History Film / JurassicPark

Beyond being Spielberg's biggest hit since his late 1970s-early 1980s run, the movie was a landmark in cinematic special effects technology. The extremely convincing animatronic dinosaurs created for the film were combined and enhanced with groundbreaking, realistic CGI ones. The results were so spectacular that it rendered [[JustForPun virtually]] all PracticalEffects like puppetry and stop motion obsolete overnight, to the point that it's impossible to find any wide-release feature film today which ''doesn't'' use digital effects. Meanwhile, in spite of the requisite Hollywood mistakes, many paleontologists and dinosaur fanatics also loved it. The moment where the visitors first come across a dinosaur in full view and are just blown away ("...it's a dinosaur!") could be the 1990s equivalent to the Star Destroyer flying overhead from ''Franchise/StarWars'': ''Film/ANewHope''.

* PunctuatedForEmphasis: "People — are — ''dying!"''

%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

!! The article you are reading is proofread by Richard Kiley (we spared no expense)!:

* AsHimself: Actor Richard Kiley provides the voice of the park tour narrator, which Hammond proudly notes. This is a reference to the fact that Kiley was a go-to narrator for nature documentaries during the '80s and '90s. Incidentally, he was specified as the ride's narrator in the original novel, and the film then made it real.

** [[spoiler:The ''T. rex'' showing up at the end to bust into the Visitors' Center, kill the raptors and, inadvertently, save Alan, Ellie, Lex, and Tim. In the original script, Grant was going to operate a man lift in the lobby to crush a raptor into the ''T. rex'' skeleton while Hammond takes care of the second with a shotgun, but Spielberg felt they needed to bring the ''T. rex'' back one more time. And he was ''right''.]]
** As a possible nod to the original climax, the ''rex'' does send one of the raptors flying into her skeletonized counterpart.
** During the famously frightening "Raptors In The Kitchen" scene, one of the raptors knocks over some pots and pans with its tail, happening to hit Tim and Lex who are crawling past it one aisle over and they panic, making more noise. Tim hides just around a corner next to a bunch of hanging ladles and other utensils, hitting most of them and barely avoiding detection by the raptor. And then the ''one'' ladle that he ''didn't'' touch falls off its handle ''all by itself'' and clangs on the floor. Improbable? Yes. Scary? ''You bet it is.''

** There's also the way the park is viewed as a whole. In the book, it had numerous problems in addition to [[spoiler:the dinosaurs finding a way to breed, such as the fact that several of the smaller ones had escaped and were attacking children on the mainland]], to the point of where one might think that [[spoiler:Nedry's sabotage]] only sped up the inevitable. In the film, we get the implication that everything would have worked out fine if not for [[spoiler:Nedry]].

* AluminumChristmasTrees: The 3D file manager that Lex uses near the end is actually real. It was a shell for the IRIX operating system (which is indeed a UNIX derivative) made by Silicon Graphics, who used to be a major Hollywood supplier of CGI technology. They even released a limited ''Jurassic Park'' edition of the computer with the company co-founder's signature.

* ShesGotLegs: Ellie. She's constantly in shorts, and her legs are the foreground focus of the first shot inside the helicopter on the ride to the island. Muldoon is also a rare male example of this trope.

** Ian isn't a bad guy, but he is a bit of a gruff GrumpyBear about the park and self-righteous. He then risks his life to save Tim and Lex, even if it wasn't necessary, facing a ''T. rex'' for them. This merits him as being one of the survivors, albeit injured.

* StockDinosaurs: Features returning favorites ''[[KingOfTheDinosaurs Tyrannosaurus rex]]'' (complete with a [[ScienceMarchesOn delightful makeover]]), ''Triceratops'', ''Brachiosaurus'' and ''Parasaurolophus''. Also introduced ''Velociraptor''/''Deinonychus'', ''Dilophosaurus'', and ''Gallimimus'' to the mainstream. One of the embryos in the cryogenic vats has labels indicating it will be used for breeding ''Stegosaurus'' (albeit misspelled as "Steg'''a'''saurus"), which doesn't appear until [[Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark the sequel]].

* DramaticLandfallShot: The helicopter's arrival at Isla Nublar.

* EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs: The entire point of Hammond's theme park attraction ... and then the dinosaurs get loose ...

* SeldomSeenSpecies: Among the embryos of StockDinosaurs in the cryogenic vats are a few labelled ''Metriacanthosaurus'' and ''Proceratosaurus'', two dinosaur genera so obscure, they've never appeared in media outside of their names being mentioned in this movie and in supplementary material of the franchise. ''Dilophosaurus'' and ''Velociraptor'' were also obscure genera before their appearances in this movie.

** The film is still a very good adaptation, but compressing the book meant removing most of the exposition of the book, which contained some explanations that filled multiple small logic gaps present in the movie, such as why the ''Triceratops'' was sick. In the book it's a ''Stegosaurus,'' and they figure out that while the animals don't eat the toxic plants on purpose, they inadvertently ingest some of the fallen berries when they periodically take in rocks for their gizzard.

** When the power goes out, the jeeps stop right in front of the ''T. rex'' paddock.

* DeusExMachina: It appears the protagonists [[spoiler:are about to be killed by the raptors when the ''T. rex'' appears and attacks the raptors, allowing them to escape]]. This in itself isn't that far fetched but what is is the fact that [[spoiler:the ''T. rex'' appears rather suddenly and is already in the Visitors' Center, despite there being no way she could have appeared by surprise the way she did]].

* SparedByTheAdaptation: [[spoiler:Hammond and Wu]] die in the first book but survive in the first movie. Also [[spoiler:Ian Malcolm]], until the second book {{retcon}}ned his death. [[spoiler:Wu]] wasn't a major character in the film, and [[spoiler:Hammond]] wasn't a {{Jerkass}} like his literary counterpart. The dinosaurs too; at the end of the first novel, Isla Nublar is napalmed and all the dinosaurs horrifically killed. In the film universe, the napalming apparently doesn't happen, as Rexy survives and is recaptured over a decade later for display in the reopened park, Film/JurassicWorld. The ruins of the original Visitors' Center are seen as well, and while it has been reclaimed by the jungle, it is very clearly un-napalmed.

** ArcWords:

* AdaptationalModesty: Dr. Sattler in the novel was very much a MsFanservice, with frequent attention given to her skimpy clothing and how the male characters admire the skin she's showing off. In the film, she dresses much more conservatively and any obvious MaleGaze is absent.

* CompositeCharacter: Gennaro was basically Ed Regis (a {{Jerkass}} publicist from the book), with Gennaro's name and law degree. He's also ''supposed'' to be muscled, but in the movie, that went to Malcolm. He is also motivated solely by potential profit, as was [[AdaptationalNiceGuy John]] [[AdaptationalHeroism Hammond]].

->''"Life, um...finds a way."''

Perhaps the most enduringly popular blockbuster film of its decade (it even celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2013 with a theatrical re-release that upgraded it into a UsefulNotes/ThreeDMovie), it spawned a [[Franchise/JurassicPark franchise]] that includes several film sequels: ''Film/TheLostWorldJurassicPark'' (1997), ''Film/JurassicParkIII'' (2001), ''Film/JurassicWorld'' (2015), ''Film/JurassicWorldFallenKingdom'' (2018), and ''Film/JurassicWorldDominion'' (2022). It also won all three of its Oscar nominations; Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects.

!!The article you are reading is proofread by Richard Kiley (we spared no expense)!:

* BaitAndSwitch: In the opening scene, we see armed guards and Jurassic Park employees watching warily as trees in some kind of jungle are pushed aside by a massive, unseen force...which turns out to be not a beast, but a forklift.

* ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation: The film shows a 3D computer interface that is actually a ''real'' program — FSN (short for File System Navigator), a proof-of-concept file-system manager included with every SGI. (It's no longer available on SGI's site, but someone has made a similar program called [[http://fsv.sourceforge.net/ FSV]].) However, prior to the system reboot, what we see of the computers is a combination of specialized [=UIs=] and plain old command-line.

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* AsHimself: Actor Richard Kiley provides the voice of the park tour narrator, which Hammond proudly notes.

-->They ''DO'' move in herds.

** Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm can easily break out of the restraints during the presentation.