I was thinking about Jurassic Park on my drive to work this morning, and my mind started circling around the impact that the movie had on popular culture in the 90's after its release. I was six when I saw Jurassic Park in theaters, and much like everyone else at the time I was blown away by it. The movie's quality has yet to be matched by any of its successors, IMO, and to me it did for dinosaur films what Saving Private Ryan did for WW2 films: it set a bar so high that all followers would forever be compared to it. This was back when Spielberg was still firing on all cylinders and seemingly could do no wrong, and to this day the first film still holds up marvelously thanks to its combination of convincing practical effects and CGI, pulse-pounding set pieces, stellar sound design and score, and that element of "movie magic" that is increasingly rare to come by.
Just watch these two clips to remind yourself of how stellar Jurassic Park was and is:
But enough about the film's quality; I want to talk about its wide-reaching impact on public interest in dinosaurs. I'm going to use another Saving Private Ryan comparison here. Just as SPR ushered in the era of WW2 videogames, TV series, and books, Jurassic Park did the same thing for dinosaurs. When I was a kid in a post-Jurassic Park world, it was like Dinotopia! At least in the United States, it seemed like everyone had dino fever after Jurassic Park's release, and the amount of dino-related games, books, toys, apparel, etc. that followed was staggering and unique to the time.
I think that dinosaurs have always been inherently interesting to kids, but their realization in the first Jurassic Park was so thoroughly impressive that it kind of shaped the public perception of them forevermore. Hell, most of what people imagine in their mind's eye when thinking about how a T-rex or velociraptor looks/sounds is rooted in the depictions put forth by JP.
The Jurassic Park franchise continues to draw good box office numbers with each consecutive release, but I feel that the impact of the first film on popular culture has never been recreated by its comparatively mediocre sequels. To those of you with young kids, are they particularly interested in dinosaurs now? If so, what got them into it and from where do they satisfy their dino curiosities?
PS - The T-Rex design in Mario Odyssey is 100% Jurassic Park.
Just watch these two clips to remind yourself of how stellar Jurassic Park was and is:
But enough about the film's quality; I want to talk about its wide-reaching impact on public interest in dinosaurs. I'm going to use another Saving Private Ryan comparison here. Just as SPR ushered in the era of WW2 videogames, TV series, and books, Jurassic Park did the same thing for dinosaurs. When I was a kid in a post-Jurassic Park world, it was like Dinotopia! At least in the United States, it seemed like everyone had dino fever after Jurassic Park's release, and the amount of dino-related games, books, toys, apparel, etc. that followed was staggering and unique to the time.
I think that dinosaurs have always been inherently interesting to kids, but their realization in the first Jurassic Park was so thoroughly impressive that it kind of shaped the public perception of them forevermore. Hell, most of what people imagine in their mind's eye when thinking about how a T-rex or velociraptor looks/sounds is rooted in the depictions put forth by JP.
The Jurassic Park franchise continues to draw good box office numbers with each consecutive release, but I feel that the impact of the first film on popular culture has never been recreated by its comparatively mediocre sequels. To those of you with young kids, are they particularly interested in dinosaurs now? If so, what got them into it and from where do they satisfy their dino curiosities?
PS - The T-Rex design in Mario Odyssey is 100% Jurassic Park.
