Jurassic Park

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Jurassic Park
Image:Jurassic Park poster.jpg
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Michael Crichton,
David Koepp
Starring Sam Neill,
Laura Dern,
Jeff Goldblum,
Richard Attenborough
Wayne Knight
Produced by Kathleen Kennedy,
Gerald R. Molen
Distributed by Universal Pictures,
Amblin Entertainment
Release date June 11, 1993
Runtime 127 min.
Language English
Budget $62,000,000 (estimated)
IMDb page

Jurassic Park is a novel written by Michael Crichton and published in 1991, which was later adapted as a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. Often considered a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering in the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it uniquely uses the mathematical concept of Chaos Theory and its philosophical implications to explain the collapse of an amusement park showcasing certain recreated dinosaur species.

Contents

Plot summary (novel)

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

The novel, in an "introduction", is initially presented as a brief report on the consequences of "The InGen Incident", which occurred in August 1989. This "fiction as fact" presentation had been used by Crichton before, notably in Eaters of the Dead and The Andromeda Strain. Shortly after the story begins, a group of scientists (including paleontologist Alan Grant and chaos theory mathematician Ian Malcolm) are invited on an all-expense-paid preview visit to Jurassic Park, a zoo-like amusement park set up by billionaire John Hammond (founder of InGen) on the island of Isla Nublar (near Costa Rica). Hammond wishes to hear the opinions of the scientists and eventually win their approval of the park; Malcolm expresses misgivings from the beginning.

The park contains dinosaurs, who have been recreated from DNA found in mosquitos trapped in amber. Hammond (and his genetic engineers) take great delight in explaining the ways that they created the dinosaurs. The scientists grow apprehensive when they discover that the dinosaurs have been breeding, despite InGen's efforts to keep them sterile.

The action begins when Dennis Nedry, chief programmer of the Jurassic Park controlling software, tries to steal dinosaur embryos as per a deal with Lewis Dodgson, who works for one of John Hammond's competitors, Biosyn. In order to do this, he has to turn off the electricity to the park's many electric fences, and a number of dinosaurs – including a Tyrannosaurus rex and eight Velociraptor – escape from their enclosures, and have a number of encounters with the scientists, who remain inside the park.

Eventually several of the characters escape the island alive (although many do not) and the island is razed by the Costa Rican Air Force, although there is disturbing evidence that several Raptors may have escaped. The book has one sequel, The Lost World.

One of the themes expressed throughout this story and its sequels is that of homeothermic (warm-blooded) dinosaurs; a recent theory popularized by paleontologist Bob Bakker.

The novel is considerably darker in tone and content than the movie, with graphic violence and a higher body count.

Movie

Image:Jurassic Park screenshot 3.jpg
Image:Jurassic Park screenshot 1.jpg
Image:Jurassic Park screenshot 2.jpg

Steven Spielberg later directed the Jurassic Park movie, filming at the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Kauai in September 1992. Opening in 1993, it starred Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. Many plot points from the novel were changed or dropped, and the cautionary aspect of the novel was reduced. A subplot involving animals escaping to the mainland was dropped, and the cast of dinosaurs was made smaller and more manageable. Many secondary characters were also dropped. Many scenes are left intact from the novel, but have the species of the relevant dinosaurs changed. The film was extremely popular though, grossing $919,700,000 worldwide, the highest ever at the time, and the sixth-highest worldwide box office take for a feature film as of 2004.

Largely credited for the movie's success were its special effects, created by Industrial Light and Magic. Through the use of CGI and conventional mechanical effects, the dinosaurs in the film appeared relatively lifelike, unlike previous effects films like Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Jurassic Park marked the Hollywood effects industry's transition from conventional optical effects to digital techniques.

The movie won Academy Awards for Visual Effects, Sound Effects Editing, and Sound, and spawned three sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001). Jurassic Park IV (IMDb) is currently in production and planned for release in 2006. There are rides based on Jurassic Park in the Universal Studios theme parks in Orlando and California.

Discrepancies

Name Status at the end of the book Status at the end of the movie
Ian Malcolm Injured during Tyrannosaur escape, dies of infection from leg wound, but returns in next book, the Lost World Escaped with a broken leg
Donald Gennaro Escaped unharmed Eaten by T. rex
John Hammond Killed by Procompsognathus while denying his park is a failure Left on a helicopter, repenting for his creation
Robert Muldoon Escaped unharmed Killed by velociraptor
Dr. Henry Wu Killed by velociraptors at visitor center Leaves for mainland by boat prior to park shutdown

A fair amount of the discrepancy between the book and the movie lies in which characters die. In addition, the characters themselves are altered.

Ian Malcom, as he appears in the book, is a rather sardonic but brilliant man who couldn't truly appreciate the accuracy of his failure theories because he is badly injured and immobilised by a dinosaur attack. Malcolm's vitriolic monologues are toned down for the film.

Grant's relationship with Ellie Sattler in the book was purely professional, whereas in the film they are involved romantically.

The character of John Hammond is distinctly different - in the book he ultimately dies at the jaws of small dinosaurs ("compys") while trying to climb a hill to his bungalow with a broken ankle, with plans to rebuild somewhere else, and irritation at his guests and grandchildren. In the movie, he escapes completely unharmed, humbled and awed by the monstrosity he created.

Canon Issues

There are key differences between the novels, movies, games, and comics in the Jurassic Park series. The differences are in not only the architectual layout of the island, but also in the dinosaurs, dates, and even the characters used. The status of what would be considered canon vary on which area is being looked at in the entire Jurassic Park franchise. For example, if one were to look at the movies as the official canon source then only the events seen in the three films would be considered movie canon; however, if one were strictly looking at the novels as the official source then only the novels would be considered canon. The video games, specifically the Trespasser (game), would not be considered movie canon or novel canon due to the fact that there are multiple contradictions in the game between the movies and the novels. One such example of a contradiction is the Isla Sorna map pictured in the Trespasser game being different from the Isla Sorna map pictured in The Lost World: Jurassic Park as well the map that appears in the novel, which also differs from the movie map as it is! The comics illustrate Isla Nublar with an undetermined amount of dinosaurs, and even bring Robert Muldoon back to life. The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the novels, games, comics, and movies should be considered to be in their own individual canon and cannot be combined with each other.

Original ending

Image:Jurassic Park screenshot 4.jpg

Originally, the movie was to end with the T. rex skeleton (in the Visitor Center) falling onto the raptors before they attack Alan Grant, Tim, Lex, and Ellie Sattler. Hammond arrives and is then able to gun down the raptors with a shotgun. Later when the original ending was seen as too simple of a resolution, the skeleton was replaced with a living T. rex that attacks the raptors, saving Grant and the others. This ending also eliminates the shooting of the raptors which is why the brief scene in which the shotgun is left in another room is included. In both versions, they quickly flee with Hammond in his jeep to the helicopter and escape the island.

You can still see this ending if you play the original Sega Genesis game based on Jurassic Park. The scrapped ending is used as the ending for Grant's campaign, with a minor alteration. Instead, you use fire grenades to cause the skeletons to fall.

Dinosaurs Featured

These are dinosaurs confirmed to be on Isla Nublar in the movies:

Dinosaurs confirmed to be on Isla Nublar in the novels

Biological issues

During the movie's production, the effects supervisors acknowledged that the Velociraptors featured in the movie were sized more like the larger Deinonychus. However, during the filming of the movie, paleontologists came across a larger dromaeosaurid species named Utahraptor, and the larger raptors remained.

The Dilophosaurus in the movie is smaller than their 6 m (20ft) real-life counterparts, and have a totally speculative frill like the Australian frill-necked lizard and the ability to spit venom. The spit and frill in particular were simply added for dramatic effect. The issue of their size may be explained by Nedry's comment about "big brothers" and this one not being "so bad".

Though the movie's theory that the Tyrannosaurus rex would be unable to 'see' someone if they were to remain still, some argue that it would still be able to smell them. In addition, most paleontologists consider Jurassic Park's use of the "amphibian visual cortex" here to be inaccurate, and that the dinosaur would be able to perceive static prey. This is acknowledged in the book: a character attempts to evade a tyrannosaur by freezing. This tactic fails and is criticized by paleontologist Richard Levine.


Other Issues During the scene where Dennis Nedry is busy stealing the DinosaursDNA, many of the tubes on which the Dinosaurs names are printed, many names are spelled incorrectly, including Tyrannosaurus. Also, the antennae of the Mosquito frozen in amber at the beggining of the film are fuzzy. This indicates that the insect is male; however only the females are bloodsuckers.

Biotechnological background

The dinosaur DNA is extracted from fossilised mosquitos, and this small amount is then amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This has been done before, for example with a Cretaceous weevil in Cano et al. (1993) (no dinosaur DNA was found).

There are some problems with this approach:

  • Foremost, the DNA featured in the movie is said to be from mosquitoes enclosed in Dominican amber. Dominican amber is approximately 30 million years old. Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
  • None of the dinosaurs featured in the movie are known to have existed in the Dominican Republic 65 million years ago.
  • The mosquito had to have had just one species of dinosaur as its prey to avoid a mix-up
  • It is unknown which dinosaur the sample contains. It would be impossible to tell which "species" it is, because the DNA sequences would fit somewhere between that of birds and crocodiles. The book does address this, stating that they "just grow it and find out" to Malcolm's annoyance.
  • The dinosaur DNA has to be correct (it has to contain every chromosome) and should contain no gaps.
  • The DNA is mixed with mosquito DNA. PCR is extremely sensitive, and will amplify that too.
  • Present day PCR can't amplify large quantities of DNA (the entire dinosaur genome). Even if this was possible, it would take a very long time.
  • PCR needs parts of the DNA to start the reaction (the so-called primers). To get them, the genome needs to be mapped beforehand.
  • Because DNA is broken down by nucleases and proteolytic enzymes in the mosquito gut, the mosquito would have to be preserved immediately after feeding.

Furthermore, in the fossilisation process, molecules are altered. Nevertheless, amber is the best preservative, because organic material is preserved. But DNA cannot survive completely without gaps for tens or hundreds of millions of years.

Tens of thousands of DNA base pairs were recently sequenced from 40,000-year-old skeletal remains of cave bears without using PCR, establishing that, in principle, large-scale genomic sequencing of fossilized remains is possible. Of course, the remains used in this study are orders of magnitude younger than anything from the dinosaur era, and the technique might not extend to those creatures.

In the book the gaps in the DNA are filled by hybridizing the DNA with frog DNA. This is extremely difficult, as one would need to know which dinosaur genes are homologous with frog genes. The use of frog genes is probably a plot device, to allow some females to change sex and breed nevertheless (although natural sex change is also possible in some more advanced vertebrates).

The next step would be bringing the DNA strands to expression. For that, one would need to inject the dinosaur DNA into the nucleus of a fertilized egg cell of a close relative of dinosaurs (birds or crocodiles (not frogs)). This technique is based on reproductive cloning, which was used to clone Dolly. In the movie, ostrich eggs are used for this purpose. However, the development of an embryo is regulated by hormones in the egg/uterus and the environment. These (bird or crocodylian) hormones need to have the same effect as their original dinosaurian counterparts. For that, they have to recognize particular pieces of dinosaur DNA, which they could hardly do. New research in plastics, however, has allowed for the creation of synethic eggs to nurture embryos through their development regardless of species. Extra hormones are needed from the original parent specimen, however, or constructed precisely from using the genome in order for the embryo to flourish.

Notes

While the cinematic incarnation of Jurassic Park used ostrich eggs as vessels to facilitate expression, the novel version very specifically utilized "a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell." The plastic was called "millipore," created by an eponymous subsidiary of InGen.[1]


References

Further reading

The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. Or How to Build a Dinosaur. Rob DeSalle and David Lindley. BasicBooks, New York, 1997. xxix, 194 pp., illus. $18 or C$25.50. ISBN 0-465-07379-4.

Video games

See Jurassic Park (video game).

There have been a number of Jurassic Park video games released to act as merchandise for the release of each film. The titles have appeared on a range of platforms including NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, PC:DOS/Windows, SNES, Sega CD, Sega Mega Drive, 3DO, PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

See also

External links

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