Jurassic Park is a film beloved by many. It is the 17th highest grossing movie of all time with $841,088,300 in the box office. What most people do NOT know, is that Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World (1997) is based on 1990 and 1995 novels of the same name, written my Michael Crichton, with the sequel being such a horrible adaptation that it only has a passing resemblance to the novel with very little (but still existent) similarities. Fortunately, Jurassic Park did not suffer the same fate, being a (generally) much more loyal adaptation and keeping to the general themes and the plot of the novel much more successfully.
The film is groundbreaking in terms of technology as the dinosaurs were brought to life masterfully, and it was so popular that it received two (arguably unnecessary) sequel movies and a (completely pointless) sequel trilogy. I really don't think this movie could have been handled by anyone other then Stephen Spielburg, who was the PERFECT director for this film. Michael Crichton (the author) DID write the screenplay, but in my eyes, that does NOT justify the film being disloyal.
While I may do a separate review on the film itself someday, we do have to ask ourselves if Spielburg's film stayed loyal enough to the book or not. Since most people know the plot of the movie well, I'm just going to provide a VERY brief general summary of both book AND the film:
Plot Synopsis
John Hammond, an old, eccentric billionaire and CEO of InGen, a genetics company, builds a biological reserve on Isla Nubular, an island off Costa Rica. Due to the potential safety concerns with the reserve, lawyer Donald Gennaro calls upon three consultants, paleontologist Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, and mathematician Ian Malcolm to accompany him to the island to inspect the safety of the park. Upon arriving on the island, they discover that John Hammond has cloned dinosaurs using dinosaur DNA extracted from ember, and has named it "Jurassic Park". Things seem to be going well until Dennis Nedry, a disgruntled employee of the park shuts off the system to steal the dinosaur embryos for a man named Dr. Dodgson. This sets all the dinosaurs loose, and results in a number of people getting killed, including Nedry himself. Eventually, a small group of survivors manage to bring back the power and escape the island, and they all agree that the park was a horrible idea and agree to never tell the public about this.
Honestly, now that I actually think about it, the movie deviates from the book quite a bit. But what they stuck to the book comes up next:
Honestly, now that I actually think about it, the movie deviates from the book quite a bit. But what they stuck to the book comes up next:
The Loyal Factors
The movie manages to get most of the cast fairly accurate: Ellie Sattler is the paleobotanist who takes an active role is stopping the dinosaur while also Ian Malcolm in both cases was a Chaotician with a tendency to ramble on about Chaos Theory, and he was indeed the only person with enough foresight to predict that the park would fail. Ray Arnolds (John Arnolds in the novel) is a chain-smoking, chief engineer of Jurassic Park who is killed by the raptors. Robert Muldoon is still the game warden of the park who is constantly distrustful of the raptors, but his role is mostly cut out. Dennis Nedry is the overweight, unorganized, arrogant computer programmer of the park who cuts off the power to steal dinosaur embryos, but is killed by a dilophosaurus later on. Henry Wu is still the Chief Geneticist of the park who fills in missing strands of the DNA with amphibian DNA, but like Muldoon, his role is largely cut out. John Hammond is the eccentric and childlike billionaire and owner of JP & InGen, but his story is heavily changed as well. Although Alan Grant, Tim & Lex Murphy, Donald Gennaro, and Lewis Dodgson are original book characters, their characters were changed so much that I will discuss them more in the next section.
Apart from the characters and the plot summary I mentioned above, the movie really doesn't bare much similarity to the book otherwise. I will discuss my thoughts on this more later on, since I do have an opinion of my own on some adaptation related things. Now on to the next section, where I will talk for a while about what the movie changed or left out all together:
Apart from the characters and the plot summary I mentioned above, the movie really doesn't bare much similarity to the book otherwise. I will discuss my thoughts on this more later on, since I do have an opinion of my own on some adaptation related things. Now on to the next section, where I will talk for a while about what the movie changed or left out all together:
The Disloyal Factors
The movie DID deviate heavily from the book most times, so I will only cover the MAJOR points that actually mattered to the overall plot of the book.
Foremost, the tone (and the subject) of the book and movie are a bit different. The movie was a thriller with a side message about not messing with nature and science. The movie was definitely a thriller first, and a cautionary tale later. The book however, is the opposite. The first few pages of the book are actually dedicated to the increasing genetic experimentation, and it becomes more and more transparent as you read that the book's really a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked genetic experiments and trying to play God, told through a thriller story. It makes sense that the movie decided to cut down most of the cautionary stuff because it probably wouldn't have worked well in the movie if they kept rambling on about why playing God is wrong, and Jeff Goldblum got the message across well without being too boring.
The movie fails include some book scenes that actually had some HORRIFYING implications. A major plot point in the book was that there were dinosaurs that had actually escaped from the park and was going around the mainland eating babies. Not only that, the group also discovers that the raptors (and pretty much all the other dinosaurs) were breeding, and a few of them had gotten on a boat to mainland (which was actually mentioned briefly the movie), but they do manage to stop the boat on time. Because of the escaped dinosaurs, the Costa Rican government held the survivors so they could help combat these dinosaurs. The movie also mentions The Lysine Contingency, which essentially makes it so that the dinosaurs can't survive without the lysine provided by the park workers, but the book later points out the dinosaurs have survived by eating lysine-rich foods, which made that a completely pointless measure.
The fates of most of the people on the island is actually changed, so I will summarize all the changed fates: Ian Malcolm, John Hammond, and Henry Wu die on the island while Donald Gennaro and Robert Muldoon survive, which are actually opposite in the movie. There are also other character changes and omissions that I will talk about as well.
Ian Malcolm's death is quite interesting, as he does feature heavily in the next book and movie. Crichton originally had no intentions to write a sequel, but after the popularity of the first film, AND the popularity of Malcolm (portrayed by Jeff Goldblum) pressured him to write a sequel and revive Malcolm by writing "he was only mostly dead and was saved due to surgery", when in the book he was pretty dead. Hammond's death was one I liked because of how unlikable his character was. He was still generally a jovial, eccentric showman, but at the same time, he was an egotistical prick who took more concern in the safety dinosaurs then the people, REFUSED to hear Malcolm at all (while the movie version was more open-minded), and even when everything was going to hell, he kept talking about "reopening the park". So needless to say, it brought (mostly) everyone no sadness ]when he was killed by the procompsognathus. Wu actually sticks around in the book to help the group stop the dinosaurs, and he actually has an argument with Hammond about making the dinosaurs more domesticated, while Hammond refused to even consider it, and interestingly enough, this part is somewhat (I'm not sure if intentionally) paid homage to in Jurassic World when Wu discusses the I-Rex with Simon Masarani. Alas, the book Wu, despite being a more likable character, is ripped apart by raptors in his heroic attempts.
Donald Gennaro is also largely changed. Gennaro seemed to have been given all the unlikable character traits from the other characters. While Gennaro WAS excited at the prospect of making money from the Park, he was also very concerned about the safety of it and was genuinely there to investigate the park further, getting furious with Hammond when he brought his grandchildren (who I'll discuss more later), because Hammond was attempting to turn this into a weekend excursion. He also didn't run away when the t-rex got loose (Which was something that Ed Regis, a character entirely omitted from the movie did), and spent the rest of the book attempting to own up and actually hunt these creatures down, eventually surviving. While he still isn't the most likable character, he was still MUCH better then his movie counterpart. Now Muldoon, actually lives up to his credentials as a Kenyan hunter and actually did stuff. In the book, he owned a military- degree LAW Rocket Launcher (rather then just that one shotgun), which he demanded to have as a safety measure, and he ran around with it blowing the legs off of raptors. That actually made Muldoon one of my favourite book characters, cause he pretty much took out a lot of the raptors with those, and he made more contributions in the book.
Grant liked kids in the book because they had the same fascination with dinosaurs that Grant had. I'm not sure what was the point of them giving him a story-line of not liking kids. Lewis Dodgson actually works for a rival company of InGen's called Biosyne, which has a whole history behind it concerning botched up genetic experiments that had some serious consequences. Dodgson is technically the main antagonist of the books, as he returns in the sequel to cause more issues. Tim & Lex are switched in age, and the computer skills are given to Lex instead, who is actually SIGNIFICANTLY more annoying in the book, constantly complaining. Nedry's backstory in the movie is: "Hammond got cheap on me." In the book, Hammond hired Nedry, but constantly added tasks that wasn't in the contract. When Nedry threatened to quit, Hammond threatened him with lawsuits and wrote to Nedry's other clients telling them that Nedry was unreliable, forcing Nedry to continue without extra pay. And you know what, I sympathized with Nedry, who's supposed to be an ANTAGONIST. Crichton really did an amazing job developing his characters more that was lacking in the movie.
While the movie showed that the Park was ready to go, the book's Park wasn't even close to opening, with multiple sections of the park being closed due to issues they encountered along the way. One of these sections was the Pteratops Lodge, which was a treetop hotel in the aviary, but was closed because the Cearadactylus in the aviary were extremely territorial and were attacking people. This wasn't included in the movie (most likely due to technological restraints) but were paid homage to in JP3 and Jurassic World. The difference between the book's and movie's endings is also an interesting topic to discuss. In the book, the Costa Rican Air Force came in and dropped NAPALMS all over the place, destroying everything. The movie has a much... calmer ending, with the survivors just escaping the island and just deciding to leave the dinosaurs alone. I'm not sure why this change happened, but I suspect it was so they could set up sequels, while Crichton realized that since the book's whole point was that the dinosaurs didn't belong there, them all dying would be the only logical option.
Now that I got through that really long section explaining what the writers ignored from the book (strange since the author helped write the screenplay), I will be talking briefly (as possible) about my personal opinions on both the book and the movie and move on to my final conclusions, rating the book, the movie, and the adaptation out of five.
Foremost, the tone (and the subject) of the book and movie are a bit different. The movie was a thriller with a side message about not messing with nature and science. The movie was definitely a thriller first, and a cautionary tale later. The book however, is the opposite. The first few pages of the book are actually dedicated to the increasing genetic experimentation, and it becomes more and more transparent as you read that the book's really a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked genetic experiments and trying to play God, told through a thriller story. It makes sense that the movie decided to cut down most of the cautionary stuff because it probably wouldn't have worked well in the movie if they kept rambling on about why playing God is wrong, and Jeff Goldblum got the message across well without being too boring.
The movie fails include some book scenes that actually had some HORRIFYING implications. A major plot point in the book was that there were dinosaurs that had actually escaped from the park and was going around the mainland eating babies. Not only that, the group also discovers that the raptors (and pretty much all the other dinosaurs) were breeding, and a few of them had gotten on a boat to mainland (which was actually mentioned briefly the movie), but they do manage to stop the boat on time. Because of the escaped dinosaurs, the Costa Rican government held the survivors so they could help combat these dinosaurs. The movie also mentions The Lysine Contingency, which essentially makes it so that the dinosaurs can't survive without the lysine provided by the park workers, but the book later points out the dinosaurs have survived by eating lysine-rich foods, which made that a completely pointless measure.
The fates of most of the people on the island is actually changed, so I will summarize all the changed fates: Ian Malcolm, John Hammond, and Henry Wu die on the island while Donald Gennaro and Robert Muldoon survive, which are actually opposite in the movie. There are also other character changes and omissions that I will talk about as well.
Ian Malcolm's death is quite interesting, as he does feature heavily in the next book and movie. Crichton originally had no intentions to write a sequel, but after the popularity of the first film, AND the popularity of Malcolm (portrayed by Jeff Goldblum) pressured him to write a sequel and revive Malcolm by writing "he was only mostly dead and was saved due to surgery", when in the book he was pretty dead. Hammond's death was one I liked because of how unlikable his character was. He was still generally a jovial, eccentric showman, but at the same time, he was an egotistical prick who took more concern in the safety dinosaurs then the people, REFUSED to hear Malcolm at all (while the movie version was more open-minded), and even when everything was going to hell, he kept talking about "reopening the park". So needless to say, it brought (mostly) everyone no sadness ]when he was killed by the procompsognathus. Wu actually sticks around in the book to help the group stop the dinosaurs, and he actually has an argument with Hammond about making the dinosaurs more domesticated, while Hammond refused to even consider it, and interestingly enough, this part is somewhat (I'm not sure if intentionally) paid homage to in Jurassic World when Wu discusses the I-Rex with Simon Masarani. Alas, the book Wu, despite being a more likable character, is ripped apart by raptors in his heroic attempts.
Donald Gennaro is also largely changed. Gennaro seemed to have been given all the unlikable character traits from the other characters. While Gennaro WAS excited at the prospect of making money from the Park, he was also very concerned about the safety of it and was genuinely there to investigate the park further, getting furious with Hammond when he brought his grandchildren (who I'll discuss more later), because Hammond was attempting to turn this into a weekend excursion. He also didn't run away when the t-rex got loose (Which was something that Ed Regis, a character entirely omitted from the movie did), and spent the rest of the book attempting to own up and actually hunt these creatures down, eventually surviving. While he still isn't the most likable character, he was still MUCH better then his movie counterpart. Now Muldoon, actually lives up to his credentials as a Kenyan hunter and actually did stuff. In the book, he owned a military- degree LAW Rocket Launcher (rather then just that one shotgun), which he demanded to have as a safety measure, and he ran around with it blowing the legs off of raptors. That actually made Muldoon one of my favourite book characters, cause he pretty much took out a lot of the raptors with those, and he made more contributions in the book.
Grant liked kids in the book because they had the same fascination with dinosaurs that Grant had. I'm not sure what was the point of them giving him a story-line of not liking kids. Lewis Dodgson actually works for a rival company of InGen's called Biosyne, which has a whole history behind it concerning botched up genetic experiments that had some serious consequences. Dodgson is technically the main antagonist of the books, as he returns in the sequel to cause more issues. Tim & Lex are switched in age, and the computer skills are given to Lex instead, who is actually SIGNIFICANTLY more annoying in the book, constantly complaining. Nedry's backstory in the movie is: "Hammond got cheap on me." In the book, Hammond hired Nedry, but constantly added tasks that wasn't in the contract. When Nedry threatened to quit, Hammond threatened him with lawsuits and wrote to Nedry's other clients telling them that Nedry was unreliable, forcing Nedry to continue without extra pay. And you know what, I sympathized with Nedry, who's supposed to be an ANTAGONIST. Crichton really did an amazing job developing his characters more that was lacking in the movie.
While the movie showed that the Park was ready to go, the book's Park wasn't even close to opening, with multiple sections of the park being closed due to issues they encountered along the way. One of these sections was the Pteratops Lodge, which was a treetop hotel in the aviary, but was closed because the Cearadactylus in the aviary were extremely territorial and were attacking people. This wasn't included in the movie (most likely due to technological restraints) but were paid homage to in JP3 and Jurassic World. The difference between the book's and movie's endings is also an interesting topic to discuss. In the book, the Costa Rican Air Force came in and dropped NAPALMS all over the place, destroying everything. The movie has a much... calmer ending, with the survivors just escaping the island and just deciding to leave the dinosaurs alone. I'm not sure why this change happened, but I suspect it was so they could set up sequels, while Crichton realized that since the book's whole point was that the dinosaurs didn't belong there, them all dying would be the only logical option.
Now that I got through that really long section explaining what the writers ignored from the book (strange since the author helped write the screenplay), I will be talking briefly (as possible) about my personal opinions on both the book and the movie and move on to my final conclusions, rating the book, the movie, and the adaptation out of five.
Personal Opinions
The Novel:
I really enjoyed the book. It was well written, and it had a nice mix of likable and unlikable characters. It also toes the line slightly concerning the main antagonists of the movie. While you see that Dodgson and Nedry (who's a very sympathetic character) cause most of the problems, you also have the raptors as ruthless killing machines, but you ALSO have John Hammond, who essentially caused Nedry to turn against him and became greedy for money. Throughout the novel, I felt like I had to root for the humans to survive, but was also kind of hoping that Hammond wouldn't survive. However, Malcolm's rants do go on for a long time and gets rather dull and annoying very quickly. Not only that, Crichton doesn't write some of the scenes very well. He merely describes what's happening, but fails to convey the emotions of any of the characters, which did make the scenes a little dull sometimes, but it is still a great novel. I like the message that Crichton delivered in this book, and although it did seem extremely preachy, they may just have been because of my annoyance with Malcolm in the novel, but still, it is a good message considering the increasing leaps science has been taking these last few decades. Overall, the Jurassic Park novel gets a 4/5.
The Film:
The film is one of my all-time favourites. It has great actors, great directors, and AMAZING special effects. While I didn't like that they decided to take the concept and make rather unnecessary sequels, as a standalone movie, it's still fantastic. I've always loved dinosaurs, so seeing them brought to life so well on the big screen was a great experience for me. What more can I say? I loved this movie from start to finish, and I loved everything about it. It's obvious to be that the Jurassic Park (1993) film gets a 5/5, no question.Overall Assessment
Despite being a disloyal adaptation, I honestly don't think it matters because the movie was made so well that it being a disloyal adaptation doesn't matter. It stands on its own perfectly well, and by taking out much of Malcolm's rambles, it was overall more enjoyable to me. Although I prefer my adaptations to be very loyal, I also tend to give it a pass if the adaptation itself is an outstanding film on its own and it did not need to rely on the book much to do so. Jurassic Park is a great example of this, as even though I really enjoyed the novel, I loved the movie even more. Although it would have been cool to see some of the scenes from the novel into the film (like the rocket launcher scene), I still love the movie for what it did, as it remained faithful enough to Crichton's original work, but they managed to also make an original movie out of it. Not only that, they did get the main point of "don't play God" across, without needing Malcolm lecturing the other characters every five minutes. Even though Crichton's novel was good, I understand that it would not have translated well into a movie since it wasn't quite written to be purely a thriller, but more to be a cautionary tale on the dangers of uncontrolled genetic testing, so I completely understand and support their decisions to change the plot.
As an ADAPTATION ONLY, Jurassic Park gets a 2/5, but keep in mind that it being a bad adaptation does not mean it's a bad movie. I do genuinely think that it being a bad adaptation actually made it a better movie, and while it doesn't win any awards for book accuracy, it still followed the book well enough so that I have no major complaints about the movie, and it also got across the author's original message as well, which I think is really important for an adaptation. Even though the movie got the general stuff, it still wasn't very accurate to the book at all, which is why I gave it a low score. Despite that, I still heavily recommend you to read the book if you are a fan of the movie, and vice-versa. I read the book after watching the movie, and I still really enjoyed it, and it remains one of my favourite books.
Now that I'm done this adaptation review, I will be going back to novel & film reviews for a while. I do have an idea of what I'm going to review next (because I've been watching a lot of movies recently). I may also do a short (DEFINITELY SPOILER-FREE) review of AVENGERS: Endgame. I always will enjoy hearing from all of you, so if you have any comments, feedbacks, opinions, suggestions, etc., please feel free to comment, and I WILL respond to ALL comments!
Very Interesting, I never knew that Jurassic Park was based on a novel.
ReplyDeleteYes. Due to the overwhelming success of the film, most people seem to brush the novel aside like it doesn't matter, when it absolutely does. Although I prefer film over the novel, the novel is still very good and I strongly recommend for everyone who watched the film or even anyone with a interest in dinosaurs or science (biology in particular) to give it a read.
DeleteThe book sounds much better than the movie...
ReplyDeleteIt really depends, I think, on your interests. I'm really into dinosaurs, so the movie, which actually shows dinosaurs in a visual medium, is my go-to choice, and I found it much more interesting then just reading about them. However, if you are interested in the sciences, you would probably enjoy reading the book more since it focuses quite a bit on the scientific aspects of it. I'm not particularly a big science person, and the book tended to lecture on and on about ethics then I perhaps liked. However, the book was definitely much more gory when it came down to the deaths, and Crichton described every part of someone's death in great detail, so you do get a more gruesome story, but action scenes involving dinosaurs worked better visually for me. Like I said though, it's really all based on personal preferences, and I strongly encourage you to read the book yourself and see what you think of it, because I didn't include everything from the book!
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