out of him until he told basically the whole story. And that’s how the whole thing began.”

Released in 1993, Jurassic Park wiped the floor with previous films in terms of computerized special effects. For the first time ever, fully realized computer generated effects looked realistic. It’s important to remember that prior to that, the best computer effects work had been done in films like Terminator Two: Judgement Day and The Abyss, and as great as those effects were, the effects were short shots and didn’t fully realize a completely real-looking on-screen image.

I can’t overstate how monumental the breakthroughs were on Jurassic Park, and Stephen Spielberg was one of the few men in the world at the time that could have shepherded the process into fruition. Certainly, George Lucas was dabbling in computer generated effects with The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on television, and James Cameron was working hard to fully realize digital creations in his own films, but Spielberg had the clout, the prestige, and the will to fully realize the concept with Jurassic Park.

However, Jurassic Park wasn’t only about the dinosaurs. The film was one of those things that hits the public at just the right time. Michael Crichton always had a knack as a writer for tapping into the latest science for his techno-thrillers, and Jurassic Park was no exception. DNA, bioengineering, and cloning were major topics in science at the beginning of the 1990s. Everyone was terrified that the cloning of human beings was only a few years away. What did all this mean for the world? Crichton tapped into that interest and those fears by reviving some of the greatest creatures that have ever lived in his story through bioengineering.

And what a story it was. Combining not only the old school paleontologist in Dr. Grant with a new school mathematician like Dr. Malcolm, Crichton throws in a billionaire P.T. Barnum-style character like Hammond and rounds it out with greedy criminals like Nedry and what you’ve got is a first-rate story that centers not only on scientific questions, but moral ones as well. Of course, it’s also a great adventure story to boot.

Perhaps one of the best things about the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park in terms of effects is that it didn’t rely solely on CGI. The CGI was seamlessly sewn together with fantastic models and robotic creations designed and created by the likes of Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren, and Michael Lantieri.

As we all know, Jurassic Park was a monumental success. The story was fantastic, and it was executed better than anyone ever imagined it could be on the movie screen.

The Lost World: JurassicPark II was released four years later in 1997. By then, the breakthroughs made in the first Jurassic Park film were becoming commonplace in theaters. With effects heavy films like Titanic, Waterworld, and Dragonheart – not to mention the special edition versions of episodes IV, V and VI of Star Wars, theater goers were used to realistic computer effects in films. The second Jurassic Park film suffered from another problem that so often hampers effect-heavy films: lack of a great story. Spielberg deviated greatly from the events in Crichton’s own sequel to his first book, and by most accounts it wasn’t for the better.

Joe Johnston took up directorial duties for the third Jurassic Park film. In many ways, the story for the third film might be considered better than the second one. However, by 2001, audiences had been so inundated with CGI dinosaurs that not even some strangely reimagined velociraptors or a monstrous spinosaurus could hold our attention for long.

And that brings us to now. What can Jurassic World offer us that we haven’t seen before in a dinosaur movie? Or does it have to offer something new? A current 16-year-old wasn’t alive when the first two Jurassic Park films were originally in theaters, and was only a toddler when the third came out. Does the new Jurassic World film have to do anything more than the first three did? Or can it rely on the tried and true formula of a great story combined with what seem like run-of-the-mill effects that we’ve all grown accustomed to?

What do you think? Will Jurassic World make a big splash in theaters, or is the concept – though revolutionary in its time – come across as outdated?

Sound off below!

[Images via The Films The Thing, SciFied, and Gizmodo]