Jurassic Park, T-Rex

My Favorite Scene: Jurassic Park (1993) “T-Rex Attack”


Jurassic World, the fourth entry in the Jurassic Saga, is three weeks away, so guess what we’re doing in this column the next three weeks?  Oh it is time for a stroll down dinosaur memory lane beginning with the biggie: Jurassic Park.  It’s hard to recreate today the amount of buzz this film had on all levels of the population.  You had fans of the novel, you had Spielberg in his prime, you had a genius marketing campaign and you had every kid in the entire world from 3-103 who has ever gone through a “dinosaur phase”.  By the time the film was released, I was vibrating at such an unbearable rate that even my overprotective parents let me go to my first-ever PG-13 movie.

It was one of the greatest theater experiences of my life, and not just because my best friend got so scared by the time the dilo attacked Nedry that he literally ran out of the theater.  There are films that come along ever five years or so, that reimagine what we think F/X are capable of, and the true mark of one of those films is that the original effects hold up.  The dinosaurs in Jurassic World look no better than the T-Rex, who took its place amongst filmdom’s greatest monsters, with its entrance and attack on the convoy.  Everything still looks stellar 23 years after the initial release and oh my sweet Lord typing that made me feel old.  That’s no knock on Jurassic World, but rather just a measure of how far a leap forward this was for special effects.  The funny part about it, if you listen to interviews with Spielberg, is that out of the whole scene, the hardest effect they had was making the rings of water on the glass emanate outwards!
Jurassic Park IV

5 thoughts on “My Favorite Scene: Jurassic Park (1993) “T-Rex Attack””

  1. Did you know that in most of the shots, the velociraptors in the kitchen scene are not CGI? The effects people figured out how to put small acrobats inside the dinosaurs, and it still looks perfect today.


    I hope this isn’t heresy, but Jurassic Park is better than any of the Indiana Jones films.

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      1. I fear that Jurassic World will pale. My prediction is that the whole concept of the park opening to the public will turn out to just be a gimmick. The first quarter of the film will be about that. The first third at most. Then we’ll just see Pratt and a few other characters as they try to save the day, and the scenario will be indistinguishable from the previous films. Except that this time there will be a genetically modified dino, and trained velociraptors working for the humans.

        I really hope I’m wrong. When I read Creighton’s original novel, then saw the Spielberg movie, I felt like a little kid again, because it tapped into the dinosaur fanaticism of my early childhood, way back when I wanted to be a paleontologist. Maybe I’ll never experience that kind of magic again with a movie. If it’s just a consequence of my getting older, that’s sad. If it’s a consequence of the way Hollywood is doing things, that’s not quite as sad, but still a bummer.


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      2. I did it in reverse order (course I was 14 at the time), but I saw the movie and then read Crichton’s novel which is still one of my ten favorite novels. It’s a completely different story than made it on screen and definitely, definitely R-rated. I know you suggested remaking that, but Spielberg’s never going to let them “remake” one of his biggest hits even if it ends up bearing little resemblance to the first film. To me, the last trailer laid bare way too much of Jurassic World. They make a new dino, new dino gets loose and starts communicating with the other dinos and an army of dinos then starts going to town on the park. If it’s more complicated than that, fantastic, because I keep having flashes of Louis Gosset Jr. in Jaws IV and realizing how much this franchise is starting to resemble that one.

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      3. Inventing a new dinosaur is a bizarre idea. There were once enormous dragonlike monsters roaming the Earth. They actually existed. And the creators of the park (and the movie) decided to improve on that?

        Also, the first time people were brought to the park the dinos got loose and killed everyone. Then a group was sent to Site B, and the dinosaurs killed everyone. Then a T-Rex was brought to New York, and it almost killed everyone. And them some people travelled to the island to get a good look at the dinosaurs, and… you see where I’m going with this. It’s a horror movie trope for authority figures to recklessly endanger the public, but wow.


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