Features: DVD, Widescreen
Editor's Note
Steven Spielberg directed this blockbuster thriller based on the popular book by Michael Crichton. Millionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) asks two dinosaur experts (Laura Dern and Sam Neill) to act as consultants on his entrepreneurial endeavor--an amusement park with DNA-cloned live dinosaurs as the main attraction. The paleontologists, along with a mathematician (Jeff Goldblum) and Hammond's two grandchildren, takes a run-through tour of the park. But soon the joyride turns to terror when an impending hurricane, an unscrupulous engineer (Wayne Knight), and the rebelling dinosaurs begin to destroy the park. Spielberg considered the most popular star of the film to be a computer-generated Tyrannosaurus rex. The special effects in general are spectacular.As Hollywood's preeminent director, Spielberg was used as a kind of financial savior for Universal Studios, which was hurting economically prior to the dinosaurian venture. Spielberg made a deal with Universal--his dream project, SCHINDLER'S LIST, would be green-lighted if he agreed to make JURASSIC PARK for the studio first. By the time SCHINDLER'S LIST premiered in December 1993, JURASSIC PARK, which had been released six months earlier, had broken E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL's worldwide box-office record.
Plot Summary
Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist girlfriend, Ellie Sattler, give lectures on dinosaur history between digs at remote exotic locales. One dusty afternoon, John Hammond, a millionaire inspired by scientific wonders, makes an offer to the erudite couple that they can't refuse: He asks them to act as consultants on his entrepreneurial endeavor--an amusement park with live dinosaurs as the main attraction. On an island off the coast of Costa Rica, Hammond's already biologically engineering living dinosaurs by extracting and reconstructing dino-DNA from fossilized insects. But bedlam ensues when Wayne, a computer genius, tampers with Jurassic Park's security system so that he can smuggle out a bunch of frozen embryos. The prehistoric creatures break loose around feeding time and the millionaire, the scientists, the park employees, and two children become fair game.
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