Twenty years after it first hit the big screen, Jurassic Park is trending again thanks to the re-released 3D version of the film. Although I'm not sure we used the word trending in those days before Twitter.
Not only were many of us too young to have seen JP in the theater in 1993 (it was rated PG13, and rightfully so), but seeing it in 3D was a dream we never thought would come true. I have to say, the movie doesn't let us down for one second. Because JP wasn't created to be 3D, it doesn't have any of the purposeful, gimmicky flaws of many 3D films. Nothing arbitrarily comes flying out of the screen toward the audience, the 3D just enhances the beautiful landscapes of Isla Nubar, and makes those clever raptors even more terrifying and life-like.
I was excited to see these incredible creatures in the large scale of a movie theater (my last screening of JP was on my 17 inch TV), but I wasn't prepared for the sound. The cacophony of a raptor annihilating that poor bovine bait is almost nauseating, and T-Rex's might roar actually shakes your bones in theater surround sound. The original music by John Williams makes your heart practically beat out of your chest. Williams also scored plenty of other film favorites like the Harry Potters, Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
I have written on this site about what the original JP meant to me, but I was shocked to say how much of this film stands up 20 years later. The graphics are incredible, and the warnings of Ian Malcolm about playing God with Nature have never felt more important.
Jurassic Park was ahead of its time in its unflinching support of dinosaurs-as-birds theory, which we now look at as a certainty. Early on, while Grant and Sattler dig in the Badlands, the team actually laughs when Dr. Grant suggests it. As a modern day audience, we laugh at their ignorant laughter. In the time since the original films, we've also learned a lot more about dinosaurs (many of them would have been fuzzy, if not feathery), and the film may not always be accurate, but there isn't a moment when it doesn't entertain and excite.
Go see Jurassic Park in 3D - It doesn't get much better than this!
