Life Finds A Way: Jurassic Park (1993)

You’re implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will… breed? No, I’m, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way.

I LOVE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ❤ IT IS ONE OF MY ABSOLUTE FAVS!!!!!!!!!!

First of all let me welcome you to my Jurassic Park Marathon!!! Yay! All this week Jurassic Park films! 🙂

So I love this movie, I absolutely do. I love the book too, but the movie was so amazing because of the people they chose to play the characters, they were absolutely perfect! Well it was a Michael Crichton/Steven Spielberg film.

Crichton got the idea for this when he was writing the screenplay Westworld. I love that movie too!

I was such a huge dino nut when I was a kid, I absolutely love this movie.

I’m the kid on the left

So why is this movie so awesome? Let’s get on it.

So John Hammond, CEO of InGen a genetic company has bought an island off of Costa Rica and created a place where Dinosaurs can roam again.  Unfortunately for him, they have had far too many accidents so his lawyer is forcing him to bring in some experts to okay the park.

Unbeknownst to Hammond, one of his employees, Dennis Nedry, is selling him out. InGen’s biggest competitor offered Nedry a ton of money to bring dino embryos.

So back in the U.S., Dr. Alan Grant, paleontologist, and paleobotanist, Dr. Ellie Slatter are out on a site digging up bones.

Dr. Grant is played by the very hunky Sam Neil.

Love this guy!

One of the best scenes in the film is when a kid makes fun of the dino bones and Grant rips him a new one.

Soon after the group is disrupted by a helicopter and have to quickly cover up the bones. This helicopter is Hammond who offers to fund their group for many, many years if they come and visit his park. They are totally down for that and promptly agree.

Along with Dr. Grant & Ellie, the lawyer brings mathematician, Ian Malcolm, who is played by none other than the very attractive Jeff Goldblum.

He’s got such a great voice!

So this past January I went to visit my sister who lives near San Diego. When I was flying down there, I was trying to buckle up my seatbelt, but it wouldn’t work. I totally felt like Dr. Grant right there.

So they land on the island and the the group is wondering what this park is all about. The only one who knows what it holds is John Hammond. They are driving onto the compound when Dr. Grant sees it….a dino.

They are given the spiel of what Jurassic Park is all about. At the visitor center they find out, through a very cheesy video, that the cloning of the dinos was accomplished by extracting the DNA of dinosaurs from mosquitoes that had been preserved in amber. The strands of DNA were incomplete, so they took DNA from frogs and used the frog DNA to fill in the gaps. The dinosaurs were all made to be female and created without a specific lysine to be only given through the food supplied by the feeders so that if there was ever an issue they would stop the feeeding and all would die.

Dr. Grant gets out of the appointed seats and takes off to check out the lab and see the baby dinos. Some are hatching at that moment and Dr. Grant sees a baby raptor.

John Hammond: [as they gather around a baby dinosaur hatching from its egg] I’ve been present for the birth of every little creature on this island.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Surely not the ones that are bred in the wild?
Henry Wu: Actually they can’t breed in the wild. Population control is one of our security precautions. There’s no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: How do you know they can’t breed?
Henry Wu: Well, because all the animals in Jurassic Park are female. We’ve engineered them that way.
[they take the baby dinosaur out of its egg. A robot arm picks up the shell out of Grant’s hand and puts it back down]
Dr. Ian Malcolm: But again, how do you know they’re all female? Does somebody go out into the park and pull up the dinosaurs’ skirts?
Henry Wu: We control their chromosomes. It’s really not that difficult. All vertebrate embryos are inherently female anyway, they just require an extra hormone given at the right developmental stage to make them male. We simply deny them that.
Dr. Ian Malcolm: John, the kind of control you’re attempting simply is… it’s not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh… well, there it is.
John Hammond: [sardonically] There it is.
Henry Wu: You’re implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will… breed?
Dr. Ian Malcolm: No, I’m, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way.

Everyone but the lawyer questions  whether Hammond has really thought about the ramifications

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Gee, the lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, uh… staggers me. Don’t you see the danger, John, inherent in what you’re doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet’s ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that’s found his dad’s gun…the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it…You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should…

Dr. Ellie Sattler: Well, the question is, how can you know anything about an extinct ecosystem? And therefore, how could you ever assume that you can control it? I mean, you have plants in this building that are poisonous, you picked them because they look good, but these are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they’re in, and they’ll defend themselves, violently if necessary.

Dr. Alan Grant: Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just been suddenly thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?

John Hammond: [laughing] I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! You’re meant to come down here and defend me against these characters, and the only one I’ve got on my side is the blood-sucking lawyer!

Donald Gennaro: Thank you.

After lunch and debate they all go out to check out the park. On the way they are joined by Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex and Tim. The groups go out in two different cars and view two no shows and a sick triceratops. Now I know how this feels. While visiting my sister in San Diego we went to the wildlife preserve, and since it is a natural habitat those animals can hide super well. In fact the whole day there I kept think that this is like Jurassic Park.

One of the best scenes is this one.

Ellie leaves with the Vet so the cars now have Lex, Tim, & Gennaro the lawyer in one, and Malcolm and Alan in the other.

Back at the compound, a huge storm is headed for the island amd all the ferries are leaving early. This disrupts Nedry’s plan as the time is shortened for his plan, but he decides to go for it, shutting down all different parts of the system, electric fences, and the motorized cars the group are in.

Nedry’s plan doesn’t work as the rain causes him to be confused and he loses his glasses, the embryos, and his life. Don’t make fun of a dino.

One area that is shut down is the T-Rex’s fence, where all the cars are in front of.

Tim gets stuck in the car and thrown off the side into a tree. Dr. Grant and Lex scale down the wall to get away and help him. Ellie and Muldoon, the keeper, come looking for everyone, but find Malcolm. They pick him up and have to leave as they are chased away by a T-Rex.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: [as they escape the T-Rex chasing after them in the Jeep] You think they’ll have that on the tour?

Dr. Grant goes up in the tree to get Tim, but as they are climbing down they have to hurry even faster as the car falls down as well. The end up having the car fall on them and being trapped again. They find shelter and rest.

Back at the compund, they can’t get around the stuff Nedry set up and decide to do a complete shut down and then restart the system. However, the system doesn’t restart. NOw everything is shut down.

The next day Dr. Grant and the kids roam through the park. They discover that the dinosaurs are having children, they cannot be controlled. They had used frog DNA to make the dinos complete, but some frogs change sex multiple times before they decide on one.

Dr. Alan Grant: [finding egg shells] Oh my God. Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding.
Tim: But Grandpa said all the dinosaurs were girls.
Dr. Alan Grant: Amphibian DNA.
Lex: What’s that?
Dr. Alan Grant: Well, on the tour, the film said they used frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps. They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of a frog’s. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment. Malcolm was right. Look…life found a way.

As they continue through the park the discover that the animals are all loose and running free in a more natural way. They are also hunting each other.

Back at the compound; Malcolm, Ellie, Hammond, & Muldoon wait for one of the employees, Ray Arnold, who was sent out to the electrical building to restart it manually. Ellie can’t wait any longer, so she and Muldoon run to the area but get hunted by Velociraptors. Muldooon doesn’t make it. While Ellie begins the restart at the same time Tim, Lex, & Dr. Grant are climbing over an electric fence. I love this scene as it is so intense.

Poor Tim. He makes it out okay, but he has had the worst of it out of everybody. First his idol (Dr. Grant) doesn’t want to talk to him, his car gets attacked by a T-Rex, he gets stuck in a car and thrown into a tree, he throws up on himself, he gets out of the tree but the car falls on him, he almost gets run over by a stampede of dinos, gets electrocuted, and the trips not over.

Ellie gets attacked by Velociraptors, but manages to get away from them.

Now I took a class on Dinosaurs and the way they are portrayed on the screen is not how they believe they looked in real life, they think they had feathers and were colorful.

Anyways, Dr. Grant leaves the kids in the compund so they can eat, while he goes looking for Ellie. They are reunited and head back to the compound.

In the compound Lex and Tim are in one of the scrariest scenes ever!!!

They manage to get back with Dr. Grant & Ellie and they all head over to the computer system so Ellie can restart it. However, the raptors attack and she has to help Dr. Grant with the doors as they are are electrical. While they do that Lex reboots the system. They call Hammond and make him call a helicopter. A raptor starts attacking them and they have to crawl into the air vents to get out. They end up having to battle them later.

T-Rex = Awesome

Raptor = Awesome

T-Rex and Raptor fight  = Super Awesome

They all end up getting away. Hammond having realized that his idea is not thought through all the way, Malcolm with his broken leg, Dr. Grant and Ellie closer than ever, and Dr. Grant having formed a great relationship with the kids and realizing kids would be great to have one day.

Now even though the movie has a LOT of differences from the book but it is so amzing of a story.

Now even though this movie, Frankenstein, and The Bride of Frankenstein show you that one shouldn’t try to take life into their own hands, still scientists just won’t listen.

Here’s a cover photo/poster I made as part of my countdown to Halloween this year.

Found this pic online and had to include it.