Jurassic Park [Media Notes 44]

I suppose I’ve seen Jurassic Park four times, once in theaters when it came out (I think) back in the 1990s and then two, three, times on the small screen, most recently over the last two days. That’s right, I didn’t watch it in one sitting, more like three or four. So I wasn’t looking for the full experience of the story, which I know well enough. I was just reacquainting myself with the film.

I came away with the sense that it would respond well to careful analysis and description or the sort that might require, say, at least 40 or 50 screen captures and 5K to 10K words, perhaps a diagram. I’d be on the lookout for ring-composition. I’m not at all sure I’ll find it, but these seems like the sort of film where at least looking would be worthwhile.

What do we have to work with? I’m not going to try to be systematic here. Obviously we’ve got dinosaurs, on the one hand, and computer technology on the other. Between those two, perhaps orthogonally, we’ve got the genetic tech that allowed Hammond’s team to create the dinosaurs and that, shall we say, is in opposition to the principle, “life will find a way,” enunciated by the mathematician, Ian Malcolm.

Then we have Hammond himself, and his grandchildren. Between them we have Drs. Grant and Sattler. Hammond wants his grandchildren to see the park and be amazed and overjoyed. Grant and Sattler save them, and everyone else, when things fall apart.

Hammon also wants to make money. I don’t think he’s greedy, certainly not Gordon “greed is good” Gekko greedy, but he wants to make money while presenting the world with this wonder. But he drove a hard bargain with his computer tech guy, Dennis Nedry, and Nedry does get greedy. His desire to make a buck is one factor in the collapse of the park.

The other, of course, is the weather; perhaps we think of the weather as the collective summation of natural phenomena. What is set in opposition to the weather? I’m inclined to think it’s something like the human capacity for construction, perhaps the park itself.

That’s our array of forces then. Now we have to deal with how they’re deployed in time. When do we know that things are going to fall apart? In one sense of course we know that when we enter the theatre; it’s that kind of film. Setting that aside, is it when our scientists interrupt the ride to enter the laboratory, or when they stop the SUVs to go off the course? How close to the center is the brontosaurus mucus episode? Notice how that’s mirrored by the blinding of Nedrey (computer guy) by the much smaller dinosaur. And so forth.

The whole thing is very nicely orchestrated. And of course, above all, we have T. Rex. What kinds of dinosaurs do we have, and the relationships among them?

Perhaps some day I’ll work on the film, but not now.