The scene between Nedry and Dodgson has spawned a cult following; there are fan recreations on Youtube and Electro Tunes sampling the line "We've got Dodgson here!" There are even t-shirts with Dodgson's face on it. Cameron Thor auditioned for the part of Ian Malcolm, but got the much smaller part of Lewis Dodgson. Thor was the one who tracked down the shaving can, for use in the movie; he had to spend endless time in a drug store to find the most photogenic can. He even used it after the audition, because he was so broke. Thor has said he would happily reprise the role at any time, because its the character he's most recognized for.
The film and the book generated so much interest in dinosaurs, that the study of paleontology has had a record increase in students.
The T-rex occasionally malfunctioned, due to the rain. Producer Kathleen Kennedy recalls, "The T. rex went into the heebie-jeebies sometimes. Scared the crap out of us. We'd be, like, eating lunch, and all of a sudden a T-rex would come alive. At first we didn't know what was happening, and then we realized it was the rain. You'd hear people start screaming."
Steven Spielberg wanted the velociraptors to be about ten feet tall, which was taller than they were known to be. During filming, paleontologists uncovered ten-foot-tall specimens of raptors called Utahraptors.
The glass of water sitting on the dash of the Ford Explorer was made to ripple using a guitar string that was attached to the underside of the dash beneath the glass.
When Hurricane Iniki hit, the cast and crew were all required to move into the ballroom of the hotel, in which they were staying. Sir Richard Attenborough, however, stayed in his hotel room and slept through the entire event. When asked how he could possibly have done this, Attenborough replied, "My dear boy, I survived the blitz!"
Harrison Ford was offered and turned down the role of Dr. Alan Grant, as he felt that the part just wasn't right for him. After seeing the film, he says that he had made the right decision.
Michael Crichton intended John Hammond to be "a dark Walt Disney".
Universal paid Michael Crichton two million dollars for the rights to his novel, before it was even published.
Steven Spielberg oversaw the post-production of this film via video link while in Poland filming Schindler's List (1993). He later called it one of the hardest times in his life as a filmmaker: the filming of the Holocaust-themed Schindler's List took such an emotional toll on him, that his enthusiasm for Jurassic Park had almost waned. He said that he needed an hour per day to get into the right frame of mind, and muster up the energy, and patience, to comment on digital dinosaurs, and answer trivial questions from the special effects crew.
Ian (Jeff Goldblum) says the line "must go faster" while being chased by a dinosaur. In Independence Day (1996) Roland Emmerich liked it so much he sampled it when they were escaping the mothership.
Steven Spielberg was in the very early stages of pre-production for the film "ER" (based on a Michael Crichton novel), when he heard about the "Jurassic Park" book. He subsequently dumped what he was doing, to make the film. Afterwards, he returned to "ER" and helped develop it into a hit television series (ER (1994)).
John Williams scored the film at the end of February, 1993 and recorded it a month later. He felt he needed to write "pieces that would convey a sense of awe and fascination, given it dealt with the overwhelming happiness and excitement that would emerge from seeing live dinosaurs."
Michael Crichton wrote the novel because of his concern for the rise of scientism, and the exploration of bio-genetics for the sake of profit.
This was Sir Richard Attenborough's first acting role since The Human Factor (1979).
When Michael Crichton was asked why the novel has "Jurassic" in the title, and has a dinosaur from the Cretaceous period on the cover, he replied that had never occurred to him, and admitted "that was just the best looking design".
The guests' encounter with the sick Triceratops, ends without any clear explanation as to why the animal is sick. Michael Crichton's original novel and the screenplay, however, includes an explanation: the Stegosaurus/Triceratops lacked suitable teeth for grinding food, and so, like birds, would swallow rocks and use them as gizzard stones. In the digestive tract, these rocks would grind the food to aid in digestion. After six weeks, the rocks would become too smooth to be useful, and the animal would regurgitate them. When finding and eating new rocks to use, the animal would also swallow West Indian Lilac berries. The fact that the berries and stones are regurgitated explains why Ellie never finds traces of them in the animal's excrement.
The Mr. D.N.A. cartoon was Steven Spielberg's way of condensing much of the novel's exposition into a few minutes.
Despite his prominent billing, B. D. Wong has less than two minutes of screen time. He is, however, the only cast member of the original film to reprise his role in the fourth film, Jurassic World (2015).
Dennis Muren suggested most of the full size dinosaurs could be done on computer from head to toe, but he had to prove it first to Steven Spielberg, which he did with a skeletal Gallimimus herd running through a field. Spielberg was so blown away by the scene, especially when a fleshy T-Rex arrived on the scene; he and Tippett looked at each other and Tippett said, "I think we're extinct". Spielberg liked the line and gave it to Jeff Goldblum to say to Sam Neill in the Visitor's Centre.
In 2005, paleontologist Dr. Mary Schweitzer discovered red blood cells and soft tissue in the fossilized bones of a T-Rex, meaning dinosaur cloning may someday become a reality.
All of the cast were given a Raptor model, signed by Steven Spielberg as a gift. It looked very frightening, and Ariana Richards has it in her house to shock anyone coming in, like a guard at the gate. Jeff Goldblum's model has a prime spot in his house and is a cherished object. Laura Dern put her Raptor model in her son's room near his crib. When he was older and saw it he screamed like never before. She had to put it in storage, but hopes one day, the two will be friends.
The crew had to have safety meetings about the T-Rex; it weighed 12,000 pounds, and was extremely powerful. They used flashing lights to announce when it was about to come on, to alert the crew, because if you stood next to it, and the head went by at speed, it felt like a bus going by.
The film opened on Friday, June 11, 1993, and broke box office records its first weekend, with 47 million dollars. It eventually went on to make more than 900 million dollars worldwide. David Koepp remembers the day it opened: "I was in New York and I walked to the Ziegfeld (Theatre) to see how it was doing. The guy comes out and announces to the big line, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the seven o'clock show of Jurassic Park is sold out.' And people go, 'Oooh.' And he goes, 'Also the ten o'clock show is sold out.' And they went, 'Ooooooh.' 'And also Saturday night's seven and ten o'clock shows are also sold out.' And I was like, 'I'm not an expert, but I think this is very good.'"
While discussing chaos theory, Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) shamelessly flirts with Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). After meeting on this film, the two began a romantic relationship, and were engaged for two years before breaking up.
James Cameron has stated that he wanted to make the film, but the rights were bought "a few hours" before he could bid. Upon seeing Jurassic Park, Cameron realized that Spielberg was the better choice to direct it as his version would've been much more violent ("Aliens (1986) with dinosaurs") which "wouldn't have been fair" to children, who relate to dinosaurs. The special effects were directly influenced by Cameron's Terminator 2 (1991).
The Dilophosaurus's venom-spitting and neck-frill became so iconic that almost every other appearance of the animal in popular media, as well as most of the Dilophosaurus children's toys advertise at least one or both of these aspects. Some even leave out the dinosaur's striking double-crests. In reality, however, the spitting ability was only made up by Michael Crichton, while adding the frill was Steven Spielberg's idea. Real Dilophosaurus possessed neither of these traits, with the twin crests and its thin jaws (the latter of which isn't very evident in the movie's design) being its real discerning features.
Ariana Richards' audition consisted of standing in front of a camera and screaming wildly. Steven Spielberg "wanted to see how she could show fear." Richards remembers, "I heard later on that Steven had watched a few girls on tape that day, and I was the only one who ended up waking his sleeping wife off the couch, and she came running through the hallway to see if the kids were all right."
In the shooting script, it was written that, during the Tyrannosaur's escape, Malcolm would simply get out of the car and run away, much as Genarro had done moments before. In fact, this is how Malcolm behaves in the scene as written in the book. When the time came to film the scene, it was Jeff Goldblum's idea to make his flight more heroic, by having him distract the Tyrannosaur so Grant could save the children.
During the scenes with the T-Rex, Steven Spielberg would roar like one through the megaphone. The cast cracked up whenever he did that.
The Dilophosaurus never walks because it was difficult to get the weight shifting and the movement right. A trench was cut into the floor of the set for the puppeteers but Steven Spielberg elected to have it just appear instead to make the scene more ominous and surprising. He also wanted more water for the scene coming down the hillside with every fire hydrant going in the studio until they ran out. Michael Lantieri joked every now and then "just splash him with something so he feels there's more water". To this day, Spielberg still feels that scene needed more water. Wayne Knight thought it a miserable scene to shoot; sliding down things, covered in mud, soaking wet, he was 327 pounds, and he could barely walk, but he loved watching it.
Steven Spielberg wanted the dinosaurs to be birdlike, e.g. snapping to attention like a chicken. He wanted the Raptors to turn their heads so they could look behind them to make them have a scarier appearance. Spielberg likened the Raptor tapping its claw to Morse code to any Raptor listening.
The Triceratops dung didn't smell at all; it was made of clay, mud and straw. It was drizzled in honey and papayas so flies would swarm near it.
Michael Crichton said that his views on science and genetic engineering are largely expressed by Ian Malcolm. Steven Spielberg saw many parallels to himself in the character of John Hammond. Fittingly, he cast a fellow filmmaker in the role, who begins his tour of the park by showing a film, in which he also acts. While Malcolm is dressed entirely in black, Hammond wears all white.
Steven Spielberg liked the dinosaurs to do things behavioral that had nothing to do with the plot, like stopping to scratch, something he learned on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
Sam Neill injured his hand lighting the flare he uses to distract the Tyrannosaur. According to Neill, "It dropped some burning phosphorous on me and got under my watch and took a chunk of my arm out."
Shortly after Nedry makes his first appearance in the control room, during his argument with Hammond, one can clearly see Jaws (1975) playing in a small video window on one of Nedry's computer screens. That movie was, of course, directed by Steven Spielberg and was Spielberg's first experiment with animatronic animals, namely the giant shark they built for the movie.
There are only 15 minutes of actual dinosaur footage in the film: 9 minutes are Stan Winston's animatronics, 6 minutes of it is ILM's CGI.
When the audience first saw the T-Rex, Steven Spielberg wanted it from inside the cars so the audience feels like they're experiencing it right there with the characters and feeling their fear.
Years after this film wrapped, it was discovered due to fossil impressions of velociraptor skin that they were (allegedly) feathered, implying that Grant was indeed right that they evolved into birds.
When the Utahraptor was discovered right before the film's release, which had a similar height to the Raptors depicted in the film, Stan Winston joked, "We made it, then they discovered it".
Michael Crichton estimated that the screenplay has about ten to twenty percent of the novel's content.
Steven Spielberg received 250 million dollars from the film's gross and profit participations.
The most difficult effect to pull off was the vibrating rings of water. Steven Spielberg wanted the T-Rex to announce its presence somehow before the audience saw it, and got the idea from watching the mirror in his car vibrate because of the sound effects. When Michael Lantieri tried to replicate that with water, it was harder than any of the dinosaur effects; nobody knew how to do it but told Spielberg they could. The night before the shoot, Lantieri put a glass of water on a guitar and when he plucked the strings, that did it. So for the scene, they fed guitar strings under the dashboard to get the effect.
The novel was published in 1990. However, pre-production of the film began in 1989, using only Michael Crichton's manuscript. It was widely believed that the book would be such a hit that it would make an outstanding movie. It turns out that assumption was correct.
After making this movie, Ariana Richards developed a great interest in dinosaurs and assisted Jack Horner - paleontologist, advisor for the film, and the inspiration for the character of Dr. Grant - on an actual dinosaur dig in Montana the following summer.
Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) dresses entirely in black in both this film and its sequel. In the book, he tells Ellie Sattler that he only ever dresses in black and gray, so that he never has to waste time thinking about what to wear. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) gives the same reason for his monotonous fashion sense in The Fly (1986), an idea that Brundle got from Albert Einstein.
In this film, Steven Spielberg directs the man who beat him to the Best Director Oscar in 1983 (Richard Attenborough, whose film Gandhi (1982) also beat Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as Best Picture).
After Joseph Mazzello was turned down for the role of Jack Banning in Steven Spielberg's Hook (1991) for being too young, Spielberg told Mazzello that he was still impressed with his audition and would try to cast him in a future project. Mazzello was then cast as Tim in this movie. As Mazzello recalls, "Steven had me screen-test with Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman for Hook. I was just too young for the role. And because of that, Steven came up to me and said, 'Don't worry about it, Joey. I'm going to get you in a movie this summer.' Not only a nice promise to get, but to have it be one of the biggest box-office smashes of all time? That's a pretty good trade." Mazzello's casting led Spielberg to reverse the ages of the children, as he decided that casting a girl younger than Mazzello would be too young to be placed in danger. Lex was therefore made the older child, and the computer expert as well. In Michael Crichton's original novel, Tim is older, and is both the dinosaur and computer enthusiast.
A baby triceratops was built for a scene where one of the kids rides it. Special effects technicians worked on this effect for a year but the scene was cut at the last minute as Steven Spielberg thought it would ruin the pacing of the film. A similar scene, however, was later used in Jurassic World (2015).
Ariana Richards was upset by the fact that an action figure of her character was not produced. (Kenner only made dolls of Grant, Sattler, Muldoon, Nedry, Tim, and eventually Malcolm.)
All the merchandise (t-shirts, stuffed dinosaurs, lunch boxes, flasks, etc.) shown in the film were, in some part, actually created to be sold with the movie.
Joseph Mazzello did the freezer scene on his birthday. The Raptor was on wheels and had to be pushed, and the claws hit Mazzello on the forehead. He fell to the floor dizzy but was OK. Steven Spielberg had the whole crew sing "Happy Birthday" so Mazzello considered it his birthday present.
The kitchen scene was Ariana Richards' favorite scene; it was filmed in two weeks with Raptors there most of the time, and a man in a suit some of the time. Anyone in a Raptor suit could only do it for up to 15 minutes, because they were bent over in a downhill skiing position which is very physical. The Raptor clicking its toenails was done with a puppeteer walking on Raptor legs.
Grossed 402 million dollars in the U.S., and just over one billion dollars worldwide. Steven Spielberg made 250 million dollars from the film; the largest sum any individual has made from a film.
Generally speaking, any shot of a full dinosaur was computer-generated, but shots of parts of dinosaurs were of animatronics.
The last element to make the dinosaurs real was sound. They had to guess what they sounded like because vocal cords wouldn't survive to the present, so Steven Spielberg instructed Gary Rydstrom to make them sound like animals; real, but big and deep. Rydstrom recorded different animals and then pieced them together. The Dilophosaurus was a swan call with a hawk, a rattlesnake and a howler monkey. Raptors were dolphins, a walrus and geese that when blended sounded horrific. These sounds were put onto a computer and then played through a keyboard. Rydstrom's favorite scene was when the T-Rex ate a Gallimimus, and it looks up one last time, either to beg for mercy or just to see what's got him; Rydstrom likened it to a dog playing with a chew-toy. As it happens, the T-Rex and the Gallimimus vocals were performed by Rydstrom's Jack Russell terrier, Buster.
Briefly held the box office record until it was beaten by Titanic (1997).
Phil Tippett became quite depressed when he learned that none of the stop-motion creatures he had been developing would be used in the film. However, shortly after that decision had been made, ILM animators discovered they did actually have a use for him. While none of his stop-motion models would be seen in the film, his techniques were determined to be quite useful in animating the computer-generated dinosaurs, especially given how much research he had put into animal movement. Rather than creating the dinosaur motion using key-frame animation, it was decided to build a stop-motion armature for each computer generated dinosaur and manipulate it as they would for a stop-motion film. These armatures were specially built with motion-sensors, and linked up to the animated dinosaurs being created on the computer. Thus, the motion of the stop-motion armature was directly translated into the computer-generated version that appears in the final film.
Before the book was published, Michael Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of 1.5 million dollars, as well as a substantial percentage of the gross.
Except for some very brief glimpses in the opening scene, the adult velociraptors - often cited as the most memorable dinosaurs in this film - don't make an on-screen appearance until over 103 minutes into the movie.
Steven Spielberg delayed the beginning of filming by several weeks to get the cast he wanted. First he allowed Sir Richard Attenborough to finish post-production on his own film Chaplin (1992) before committing to the film. He also waited until Sam Neill could finish filming Family Pictures (1993). Neill ended up only having a weekend off between finishing that film and starting this one.
Michael Crichton wrote the novel in 1990, but he first got the idea in 1981. Crichton wasn't sure how to plausibly bring dinosaurs back to life until he learned about insects in amber preserving their DNA, which was the breakthrough he had been looking for. He later learned the idea is hypothetically possible. A weevil, containing dinosaur blood from more than 65 million years (125-135) ago was discovered in amber. But DNA quickly breaks down in an insect, which is why Jurassic Park's dinosaurs are more fictional.
The crew were caught in a very dangerous hurricane, Iniki, which hit the island of Kauai. The film-makers managed to capture shots from the hurricane and use it in the movie. This incident was the subject of a 2009 episode of The Weather Channel series, Storm Stories (2003).
Hammond (Sir Richard Attenborough) creates the dinosaurs from DNA trapped in amber. He also carries around a cane capped with a mosquito in amber. Attenborough's brother is naturalist David Attenborough, who has his own collection of animals trapped in amber. This was the focus of Natural World: The Amber Time Machine (2004).
The storm overpowering the park has been read into as the film's theme of trying and failing to control nature.
During the Jell-O eating scene - with Lex and Tim eating sweets, fruits, and desserts - a crew member held Ariana Richards' elbow and shook her arm to add to her character's terror. She (Richards) asked if she could do it, but they didn't think she'd be able to pull it off in a believable way.
In the 3-D version, Steven Spielberg claimed adding leaves to the Jeep chase took the excitement from a seven to a nine.
Gallimimus means "fowl mimic". Although Grant never answers Lex's question, Gallimimus were carnivores, but only went after other dinosaur eggs.
Many errors were corrected digitally: some stunt people were made to look like the actors, and in one scene an entire Ford Explorer was digitally generated.
The electric vehicles in the film are Ford Explorers, but in the novel, they were Toyotas; Steven Spielberg managed to get seven for the film. The Explorers were modified to create the illusion of automation by hiding the driver in the trunk. The Jeeps were also customized for the shoot. Universal Studios Japan has a replica of one of the Ford Explorers from the movie.
A rattlesnake made the noise of the Dilophosaurus neck rattle, because it was scary to listen to. The cute Dilophosaurus sound was made by the hopping chirps of a swan.
The T-Rex model was controlled with a waldo, a very small replica to manipulate it to get it to respond exactly. They weren't supposed to get it wet, because it was fine-tuned into how much it weighed, but once they shot the rain scene, it stopped responding. Between takes they had to towel it down to dry it out at night. When it attacked Lex and Tim, it lost some of its teeth on top of the car. They tried gluing them back in, but one refused to after twenty minutes; indeed, there's a shot where if you pause it in the right place you can see it's missing a tooth.
After the twin hits of Jurassic Park and Schindler's List (1993), Steven Spielberg took a rare sabbatical. It would be four years before he returned to the director's chair with The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997).
For the premiere, Steven Spielberg turned up in one of the Jurassic Park tour vehicles. Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum also attended the premiere.
After directing Hook (1991), Steven Spielberg wanted immediately to film Schindler's List (1993). Sid Sheinberg greenlit the film, on the condition that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first.
Began principal photography on the island of Kauai in August 1992, two years and one month after pre-production. The lush resort made it an ideal setting but after three weeks filming, Hurricane Iniki came to Kauai, and the crew were asked by the hotel to pack their suitcases, fill their bathtubs in case of a power or water shortage, and to pack a day bag and meet in the hotel ballroom, on the basement level. By 9:00 a.m., the storm hit. Kathleen Kennedy ensured the movie crew had generators for lights and plenty of food and water. They had to be self-sustaining because they moved around on location all the time. They had to camp out in rows of chaise longues on the ballroom floor, while the cast and crew heard winds pick up at 4:00 p.m., and rumble by the hotel at nearly 120 miles per hour. Kennedy likened it to a freight train roaring past. Iniki struck all the sets, leaving no working phones or power on Kauai, so at dawn, Kennedy jogged to the airport to explore their options, where all the windows were blown out in the terminals, and it was full of palm trees, sand, and water. Kennedy hitched a lift to Honolulu on a Salvation Army plane and began organizing from a pay phone. Over 24 hours, she coordinated the safe return of the company, and arranged for more than 20,000 pounds of relief supplies transported from Honolulu and Los Angeles into Kauai. After returning to Los Angeles, Jurassic Park resumed production at Universal.
The T-Rex chasing the Jeep, took some engineering. Paleontologists alleged a T-Rex could run up to fifty miles per hour. But the model was too big to run that fast, and its bones couldn't support its weight. So they dialed it down to a more acceptable 25 miles per hour. Hammond says it can go 32 miles per hour.
Dr. Malcolm's quip that Sattler's and Grant's jobs are extinct is quoted from what puppeteer Phil Tippett said to Steven Spielberg when he decided to use CGI and not Go-Motion. Spielberg had it put in the film as a joke.
Jeff Goldblum regretted that he never got to do any scenes with the adult Raptors until The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), although he thought the baby Raptor was more creepy than cute.
Alan Grant is modeled after Paleontologist Jack Horner who, like Grant, digs and teaches in Montana, and was also a technical advisor on this film.
Jurassic Park's first television broadcast was on May 7, 1995, following the April 26th airing of The Making of Jurassic Park. 68.12 million people tuned in to watch, garnering NBC a 36 percent share of all available viewers that night. Jurassic Park was the highest-rated theatrical film broadcast by any network, since the April 1987 airing of Trading Places (1983).
Sir Sean Connery was offered the role of John Hammond based on his performance as Professor Henry Jones, Sr. He subsequently turned it down.
The gun that game warden Muldoon uses is an Italian Franchi SPAS 12, a commonly used gun in films due to its aesthetic modern appearance. Steven Spielberg kept the gun after the production ended. It is part of his very large, private gun collection, and he had many of the stars sign it. When he invites guests to his home in Beverly Hills, he lets them shoot it.
Steven Spielberg wanted the T-Rex's roar to sound like a "King Kong" roar, particularly at the climax. King Kong (1933) was one of Spielberg's biggest influences when making the film.
Michael Crichton's agents circulated the book to six studios and directors. Warner Brothers wanted it for Tim Burton to direct, while Columbia Pictures was planning it for Richard Donner. 20th Century Fox was also interested, and was intending the project for Joe Dante, while Universal Pictures wanted Steven Spielberg to direct. Crichton was reluctant to submit to a bidding war. He instructed his agents to put a set price on the film rights and he could decide who was more likely to actually get the film made. After interviewing all the prospective directors, he agreed to sell the rights to Universal and Steven Spielberg, who was already his first choice.
The Mr. DNA film was created by Bob Kurtz. Steven Spielberg wanted one of those creaky instructional animations from school to deliver the exposition about dinosaurs being created to the audience. Kurtz feared Mr. DNA was too corny, and the audience wouldn't buy the dinosaurs, but Spielberg thought it should be a little corny. The Brontosaurus at the end of it is a tribute to Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur, but most of it wound up on the cutting room floor. Kurtz created similar sequences in City Slickers (1991) and Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), as well as a singing cereal packet for Minority Report (2002), and a trailer for Casper (1995).
When Steven Spielberg first started working for Universal Pictures, he was asked to give a tour to a special guest, who had just sold the rights to one of his books to the studio. The guest turned out to be Michael Crichton, who later sold the film rights for another novel to Universal that Spielberg wound up directing, Jurassic Park. The two later became friends, because he claimed Crichton knew how to blend science with big theatrical concepts.
In the book, the sick animal is a Stegosaurus, said by Ian Malcolm to be sick because the Jurassic era air had more oxygen than the Holocene, part of the chaos theory.
Sandra Bullock, Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore, Helen Hunt, Teri Hatcher, Elizabeth Hurley, and Sherilyn Fenn tested for the role of Ellie Sattler. Julianne Moore would later go on to play Dr. Sarah Harding in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997).
Jim Carrey was considered for the role of Ian Malcolm.
Before Steven Spielberg decided to use animatronic dinosaurs and computer graphics imagery, he wanted to use stop motion animation for the dinosaur effects and had Phil Tippett put together a short demo of the kitchen scene using claymation dinosaurs (Barbie dolls were substituted for the actual actors).
Scenes of the T-Rex attacking Grant and the kids, while they ride down a river and through a running waterfall, were cut before filming.
The original idea for Jurassic Park came from Michael Crichton's attempt in 1983 to write a screenplay about a Pterodactyl being cloned from an egg. The screenplay and movie never came to fruition. Originally, Crichton's novel was rejected by his "people", a group of about five or six personal acquaintances, who always read his drafts before he sends them off. After several rejections, Crichton finally figured out what was wrong: he had originally intended for the story to be through the eyes of a child who was at the park when the dinosaurs escaped, which his peers felt was too ridiculous, and could not identify with the character. Crichton re-wrote the story as it is today, and it became a huge hit. (The story also incorporates the "amusement park run amok" element of Crichton's earlier screenplay Westworld (1973).)
This is the movie that inspired BBC's Tim Haines to produce the groundbreaking dinosaur documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs (1999) and its various follow-ups. But it also made his and the animators' job at Framestore harder, as people have already had an idea of what dinosaurs "should" look and move like.
The highest-grossing film of 1993; it outdid Steven Spielberg's own E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as the then biggest box office success in film history (not adjusted for inflation). It would hold that record until Titanic (1997), and then James Cameron would also outperform himself with the release of Avatar (2009).
In the scene where the survivors are crawling through vent spaces, the computer monitors are shining on the raptor after them. This is usually mistaken as being the shadows from the air vents. It's the letters GATC, the four letters used to denote the components of DNA.
When Nedry is stealing the dinosaur embryos, there is one labeled a Brontosaurus. Brontosaurus was not a real dinosaur, but one named by a paleontologist that had the wrong skull on his specimen. The correct skull for the animal was found by a different scientist, and it was then called the Apatosaurus.
Laura Dern thought the first scene with the Brachiosaur was very tender. She recalled shooting the scene, where the actors were looking at an X on a piece of paper. Grant loses the power in his legs because Sam Neill thought seeing something so mind boggling would make you faint. When Steven Spielberg first edited the scene, the temp music was the St. Crispin's Day speech from Kenneth Branagh's Henry V (1989). Phil Tippett thought it perfect and said "you did it, you crazy son of a bitch", not knowing that was a line from the movie.
Director Steven Spielberg was worried that computer graphics meant Nintendo type cartoon quality. He originally only wanted the herd of gallimimus dinosaurs to be computer-generated, but upon seeing ILM's demo animation of a T-rex chasing a herd of galamides across his ranch, he decided to shoot nearly all the dinosaur scenes using this method. The animation was first plotted on an Amiga Toaster, and rendered for the film by Silicon Graphics' Indigo workstations.
No one knew what the Raptors sounded like, so to get an interesting sound, they recorded a young dolphin in heat, recorded underwater; it put him in a certain mood and made a wonderful scream, not at all like a dolphin. When Muldoon was hissed at, that was an agitated goose.
Steven Spielberg changed the climax weeks before the end of the shoot. He felt the audience would hate him if the T-Rex doesn't make one final heroic appearance, since he considered the T-Rex the star of the movie, hence the Raptor/T-Rex fight. The original climax involved the Raptors being killed by the T-Rex skeleton in the Visitors Centre. The new climax was completely computer animated unlike the first T-Rex attack. First, they enacted it, and then added in the effects. It was the last scene to be filmed.
The sounds made by the Dilophosaurus were a combination of the sounds of howler monkeys, hawks, rattlesnakes, and swans. The main cry of the Velicoraptors was a combination of the sounds of elephant seal pups, dolphins and walruses. The elephant seal sounds were recorded at The Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California, a marine mammal hospital that rehabilitates and releases sick and injured seals and sea lions.
The sounds the Velociraptors make when communicating is the same sound tortoises make when having sex.
The full-sized animatron of the tyrannosaurus rex weighed about 13,000 to 15,000 pounds. During the shooting of the initial T-rex attack scene that took place in a downpour and was shot on a soundstage, the latex that covered the T-rex puppet absorbed great amounts of water, making it much heavier and harder to control. Technicians worked throughout the night with blow driers trying to dry the latex out. Eventually, they suspended a platform above the T-rex, out of camera range, to keep the water off it during filming.
For Film Review's 55th anniversary in 2005, it declared Jurassic Park one of the five most important in the magazine's lifetime.
A study by Western Australia's Murdoch University concluded that DNA cannot survive more than 6.8 million years - a finding that effectively rules out the film's method of replicating dinosaurs. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in 2012, was based on carbon-dating bones from the moa, an extinct New Zealand bird. The researchers found that the DNA from the bones halved after about 521 years when stored at 13.1 degrees. At minus five degrees, the final fragments of DNA in a bone would disappear after 6.8 million years.
The raptors in the kitchen scene was filmed on Joseph Mazzello's 9th birthday. Due to a misunderstanding, Joseph ran into one of the raptors on one of the takes, and was injured.
There were so many wires and rigging to control the velociraptor animatrons in the kitchen stalking scene that the child actors had to literally step over and around them while the scene was being filmed. The kitchen set was greatly expanded from the original design to accommodate the velociraptors. Some reports say that all of the dinosaurs in the kitchen scene were computer-generated.
The T-Rex chasing the Jeep was the most difficult scene to animate. Steve 'Spaz' Williams had to do research because there's no frame of reference for a running animal of that size; it took two months to figure out how to get it to run, for instance. He would run the sequence backwards to see all the mistakes. They were also able to use the computer to add little details to authenticate the scene, e.g. the T-Rex running through puddles of water and leaving splashes, et cetera. The splashing was filmed individually and then the computer added it to the T-Rex's footsteps.
For the part where the T-Rex catches a Galliminus and shakes it in his mouth, the sound was taken from a dog shaking a toy in its mouth.
The scene where Grant, Tim, and Lex meet the herd of Gallimimuses was scheduled to be the last scene shot in Kauai. When Hurricane Iniki hit, filming for this scene had to be postponed. Production returned to California and then, a few weeks later, Sam Neill, Joseph Mazzello, and Ariana Richards had to travel back to Hawaii, but this time to the island of Oahu, to shoot the scene.
When the T-Rex turned at the sound of the doorslam, Steven Spielberg wanted a quick turn because "slow isn't scary".
The film revolutionized dinosaur behavior; whereas in previous films they were slow moving, they were now fast and athletic; this derived from paleontologist Robert Bakker. Another aspect included was dinosaurs are not cold-blooded, but rely on the Sun to be active. Steven Spielberg wanted his dinosaurs to be fast-moving, hot blooded predators, e.g. if a T-Rex in the rain were cold-blooded, it couldn't do anything, hence the scene in the film.
As the movie was released in Costa Rica, local theater owners scratched/blurred the San Jose tag during the scene when Nedry waits for his contact in what supposedly was the country's capital, because the local audiences reacted negatively to inaccuracies in the scene's geography.
Newspaper clippings on the fridge in Grant's trailer read "Space Aliens Stole My Face" and "Dinosaurs On Mars!"
Grant fashioning a functioning seat-belt with only two latches and no latch plate foreshadows a later scene where the dinosaurs are suddenly able to breed, despite that they were all originally female.
The T-Rex chasing the Jeep was changed by Steven Spielberg from a scene with them just driving away at the sound of the T-Rex's footsteps.
The Dilophosaurus spit used a paintball mechanism that actually spat from the model's mouth; the venom was made out of methacryl and KY Jelly, with some food coloring mixed in.
The film's tagline "An Adventure 65 Million Years in the Making" derived from a joke Steven Spielberg made about the thousands of years the mosquito was trapped in amber before being discovered.
When Dr. Grant is talking to the boy in the beginning of the movie, there is a dinosaur's head depicted on the mountain in the back.
Perhaps to increase the general sense of anxiety (if only subconsciously), the Triceratops mural behind Hammond as he eats ice cream in the visitors center also incorporates elements from "Guernica," Pablo Picasso's famous painting of the horrors of war.
To emphasize the birdlike qualities of the Gallimimus, the animation focused on the herd of them, instead of individually. To prepare for the scene, the animators ran through an ILM parking lot, with plastic pipes standing in for the tree they vaulted over in the film. One of the animators missed the jump and fell over, something that was incorporated into the scene. The sounds of the Gallimimuses were horse squeals.
Several of the storm scenes in the film were actual footage of Hurricane Iniki, which struck production during location shoots in Kauai, but because they managed to fit in with the plot, it was decided to use them.
To give the 1993 Ford Explorer XLTs the appearance that they were driverless and were running on an electric track, the SUVs were driven by remote from the rear cargo area of the vehicle. The driver was hidden under the Ford Explorer's cargo canvas, which was always pulled closed during filming. To see where to steer the SUV, the driver watched a small television, that was fed outside images via two cameras. One camera was mounted on the dash in front of the steering wheel, and the other was mounted on the lower center portion of the front bumper, above a black box. Both cameras can be clearly seen in the movie several times.
Sir Richard Attenborough plays Joseph Mazzello's grandfather. He subsequently cast Mazzello in his next film, Shadowlands (1993).
David Koepp trimmed much of the characters' excessive details, because he felt that whenever they started talking about their personal lives, he couldn't care less, and neither would the audience. He instead substituted individual moments like Malcolm flirting with Ellie, making Grant jealous, or Lex's adolescent crush on Grant, who fails to notice.
It was while supervising post-production on this film that George Lucas decided that technology was good enough to begin work on the Star Wars prequels. Appropriately, Samuel L. Jackson was able to appear in those films as well.
To study the movement of the Gallimimus herd, the film's digital artists were ordered to run along a stretch of road with some obstacles, their hands next to their chest.
Paleontologist Robert Bakker was blown away by the film's dinosaurs; Tim name-checks Bakker when talking to Grant.
Jurassic Park had perhaps the most rigorous marketing campaign ever conducted for a film, up to that point, costing up to 65 million dollars, including licensing deals with 100 companies to market 1,000 products. Merchandise, with the Jurassic Park name on it, included toy dinosaurs, calendars, "Making-of" books, action figures, bread, yogurt, fast-food, video games, a deal with McDonalds for "Dino-sized meals", a junior novelization, comic books, a Jurassic Park Discovery Centre at Islands of Adventure, shirts, etc. Although this led to a somewhat blasé reaction when the film premiered, the marketing turned Jurassic Park into a box-office phenomenon, and toppled E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), previously Steven Spielberg's most commercially successful film. It's said the marketing cost more, and made more, than the film did, setting a new record for tie-ins, over one thousand individual deals that generated over a billion dollars in revenue.
Wrapped twelve days ahead of schedule, but there was still a lot of work to be done. Steven Spielberg then worked with Michael Kahn to edit the film, before any dinosaurs were added. They trimmed the film for weeks, wanting Jurassic Park (1993) to look great without the dinosaurs, before they were added, which would make the film even greater.
The sick triceratops was designed with a very colorful pattern on its skin. Once the creature was brought on location, however, Stan Winston decided that, to be realistic, the animal should be covered with dirt from its surrounding environment.
Although his character is opposed to it, Jeff Goldblum thinks a dinosaur safari park is a cool idea.
The Triceratops scene was a major operation. Most of the dinosaur scenes were shot on sound-stages, but Steven Spielberg wanted this scene shot on location in Hawaii. The puppeteers loved this decision because the dust and the dirt tied it into the environment. It was also the first dinosaur the actors saw; they were blown away by its realism. Stan Winston's team dug a hole beneath the puppet and eight puppeteers below operated cables and push-rods. The backside of the Triceratops had a door with three or four men inside. The only one of the actors not impressed was Joseph Mazzello because the first dinosaur he got to see up close didn't do anything. To get the Triceratops to breathe, Gary Rydstrom blew into a toy called a "zube tube" to add the harmonics.
James Cameron said in an interview he wanted to do the film with Arnold Schwarzenegger as Grant, Bill Paxton as Malcolm and Charlton Heston as Hammond.
According to Fandango, it would cost approximately $23,432,400,000 to build a real life Jurassic Park (in 2015 USD):
- 1.5 billion dollars - The cost for the park, itself.
- Ten billion dollars - To purchase an island off the coast of Costa Rica with 66 square miles of land (22 square miles for Isla Nublar and 44 square miles for Isla Sorna).
- Eight million dollars - Research and legal team.
- Nine million dollars - Harvesting dinosaur DNA.
- 8.5 million dollars - Overhead to clone dinosaurs from the DNA.
- Eleven billion dollars a year (32 million dollars per day) - Employee payroll and operations budget.
- 200 million dollars a year - Dinosaur food budget.
When Grant feeds the Brachiosaur, the head was twelve feet high, on a dolly, so it could move in on wheels, and the actors would have something to which to react. The Brachiosaur snot was methacryl; Steven Spielberg insisted it be green, if it has a cold. Ariana Richards gets asked about that scene in every Jurassic Park interview; she refuses to talk about it anymore. To create the sound of the sneeze, Sound Designer Gary Rydstrom used the combination of a whale's blowhole and a fire hose turning on from the Skywalker Ranch Fire Department. For the singing, he slowed down a donkey yodel, and stretched it out into a song.
Although Jurassic Park managed to outperform E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982),, as the most successful film worldwide in history, it did not top E.T.'s gross in North America.
As of April 2015, the Brontosaurus officially does exist. Researchers from the UK and Portugal, analyzed a wealth of evidence, and determined that there is enough variation between the fossils to warrant a separate classification.
When getting an update on a storm, Hammond says "Why didn't I build in Orlando?" The distributor, Universal Studios, has two theme parks there. One of them, Islands of Adventure, has a Jurassic Park themed area and rides.
On the last night of filming, cast and crew lifted their glasses in a champagne toast and the weary, but enthusiastic Steven Spielberg announced that Jurassic Park, after two years in planning and four months before the cameras finished on budget, and twelve days ahead of schedule.
The film cut out many species of dinosaur that were featured in the novel for budgetary and technological reasons. One of these was a small, chicken-sized dinosaur called Procompsognathids, which later made an appearance in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). Dr. Wu explains their reason for having this creature: Dinosaur excrement, he presumes, would have been bio-degradable during the Cenozoic era. However, in the modern day, bacteria have evolved to the point that it is no longer able to break down dinosaur waste, and the larger dinosaurs produce quite a lot of it. "Compys," as they are called, eat the other dinosaurs' waste and then excrete it themselves in smaller piles which are more easily broken down by present-day bacteria. The lack of compys in the film may explain the mountain of excrement that Ellie finds.
Steven Spielberg didn't want people to be constantly reminded that what they're seeing is CGI, but real, full-blooded dinosaurs, starting with the Brachiosaur scene, where Spielberg was keen on the dinosaur interacting with the background, and would offer suggestions to the animators on how to make it better. The second scene done in that same vein was the Gallimimus scene, which made use of 25 animated individual Gallimimuses. Geometric shapes represented them initially and were choreographed onto the scene. Spielberg needed complete freedom to convey the energy of the scene, so worked with Dennis Muren to shoot it, because he wanted to move the camera and not lock it down everytime a Gallimimus came into frame. The scene was shot gradually with Sam Neill, Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards running through a field by themselves. A grid was placed over the ground as a frame to chart the movement of the camera by computer, using what looked like golf balls whenever an actor looked somewhere. The dinosaurs were than added later.
The best dinosaur movies in the past were done with stop-motion photography, but Steven Spielberg wanted to push the effects envelope. After interviewing every effects shop in town, a cadre of effects people were assembled. Stan Winston created the live action dinosaurs, which were to be quick, mobile, full-size animals. Winston broke Jurassic Park into three phases; research, design and construction. Winston's team spent a year on research, consulting with paleontologists, museums and hundreds of texts. His artists prepared detailed sketches and renderings, that later led to 1/5th scale sculptures and the twenty-foot T-Rex.
While subtle, Nedry's hillside spill during the dilophosaurus sequence is accompanied by a cartoonish "slide whistle" sound.
The reason Velociraptors and Deinonychus share the same attributes in the film is allegedly because Michael Crichton got them mixed up in the novel.
Steven Spielberg's most commercially successful film.
The Brachiosaur scene was the second dinosaur scene with the actors, and took a long time to film, because Sam Neill and Laura Dern had to react to nothing most of the time, and Steven Spielberg was coming up with new shots on the spot.
When Juanito is meeting Gennaro at the beginning when Gennaro is on the raft Juanito says in Spanish "Apuesto mil pesos que se cae" which means in English "I bet a thousand pesos he falls off".
According to Foley Artist Dennie Thorpe, the sounds of the hatching baby dinosaurs were created by a combination of crushing ice cream cones (egg shell breaking), squishing cantaloupe melon halves (embryonic emergence), goo-smeared pineapple skin (baby dinosaur flesh cleansing).
To film the scene when the T-Rex ate a Gallimimus, a man waved a long stick with a drawing of a T-Rex head at the end of it. Joseph Mazzello thought it looked amateurish, more like a child's drawing. It made him think of Ian Malcolm's line "Uh, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs, on your dinosaur tour, right?"
Fred Sorenson was the pilot who flew the crew off Kauai when the hurricane hit during production. He played Jock, the pilot who flew Indiana Jones away in the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), also directed by Steven Spielberg.
After Malcolm snatches the radio off of Hammond, and gives Ellie directions on how to get to the power box, Jeff Goldblum doesn't have any more dialogue from that point on.
The film is quite faithful to the novel, no doubt because of Michael Crichton's involvement with the screenplay. In fact, both are said to be thin on plot and characterization, but there are some differences. Alan and Ellie were never a couple in the book, and indeed, by the time of Jurassic Park III (2001), have gone their separate ways; Hammond has gone from a misguided fanatic to a kindly, but eccentric billionaire; Lex and Tim have swapped ages, are closer, and Tim is the computer hacker in the novel while Lex is a petulant, useless character but more capable in the film; Grant becomes an uncomfortable surrogate father figure to Lex and Tim who softens his attitude over the film, no doubt Steven Spielberg's influence; Arnold, Muldoon, Gennaro, and Dr. Wu all have bigger roles in the book; the night vision goggles are put to more use in the novel; aerial dinosaurs are not seen until the sequels, etc.
Steven Spielberg wanted the dinosaurs portrayed as animals and not monsters, hence Grant's line to Lex. Paleontologists were brought in to do that, like Jack Horner and Robert Bakker, two of the world's foremost dinosaur experts. Horner vetoed an idea that Raptors had snake tongues because that would sabotage his theory that they're related to birds.
A large photo of J. Robert Oppenheimer (one of the scientists who created the atomic bomb) is displayed on Dennis Nedry's workstation.
Was followed by two sequels within one decade after its release. There were plans for a fourth film, but they were immediately scrapped in late 2008, after the death of Michael Crichton. However, in 2012, they eventually did decide to set things into motion, and Jurassic World was finally released in 2015.
During the Gallimimus scene, Sam Neill, Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello were shown pictures of them first, then went out to the hills of Oahu in Hawaii and told to run and run and run. Neill couldn't visualize the finished scene, but Steven Spielberg had a megaphone strapped to his head and made his feelings known. He worked with all three actors, trying to find more in the scene than on the page. When the herd turned right, Phil Tippett thought Mazzello should say "I think we're going to get flocked!" Spielberg said no and changed it to "They're uh...they're flocking this way." The log the Gallimimuses touched were painstakingly rigged by wires and miniature explosives so when Alan, Lex and Tim hid behind it, crew members shook it to make it vibrate.
King Kong (1933) was Steven Spielberg's biggest influence on Jurassic Park (1993), and the main reason why he wanted to direct it, hence Ian Malcolm's line "What have they got in there? King Kong?" After seeing the King Kong puppet on the Universal Studios tour, Spielberg asked the designer to apply the same principles to Jurassic Park's dinosaurs, e.g. smoothness, muscle tone, etc.
Dr. Wu, in both the film and the novel, seems unaware of the implications of what he's created; scientists in Michael Crichton novels are often ignorant of the consequences of what they create.
As the story takes place on an island near Costa Rica, the filmmakers originally considered filming in Costa Rica. This idea was quickly abandoned when they realized that the Costa Rican government would not allow them to build roads to get to their filming locations.
In Michael Crichton's novel, John Hammond proudly says that the narrator on the prerecorded park tour is Richard Kiley. Later, Kiley was hired to play himself in that role for the movie; possibly the first instance of a celebrity appearing in a book, and then later cast as him or herself in the film version. This feat was not repeated until 2009, when boxer Paolo Roberto played himself in the film version of The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009). He too was already previously featured as a character in the book.
Steven Spielberg considered Richard Dreyfuss, who starred in his Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), for the role of Dr. Alan Grant.
The casting process was fairly easy; Sir Richard Attenborough was the last to be cast. Attenborough hadn't acted since 1979. Attenborough knew Steven Spielberg was the perfect director for the material, after reading the novel.
Malcolm's speech to Hammond about the dangers of Jurassic Park are condensed from the novel: "Scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast. There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy. Cheat, lie, falsify - it doesn't matter. Not to you, nor to your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards." This may have been edited by the film to make Malcolm seem less arrogant.
The T-Rex's visual acuity based on movement (which is true of most animals) was not entirely right in the movie; it still had an incredible sense of smell and would have sniffed out its prey if not for a sinus infection, in the film allegedly. An aspect that was used in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997).
When scouting in Kauai, Steven Spielberg thought the jungle looked like broccoli. He wanted a division between the clearing and the tops of the trees for the first scene with the Brachiosaur. Initially, it was to appear behind some trees but they obstructed it.
Sets were constructed on five of Universal's largest soundstages and one enormous Warner Brothers stage.
In the egg-hatching scene, a new-born baby triceratops was originally supposed to come out of the egg, but it was changed to a velociraptor.
Whereas in the movie, Dr. Grant claims that T-rex's vision was based on movement as a fact, in the novel, he was surprised that many dinosaurs only reacted to movement, and this lead him to deduce that there was an error in their cloning processes. Due to the movie being more famous, many laypeople believe that T-rex's vision was movement-based in reality, but this is incorrect, as it probably had very good vision, as expected from a top predator.
The Triceratops is Grant's favorite dinosaur, and it was also Steven Spielberg's because "three horns are better than one".
The roar of the Tyrannosaurus Rex has been used for most monsters ever since the film's release, as it signifies a large animal's large lungs.
Robin Wright was offered the role of Dr. Ellie Sattler.
Later in the movie, as one of the Jeeps pulls up, right before they get out, the camera zooms in on the Jeep door. The Jurassic Park logo is on the door, but it is covered in mud so that the only words that can be read is "ur ass Park", perhaps a subtle joke about many of the characters getting hurt or killed in the movie.
The day Hurricane Iniki hit was not a complete loss. Steven Spielberg convinced Dean Cundey to shoot footage of it before being locked into the hotel ballroom. This footage appears in the film, representing the storm that hits the island in the story.
Anna Chlumsky and Christina Ricci auditioned for the role of Lex Murphy, but the part went to Ariana Richards.
Both times Lex and Tim are left by an adult - by Gennaro when he leaves the Explorer, and by Grant at the Visitors Center - they come under attack from a dinosaur or dinosaurs.
The movie marked the climax of the "Dinosaur Renaissance", a groundbreaking scientific revolution that lasted from the '60s until the early '90s, during which dinosaurs went from being seen as sluggish, dimwitted and cold-blooded reptiles to the agile, intelligent and warm-blooded animals depicted in the film. It also presented a new kind of visual "design" of the dinosaurs to the public. Much of this can be traced back to the works of paleontologists John Ostrom (who first realized the uniqueness of "raptor" dinosaurs), Bob Bakker, Jack Horner (on whom the character of Dr. Alan Grant was based) and Gregory Paul. In fact, modern day paleontologists often jokingly call the '90s and early 2000s the "Paulian Era", because the appearances of the dinosaurs in the movie and in virtually every other piece of work created at this time were based on reconstructions originally made by Greg Paul. Newer scientific findings have, however, proven much of these to be incorrect, which has lead to the coining of the term "shrink-wrapped dinosaurs", as many of Paul's reconstructions (and by extension, the JP dinosaurs) look like dinosaur skeletons coated in muscle and skin, but virtually no other soft tissue.
The scene where the T-Rex comes out of the bushes and eats the gallimimus was actually shot on the island of Oahu at Kualoa Ranch. This was the only outdoor scene not filmed on Kauai, due to Hurricane Iniki.
Steven Spielberg wanted the dinosaurs to breathe in and out, pulsing visibly and the eyes to dilate like on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) because it made them more real, and was also scary to see.
Tim makes references about Robert Bakker and his dinosaur book. Bakker was a technical advisor on Jurassic Park (1993) and was the inspiration for the character of Alan Grant in the original novel.
Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton first met over two decades earlier, when Spielberg gave Crichton a tour of Universal Studios during the production of The Andromeda Strain (1971).
Much of the behavior seen in the film is based on modern wild animals, since little is known of the actual behavior of dinosaurs.
The leaf Ellie examines, is something she took en route, and it's in the trailer, but not the final film.
Steven Spielberg remained in contact with ILM while he was in Poland filming Schindler's List (1993) through teleconferences four times a week. He described the extra workload as "a bipolar experience, with every ounce of intuition on Schindler's List, and every ounce of craft on Jurassic Park". He rented two satellite channels through a Polish television station (for 1.5 million dollars a week) and kept them open at all times, and downloaded, from Hollywood each day, the visuals on one, and the sound through the other. He then spent evenings and weekends working on them with video equipment.
In the shots of the gift shop, clearly visible, is a book entitled "The Making of Jurassic Park" by Don Shay and Jody Duncan. This title was published, but tells the behind-the-scenes story of how the film was made. Jody Duncan also wrote the "Making of" book for The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997).
The tyrannosaur paddock set was constructed both on location and as a studio set. The former was for the daytime scene in which the creature fails to appear, and the latter for its nighttime escape, in order to accommodate Stan Winston's robotic t-rex. This set required a soundstage much bigger than Universal had to offer, so it was filmed at Warner Bros.
Michael Crichton was hired to adapt his novel for the big screen for 500,000 dollars, but David Koepp wrote the final draft, leaving out much of the novel's exposition and violence, as well as making a few character changes.
Real Velociraptors were actually barely 1.6 ft. tall, much smaller than the ones depicted in the movie. Shortly after the movie release, a dinosaur was discovered in Utah that was almost identical to the Velociraptor in the film. Although the idea was finally scrapped, one of the proposed names for the new species was "Utahraptor spielbergi".
B.D. Wong auditioned using pages from the novel, as the script had not been finished yet. As such, he expected Dr. Wu to play as prominent a role in the film. He didn't find out until production had started, that he was only needed for one day.
The real species called Velociraptor was much smaller (about 3' tall) than the animals in the film and were believed to have been feathered. They were part of bipedal, bird-like predators of the family Dromaeosauridae, some of which were even larger than the "velociraptors" in the film.
Brachiosaurus means "arm lizard" and was one of the largest animals ever weighing up to ninety tons. They were called sauropods. The Brachiosaur was one of the few dinosaurs in the film that lived in the Jurassic period, 200 million years ago, but it was the Triassic that launched the age of dinosaurs. Tim mentioned Brontosauruses which were used in the film, which means "thunder lizard" and were smaller about thirty to forty tons.
In a 2010 poll, Entertainment Weekly rated Jurassic Park the greatest Summer movie of the last twenty years.
The park software is written in Pascal; a program is clearly visible in one of the monitor close-ups on the UNIX system. The graphical interface recognized as a UNIX system was the experimental Silicon Graphics 3-D File System Navigator. The version number of the Silicon Graphics UNIX Operating System is 4.0.5 and is visible in one of the close-ups in the operating system's shell window (command program).
To showcase the film's sound design, Steven Spielberg invested in the creation of DTS, a company specializing in digital surround sound formats, so it would allow audiences to "really hear the movie the way it was intended to be heard". George Lucas supervised the sound crew while Spielberg was in Poland working on Schindler's List (1993). The work was finished by the end of April. Sound designer Gary Rydstrom considered it a fun process, given the film had all kinds of noises: animal sounds; rain; gunshots; car crashes; scenes without music, etc. Spielberg took the weekends to fly from Poland to Paris, where he would meet Rydstrom to see the sound progress.
Steven Spielberg's most expensive film at that point in his career.
Malcolm distracting the dinosaur with a flare was included at Jeff Goldblum's suggestion, as he felt a heroic action was better than going by the script, where like Gennaro, Malcolm would get scared and run away.
In the scene where the helicopter lands on the island, dummies were used instead of real passengers because of the riskyness of the descent at that location (Manawaiopuna Falls).
No music is used during the first T-Rex scene or the Dilophosaurus scene. That has also happened in the film, Jaws (1975)-another Steven Spielberg classic-when the last victim is eaten.
Steven Spielberg knew as soon as his kids saw the model T-Rex they wouldn't want to go home, which is just the reaction he wanted. Michael Crichton also viewed the model, and was impressed.
The ripples in the glass of water caused by the T. Rex's footsteps was inspired by Steven Spielberg listening to Earth, Wind and Fire in his car, and the vibrations the bass rhythm caused. Michael Lantieri was unsure of how to create the shot until the night before filming, when he put a glass of water on a guitar he was playing, which achieved the concentric circles in the water Spielberg wanted. The next morning, guitar strings were put inside the car and a man on the floor plucked the strings to achieve the effect.
Malcolm is interested in a relationship with Ellie; in real life, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern did get involved and were engaged for two years before breaking it off. Goldblum is famous for striking up relationships with co-stars.
Steven Spielberg refuses to record a Director's Commentary for any of his films.
Laura Dern loved filming the Raptor attack in the tunnels of the maintenance shed.
Steven Spielberg wanted the film to honor dinosaurs in a way that had never been seen before; he wanted the audience to believe what they were seeing.
There were two animatronic Tyrannosaurus built for filming. One was the full-body version, the other only consisted of a head, and was used for closeups.
The film visits four places within the first thirteen minutes. After that, the film stays on Isla Nublar.
As well as the Brachiosaurs when Grant and Ellie first arrive in Jurassic Park, the other dinosaurs they see in the distance are Parasaurolophus.
Steven Spielberg wanted all the top special effects people in the business to work on the film as the design team, Stan Winston, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri. They jumped at the chance.
On the walls inside Grant and Settler's trailer are a couple of scientific skeletal reconstructions of raptors, according to how they had really been imagined in the beginning of the '90s. Interestingly, these are actually the most accurate dinosaur reconstructions on the film, having been made by paleontologist and paleo-artist Gregory Paul, whose book (Predatory Dinosaurs of the World) Michael Crichton studied when writing the original Jurassic Park novel. One of the papers on the wall is in fact a page from Paul's book.
In a moment of the movie, one Velociraptor appears in head shot illuminated with a computer screen full of four letters repeated time and time again: "ACGT". These letters are the acronym for Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine, DNA's base pairs.
William Hurt was offered the role of Dr. Grant, but he turned it down without reading the book or the script.
The Gallimimus vocals were done with horses, male and female, because the females make interesting sounds when a male horse shows up like high pitched squealing. The stampede sound was running horses or cattle getting herded.
Steven Spielberg studied the effects sequences on Terminator 2 (1991), The Abyss (1989) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) to help prep him for work on Jurassic Park.
A life-size T-Rex drawing on the wall of Stan Winston's studio helped create the real thing. The T-Rex was so enormous, they had to raise the roof to accommodate the sculpture.
In 1993, over fifty CGI dinosaur effects had to be added, an unprecedented number at that time, calling upon the most powerful computers at ILM (they took up three rooms). They go through millions of cycles, and the animators had to deliver dinosaur performances. Phil Tippett had the animators mime like dinosaurs to convey them better on screen. Tippett also had the animators design a dinosaur input device to translate movements to the dinosaurs on screen. Real animal movements were studied too, like iguanas, giraffes, rhinos, crocodiles, elephants, and ostriches were incorporated.
Michael Crichton was delighted to be writing the screenplay, as was his custom, but it was one of Steven Spielberg's customs to bring in other writers, which he did, when he hired David Koepp to write the final draft.
The Dilophosaurus model was made deliberately smaller than the real thing, so as not to confuse it with the Raptors. It was nicknamed "Spitter" by Stan Winston's team.
Dr. Alan Grant is based on famous paleontologist Jack Horner.
Harrison Ford has never watched Jurassic Park all the way through. He was offered the role of Dr. Alan Grant but turned it down.
The picture that can be seen taped to programmer Dennis Nedry's computer monitor is of J. Robert Oppenheimer. The picture is partly obscured by a post-it with an atomic bomb mushroom cloud drawn on it.
On September 11, 1992, Hurricane Iniki hit the island of Kauai, delaying production of the film. Much of the crew helped in the clean up.
Dr. Alan Grant has at least 2 dinosaur models from the 1988 Carnegie Collection: The original green color Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the adult Apatosaurus.
The helicopter used in the movie, was later involved in an accident in Hawaii in March 2001. In the accident, the chopper dropped ten feet to the ground, bounced back up and then tipped on its right side.
The Brachiosaurs chewing food (something they never did really) was added to make them seem more docile, like a cow chewing her cud. Also, they had limited vocal capabilities but were given whale song, donkey calls and penguin noise to make them sound melodic.
The third dinosaur scene with the cast was at the Raptor pen, where Steven Spielberg provided some of the vocalizations to motivate the actors.
Compositing dinosaurs onto live action scenes took up to an hour. Rendering them took from two to four hours per frame, but the T-Rex in the rain took up to six hours.
Jack Horner's research is controversial, which is exactly why he found Jurassic Park, and its idea of reviving dinosaurs, especially a T-Rex, fascinating. But he is opposed to the idea of scientists reviving them.
Ariana Richards regretted never getting to work with the Dilophosaurus or even see it during the shoot because it was a real surprise when watching the film. She was glad she didn't get spat at though.
Kurt Russell turned down the role of Dr. Alan Grant, due to salary demands.
The second highest-grossing film of the twentieth century (not adjusted for inflation), behind Titanic (1997).
At the 66th Academy Awards, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List and Jurassic Park competed for the Best Sound category. Ultimately, Jurassic Park won the Academy Award for Best Sound.
There have been attempts made before and after the film to locate preserved dinosaur DNA. Ten percent of the time, they were successful, but never a completely uncontaminated sample.
The release strategy was planned fifteen months before the studio had the chance to see a frame of the movie.
Steven Spielberg needed miniature photography for any wide angle, or full-length dinosaur shots.
Michael Crichton's original idea for the screenplay was about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur; he continued to wrestle with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he turned it into a novel. Steven Spielberg first learned of it in October 1989.
Jack Horner described the T-Rex model as "the closest I've ever been to a live dinosaur".
The T-Rex model was the largest sculpture ever made by the Stan Winston studio.
A Jurassic Park tourist attraction was unveiled at Dorset's Dinosaur Museum. Also, there's a Jurassic Park log flume ride at Universal Studios in Los Angeles; indeed, all of the Universal Parks and Resorts include a theme ride associated with the film. The first was Jurassic Park: The Ride on June 15th, 1996, built after six years of development for 110 million dollars. It was replicated for Universal Studios Japan, in 2001. Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida (a place Hammond wished he had built the real park), has an entire section dedicated to the film that includes the main ride, christened "Jurassic Park River Adventure" and many smaller rides and attractions based on the series. In Universal Studios Singapore, which opened in 2010, the Themed Zone named The Lost World consists mostly of Jurassic Park rides, such as the roller coaster Canopy Flyer and the river rapids Jurassic Park Rapids Adventure.
Michael Crichton was encouraged to write the novel after he took the idea about dinosaur cloning to some scientists who saw the plausibility in it. Crichton told Steven Spielberg the idea and he loved it, so Spielberg coaxed the rest of the story out of him. Spielberg then storyboarded the book (something he had never done before), with scenes he wanted to carry over to the film.
Michael Crichton spent years working on the story, trying to convince himself the premise was not so unlikely; he had to do a lot of research before he could.
Steven Spielberg managed to acquire the film rights before the novel was even published for 1.5 million dollars in 1990.
Jurassic Park gave a much needed boost to Michael Crichton's flagging career. After the global success of the film, Crichton became a hot commodity in Hollywood, with many of his novels adapted into films.
Phil Tippett recruited a team to supply more than fifty Go-Motion (a more refined version of stop-motion) shots.
In the movie, Alan Grant clearly states that he hates kids, and later in the movie, develops a relationship with Lex and Tim after their adventure through the park. But in the book, Grant says that he loves kids, and watching their awed expressions at museums as they see dinosaur skeletons.
Steven Spielberg identified with Hammond's obsession with showmanship.
Steven Spielberg wouldn't have made the film if he felt he couldn't get away with it, or shared a personal connection with it; notions he has on all of his films.
Steven Spielberg supervised the post-production on Jurassic Park concurrently with the filming of Schindler's List (1993).
Released into 3-D on April 5, 2013, for the film's 20th Anniversary. Other countries saw the re-release over the following six months. This release also had a Burger King promotional tie-in. Many people felt the 3-D conversion didn't enhance the effects in any way, mainly because most of the dinosaur scenes are set at night, and shadows don't come out the screen very well the way the day scenes do. This re-release pushed the film's total gross to a billion dollars, the seventeenth film to do so. It now ranks as the fourteenth highest grossing film worldwide, the sixteenth highest grossing film in North America (unadjusted for inflation) and the highest grossing film released by Universal Pictures and directed by Steven Spielberg. Spielberg claimed he had produced the film with a "subconscious 3-D" since the film has animals walking toward the cameras and some effects of foreground and background overlay. In 2011, he stated that Jurassic Park was the only film he had made he had considered for a conversion, and once he saw the 3-D version of Titanic (1997), he really liked the new look of the film that he hired the same retrofitting company. Spielberg and Janusz Kaminski supervised the nine month process during the production of Lincoln (2012). ILM contributed some elements and updated effects shots for a better visual enhancement.
Broke the opening weekend record that had been set by Batman Returns (1992). It broke opening records in several countries.
The film used CGI to bring dinosaurs to life. When Michael Crichton directed Looker (1981), he predicted such a technology, but put to far more sinister purposes. Crichton was always a skeptic about new technologies.
Jodie Foster, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ally Sheedy, Geena Davis, Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Grey, Kelly McGillis, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julia Roberts, Linda Hamilton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bridget Fonda, Joan Cusack, and Debra Winger were all considered for the role of Dr. Ellie Sattler.
The character played by Cameron Thor is named Lewis Dodgson. Author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Lewis Carroll was born with the name Charles Dodgson. Since both the first and last names of the character are written with the less common spellings which Carroll used, this is a fairly obvious nod to him, although the reason for the joke is unclear. Lewis Carroll's novel is referenced again when Nedry names his program to sabotage the park security systems "White Rabbit Object", which is in the novel.
The Dilophosaurus was made smaller than an actual one to differentiate it from the Raptors and to not have it compete with the T-Rex. But by making it smaller it fit the story, because at first you don't take it seriously but then you see how dangerous it is.
In the 5th edition of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Jurassic Park (1993) is listed.
When filming the kitchen scene, which was filled with reflective surfaces, Dean Cundey had to plan the illumination while using black cloths to hide the light reflections.
In reality, Dilophosaurus actually measured around seven meters (23 feet) long, and weighed close to 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds). In addition to making it venomous, and adding a neck frill, Steven Spielberg also reduced the size of Dilophosaurus to .91 meters (three feet) tall, and 1.5 meters (five feet) long, so viewers wouldn't confuse it with the Velociraptors.
Included among the American Film Institute's 1998 list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.
Phil Tippett, the dinosaur supervisor on the film did the Brachiosaur scenes first. They were difficult because of the new technology. He wanted flesh moving, so when the feet went down you saw tremors through the muscles. Dean Cundey made it appear like it was nibbling by attaching a cable to the top of the tree and pulled on it to get the branch to react and snap; the animators carefully coordinated the animation with that.
Phil Tippett was disappointed that Steven Spielberg wanted 100 percent CGI, and no Go-Motion, but Tippett became the director of the CGI dinosaurs, almost like an animal trainer.
Hammond describes Muldoon as an "alarmist". Michael Crichton was often alarmist about scientific discoveries, as mirrored in Muldoon and Malcolm's characters.
Although this was one of the first movies to use CGI, it was pioneered (albeit in its infancy) on another Steven Spielberg film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Steven Spielberg left the editing for two weeks to start shooting Schindler's List (1993) in Poland.
The Jeep being chased by the T-Rex is inspired by the movie Hatari! (1962).
According to Daan Sandee (Thinking Machines Corp), the CM-5 super computer, used in the control room, was one of only two ever built to that size (1024 nodes). The other machine was at Los Alamos. The machine used in the movie, was sold in smaller segments after the scenes were complete. Mirrors were used to make it seem like more CM-5's were present.
Universal's Stage 24 became the industrial size kitchen set. Stan Winston's team manipulated every moving part of the full size Raptors, while Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello cowered in a corner.
Raptors are close knit, smart, fast, and maneuverable in their choreography more than any dinosaur. They could manipulate things with their fingers, as shown in the film where they learn to open a door.
The global success of the film created a worldwide interest in dinosaurs, and a sudden interest in museums.
Nicole Kidman, Heather Graham, Lisa Rinna, Renée Zellweger, Kim Raver, and Mariska Hargitay were among those considered for the role of Dr. Ellie Sattler.
Ian Malcolm only sees four dinosaurs: Brachiosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Triceratops, and the baby velociraptor.
Laura Linney auditioned for the role of Ellie Sattler.
Although composed by John Williams, his score for Jurassic Park is not often counted among Williams' more famous film scores. In 2013, for the 20th Anniversary of the film, Williams released an album that restored fourteen minutes of music, cut from the original film.
Michael Keaton, Bruce Campbell, Johnny Depp, Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg, and Michael J. Fox were screen-tested for the part of Ian Malcolm.
Phil Tippett acted as a consultant on dinosaur anatomy on the film.
Jurassic Park was completed on May 28, 1993, and released into theaters on June 11, 1993, but it premiered two days earlier at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., in support of two children's charities. Its nationwide release was in 2,404 locations on an estimated 3,400 screens, with an international 3,400 prints. Following release, a traveling exhibition called "The Dinosaurs of Jurassic Park" began, showcasing dinosaur skeletons and props from the film.
The Triceratops scene was a logistical nightmare for Stan Winston when Steven Spielberg moved up the shoot of the animatronics. It took eight puppeteers to operate it in Kauai. Gary Rydstrom combined the sound of him breathing into a cardboard tube with the cows near his workplace at Skywalker ranch to create the vocals.
Stan Winston claimed the first T-Rex attack was the most amazing scene he had ever worked on, at that point in his career. It was difficult, because it was raining, and that had to be kept off the T-Rex, otherwise it would soak it up, start shaking, and change weight, and have to be dried off.
Ian Bannen and Jon Pertwee were possibles for Hammond.
Costa Rica was dismissed as a location, because of Steven Spielberg's concerns about infrastructure and accessibility. He chose Kauai as a location, because he had worked there before.
Some on the crew were worried that the computers would replace them, but instead it created more work for them.
Isla Nublar is Research Team 93, according to Jurassic Park merchandise; Jurassic Park was one of the most merchandised films of 1993.
During the kitchen scene, the Raptors are outmaneuvered more than once, perhaps because they're outside their element, and are unfamiliar with a man-made environment, e.g. the reflective surfaces they mistake for Lex. Its often the film's most celebrated scene, at least whenever the T-Rex is not around.
When Lex nearly fell through the ceiling, the stunt girl looked up at the camera and Ariana Richards' face had to be superimposed, something not possible before the advent of CGI; it's considered one of the film's most thrilling visuals.
The Gallimimus stampede took place in a pasture. The crew came across a herd of cows and jokingly offered them jobs, offering to dress them up in latex as dinosaurs. Sadly, they all ran away.
The computer in the back of the computer room with the many (65536) red LEDs is actually a real computer: The Connection Machine CM-5 made by Thinking Machines. It contained many SPARC 2 RISC processors and the LEDs were added to make the machine more aesthetically pleasing than their previous models. Unfortunately, it was not actually a very good supercomputer and the company failed not long afterward. The comment about networking eight connection machines is pretty superfluous as they were meant to be used like this. The bigger problem was writing programs that efficiently mapped onto the data parallel architecture.
In May, 1990 Universal Pictures obtained galleys of Jurassic Park and wanted to purchase it on Steven Spielberg's behalf. Michael Crichton had written the book in two years; of the four major studios bidding on it, Crichton was happiest with Spielberg's involvement, and less than a week later, Spielberg got the job of directing it.
Attributed with changing the way films were made in the future, after utilizing the best technology ILM had available. ILM wanted the dinosaurs to move naturally, so they studied animal behavior, movements and body language of elephants, alligators, ostriches, and lions. The graphic designers received special training, including movement lessons, to capture dinosaur behavioral nuances.
In anticipation of its Blu-ray release, Jurassic Park had a digital print released into UK cinemas on September 23, 2011. It wound up grossing 245,422 pounds from 276 theaters finishing at eleventh on the weekend box-office charts.
Made its VHS and LaserDisc debut on October 4, 1994. With seventeen million units sold in both formats, its the fifth best-selling VHS tape ever. It was first released on DVD on October 10, 2000. It was the thirteenth best-selling DVD of the year, with 910,000 units sold. In 2012, Jurassic Park (1993) was among 25 films Universal Pictures picked for a box-set that celebrated the studio's 100th Anniversary, as well as in Blu-ray, with an augmented reality cover. The following year, the 20th Anniversary 3-D conversion was issued on Blu-ray 3-D.
Shooting on Kauai was completed by mid September, 1992 and then the crew shot the first scene with Grant and Ellie in the Mojave desert in two days. The rest of the movie was shot on soundstages, like the Genetics lab, the Visitors Centre and the T-Rex paddock. The first T-Rex attack gave the crew more control being shot on a soundstage, with CGI and animatronics interacting with the cast, and the set, and real-life, while being controlled off-screen.
Juliette Binoche was offered the role of Dr. Ellie Sattler, but turned it down, in order to make Three Colors: Blue (1993) with Krzysztof Kieslowski.
Jack Horner supervised all of the dinosaur designs, to get them as close to the real thing as possible.
Location shooting began on Kauai in August, 1992, for three weeks. Kauai was chosen, because it was the perfect environment, if you wanted to see a dinosaur, and it was strong visually. Steven Spielberg wanted the park itself to look as real as possible.
Velociraptor also means "quick plunderer". They're level of intelligence in the film, is equivalent to a chimpanzee with similar grasping hands.
Clint Eastwood and Marlon Brando were considered for the part of John Hammond.
Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy began recruiting the design team in the Summer of 1990. They wanted the freedom to create a reality, where their imaginations were unrestricted in Hawaii, on soundstages, or through CGI.
Dr. Grant discovery, that dinosaurs move in herds, is taken from Jack Horner's research; Horner owns a Deinonychus claw, similar to the Raptor claw Grant owns.
Steven Spielberg considered hiring Bob Gurr to do the full size dinosaurs because he was impressed with his apes in the "Kongfrontation" ride at Universal Studios.
Much of the dinosaur behavior in the film, derives from information gleaned at digs in Montana like the one in the film, America's biggest dinosaur graveyard.
Dinosaur experts Jack Horner and Robert Bakker were consulted before making the film, and both were name-checked in the novel as well.
Dennis Quaid, Kevin Costner, Mel Gibson, and Robin Williams were considered for the role of Alan Grant.
Bob Hoskins and Jeffrey Jones were considered for the role of Muldoon.
In the movie, Dr. Grant resuscitates Tim, after he is shocked by the electric fence. In the book it is Lex who is the one resuscitated by Dr. Grant, after nearly drowning in a river escape.
The film has an almost similar plot with that of the H.G. Wells novel "The Island of Dr. Moreau". In the novel, the scientist Dr. Moreau has conducted genetic experiments on his island which mutant hybrids of man and animals were created and inhabit the island. Both the film and novel, John Hammond has set up a theme park on an island where genetic scientists have cloned dinosaurs.
The dilophosaurus's venom was originally to be pale green. However, the combination of studio set lights and artificial rain rendered it nearly invisible on film, so it had to be darkened.
Brachiosaurus is the only dinosaur to be given a possible maximum age. The encyclopedia included with DVD of the first film puts their age at a maximum of two hundred years.
The amber mine Gennaro meets Juanito at is called Mano de Dios which in English means "Hand of God".
None of the dinosaurs featured in the movie are known to have existed in the Dominican Republic in the Mesozoic Era. Dominican amber is 10 to 30 million years old, whereas dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
Grant wears a similar hat to Indiana Jones, except Grant's hat comes off while Indy's almost never does; both characters are from Steven Spielberg films.
Birds are a Velociraptor's closest living relative. The knowledge that dinosaurs are related to birds, dates back to 1868, with similar ankles and tails, wrists and claws. Birds are the real way to bring a dinosaur back to life, with emus being the nearest thing there is to a dinosaur today, with the way they walk. Birds are a descendant of dinosaurs and chickens may lead to the creation of a dinosaur someday, but not a full-blooded one. It could also extend to other extinct animals and new fuels.
According to storyboards, the first scene with the T-Rex played out like this: the kids were in the Explorer, with a character called Regis who showed Tim the goggles; Grant had glasses and a beard (like in the novel) and had Gennaro as a passenger; Lex was kicking her legs over the front seat and Tim stopped her, when he heard the T-Rex, and he still had the goggles on; Gennaro had more hair; Lex looks at the roof before the leg lands on it, with the chain still attached; a shot of the Explorer from the T-Rex's side of the fence; Tim sees the T-Rex touching the fence through the goggles; the danger sign also lands on the roof; when the T-Rex first steps out onto the road, its foot hits the ground; a POV shot of Tim watching the T-Rex circle the other Explorer; the T-Rex eyeing Grant and Gennaro through the Explorer, and Grant using a radio to warn the kids not to move; Tim and Lex looking up at the T-Rex through the roof as it looks in at them; a wider shot of the T-Rex attacking the roof; Tim and Lex both crawling through the mud; the T-Rex watching Grant wave the flare from her POV; Gennaro runs from the Explorer, but doesn't wave a flare like Malcolm; the T-Rex gives chase, knocking Grant out of the way; Tim is unconscious in the Explorer, and then tries to get free; the T-Rex looks in at Tim with a mouth full of mud, etc.
Go-Motion was used to see how the dinosaurs moved, but Steven Spielberg was very keen on the effects lacking any Go-Motion jerkiness; while his children bought into the early animations, he didn't.
Dennis Muren scouted scenery for the full-motion dinosaurs at a ranch. But the water was shot at Lake Ewok at Skywalker Ranch.
Stan Winston, enthusiastic about the new technology pioneered by Jurassic Park, joined with IBM and James Cameron, to form a new visual effects company, Digital Domain.
During the early stages, Go-Motion was considered to animate all the dinosaurs, except for the Gallimimus herd, where Dennis Muren insisted that be done with the then emergent CGI.
The first time dinosaurs have been depicted with CGI effects on film. Although CGI has moved on since, Jurassic Park (1993) is still considered to hold its own, as one of the most thrilling in the field.
Steven Spielberg wanted a predator as dangerous as the T-Rex so he included the Raptors but combined them with another species, Deinonychus. Spielberg liked the name Velociraptor, but is not very tall, whereas Deinonychus is the size of a human being, so Spielberg combined them, because they came from the same branch of the dinosaur tree. The Deinonychus has the retractable claw that's as sharp as a box cutter, but has smaller teeth than a Raptor. Also, the Deinonychus eats you before it kills you - rather than the Raptor - and they hunt in packs and ambush their victims instead of the Raptor.
Steven Spielberg wanted the dinosaurs to be life-size at first, but deemed the idea too expensive and unconvincing.
Some believe Steven Spielberg cast Sir Richard Attenborough as John Hammond to thank him for his support on Oscar night when Gandhi (1982) trounced E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
Malia Scotch Marmo did some rewrites on the final script, but remains uncredited.
Dylan McDermott and Tom Sizemore also screen-tested for the role of Dr. Alan Grant.
Laura Dern's mother Diane Ladd also starred in a dinosaur film released in 1993. She played Dr. Jane Tiptree in Carnosaur (1993).
Isla Nublar is stated to be 120 miles west of Costa Rica. However there are no islands, of any size, west of Costa Rica for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers).
Triceratops did indeed live in the jungle. The name means "three-horned face". The movie implies it had no protection from twentieth century plants, which could poison it.
Unlike Lex, Grant and Tim never lose their fascination with dinosaurs, even after they've seen what they can do, like watching the T-Rex feed on a Gallimimus, while Lex only wants to leave.
Dennis Muren doubted a real T-Rex would look like the one in the film. It wouldn't be as aggressive, because when bears fight on their hind legs, they can only do it for six to seven seconds before collapsing. Dinosaurs that did the same would wear them out.
Editor Michael Kahn had a rough cut of the film prepared just a few days after filming wrapped.
Production moved to Red Rock Canyon State Park, chosen for its similarities to a Montana dinosaur dig, where Sam Neill and Laura Dern filmed they're first scene; they were coached by Jack Horner, the premier paleontologist and curator of paleontology at Bozeman, Montana's Museum of the Rockies.
According to storyboards, the kitchen scene plays out with an angle from above when Lex and Tim first enter the kitchen; Tim turns the lights off, not Lex; Lex and Tim both look at the door; another shot with Lex and Tim watching; Lex holds onto the ladle after tapping it; Lex looking at the Raptors' reflections; an image of Lex hiding and the Raptor hitting the cabinet; the other Raptor seeing Tim run; Tim's feet slipping; Tim by the door as the Raptor slips; Tim crawls out the door, etc.
Phil Tippett created dinosaur miniatures, while Stan Winston provided full size robots. Michael Lantieri supervised interactions between actors and the sets. Dennis Muren led ILM with combining these elements on film in post-production.
The cast first interacted with Stan Winston's Triceratops, and it was important to Steven Spielberg that the film succeeded from the first day of shooting, and after that scene, he knew they had. Winston felt that was a good scene, into which to ease the crew, before they moved onto tougher stuff.
In the film Ellie Satler wears a pink blouse, a blue tanktop and shorts. 3 years after the film's release, the video game Lara Croft (1996) (VG) was released. In the game, the game's title protagonist Lara Croft wears a tanktop and shorts.
In a storyboarded but unused scene, Lex walks towards Grant and Tim, when a baby Trike appears behind her; it knocks her, sending Lex flying; Lex turns and sees the Trike.
Early designs for the park, had a bridge over water, between the Visitors Centre and the big doors (which can be seen in Jurassic World (2015)); Lex outside the Explorer, when the T-Rex attacked it; a scene with Grant, Lex, and Tim in a raft, being attacked by a dinosaur; the T-Rex chasing Grant, Lex, and Tim through the jungle, with the kids' ages swapped; three Raptors attacking at the Visitors Centre, etc.
Steven Spielberg lost the Oscar for Best Director to Sir Richard Attenborough, when Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) lost to Attenborough's Gandhi (1982). In Jurassic Park (1993), Spielberg got to direct Attenborough, but he is not the only one associated with Gandhi (1982) that Spielberg has directed in his career: Amrish Puri and Roshan Seth in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984); Sir Ben Kingsley in Schindler's List (1993); Nigel Hawthorne in Amistad (1997); Martin Sheen in Catch Me If You Can (2002), and Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln (2012).
The audience doesn't see a dinosaur fully until fifteen minutes into the film, when Grant, Ellie, Malcolm, Hammond, and Gennaro see the Brachiosaur.
The advents in CGI, would allow the dinosaurs to appear three-dimensionally, and for the animators to work out their muscle structure, and how they would move.
After the dinosaur molds were done, they were put over robotic skeletal structures. The next stage was movement. Phil Tippett wanted Steven Spielberg's storyboards done three-dimensionally with clay, to flesh out the scenes, and give them dimension, called Animatics, to act as a template.
Samuel L. Jackson went on to appear in two recurring roles: Mace Windu in the Star Wars prequels, and Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Laura Dern went on to appear in Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017), while Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum appeared together again in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). Neither franchise allowed Jackson to work opposite his former cast mates again.
In 1 scene, Ian Malcolm mentions the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. The film came out a decade before Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) which is based on the Disneyland ride.
In the special features for The Fly, Jeff Goldblum revealed that he first met Martin Ferrero at the airport for their flight to Hawaii. Ferrero then suggested that it should be Malcolm who dies and Gennaro who lives. This is, in fact, how it went in the novel. Malcolm ultimately dies of his injuries, and Gennaro; who is not present for the tyrannosaur attack because he stayed behind with Ellie with the sick Steogsaurus/Triceratops; lives and helps Muldoon get the park running again, much of which was given to Ellie in the film.
As the raptor is looking up to the ceiling tiles in the control room, the light filtering down makes a repeating GACTGACTGACT pattern on its face and neck. GACT represents guanine, adenine, cytosine, and thymine - the four nucleotide bases of DNA.
The scene when the TRex charges out of the trees to get the gallimimus was inspired by a scene similar in The Valley of Gwangi (1969). Which was another film Steven Speilberg was inspired by.
Samuel L. Jackson subsequently appeared in The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), which starred Geena Davis and was directed by Renny Harlin. David and Harlin were married at the time, and Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum became a couple after working together on this film. Dern had previously had a relationship with Harlin, while Goldblum had previously been married to Davis.
B.D Wong and Jeff Goldblum would later star together in Jurassic World: Final Kingdom (2018) as their characters Ian Malcolm and Henry Wu.
Richard Attenborough's previous film, Chaplin (1992), featured David Duchovny in a small role. Duchovny's ex-wife, Téa Leoni, appeared in Jurassic Park III (2001) and A League of Their Own (1992), the latter of which also featured Jeff Goldblum's ex-wife, Geena Davis. Duchovny later appeared on '_Twin Peaks (2017)(TV)_', opposite Laura Dern. He also hosted an episode of The Saturday Night Live Band, on which he played Goldblum.
Ellie tells Grant that she can't get the gun without moving away from the door hinge. Pushing where she is does nothing to help keep the door closed, so she could easily have grabbed in.
Steven Spielberg identified with John Hammond, seeing strong parallels between Hammond's vision for the park and his own work as a film-maker. To this end, Hammond was made a more sympathetic character. To show the parallels to film-making, Spielberg cast fellow filmmaker Richard Attenborough, which both acknowledges the past and predicts the future. Spielberg had lost the Best Picture and Best Director awards to him years before when E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) lost to Gandhi (1982). Spielberg's subsequent film, Schindler's List (1993), won both Oscars, and both films starred Ben Kingsley.
Several scenes are taken straight out of the novel, but have the species of the dinosaur changed. In the novel, the visitors see an Apatosaurus, not a Brachiosaur, upon their arrival. The sick animal they encounter during the tour is a Stegosaurus, rather than a Triceraptops. Grant and the children are caught up in a herd of Hadrosaurs, rather than Gallimimuses. While the Velociraptors are used in both the novel and the film, their behavior is in fact more consistent with Deinonychus.
Muldoon hated the Velociraptors more than any of the other carnivorous dinosaurs. He even showed more concern regarding the stability of the raptor fences than those of the T. rex Paddcock.
Ray types on an IBM Model M 1391401 keyboard, a favorite for computer programmers for its distinctive audible keystroke.
Jeff Goldblum claimed that his reaction to seeing a Brachiosaurus for the first time was captured in one take, with Steven Spielberg dictating to him off-camera what expression he wanted.
Donald Gennaro makes a small appearance in "Weird Al" Yankovic's Jurassic Park song's claymation music video. He is reading a newspaper in the bathroom, when the Tyrannosaurus rex appears and eats him (then proceeds to drink a cup of tea and floss). In regards to the dinosaur eating the lawyer, the song includes the line "Well, I suppose that proves they're really not all bad."
In 2011, Martin Ferrero reprised his role of Donald Gennaro in a CollegeHumor parody of Jurassic Park.
Laura Dern's previous film, Rambling Rose (1991), also featured John Heard, who performed the audio book version of Jurassic Park.
The hatchling's egg was made of wax with a lay saran wrap laid on top of it and the hatchling itself was molded by Greg Figiel. The puppet was puppeteered by over seven people.
For the hatchling vocalizations, Gary Rydstrom aimed to find a baby animal that had raspy vocalizations as the adults would make similar sounds. Rydstrom and his team recorded various baby animals including those of owls and foxes for the newly born raptor. The baby owl sounds were used for the baby's vocals upon Dr. Grant discovering its identity.
The "Big One" Velociraptor appears to kill only for fun or possible killing to get her revenge as she might understand to be lock up in a encloser against her will, evident by the fact that she kills Robert Muldoon and soon after hunts the rest of the humans. If she had killed and eaten Muldoon, who was nearly as big as she was, then she would have been full and wouldn't have needed to hunt the other humans.
Steven Spielberg wanted Judith Barsi for the role of Lex. He'd previously worked with her on The Land Before Time (1988). He was shocked to discovered unfortunately that she'd been murdered in 1988 by her own father.
Bollywood's top actress, Sridevi, was offered a role in this movie by Steven Spielberg himself but she declined.
This film won all the three Oscars it was nominated for: Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects.
Jeff Goldblum's first leading role was in The Big Chill for director Lawrence Kasdan, who had previously written Raiders of the Lost Ark for Steven Spielberg. It also featured William Hurt, who was Spielberg's first choice for the role of Dr. Grant.
Jeff Goldblum was first interviewed for the role of Malcolm after berg abandoned the draft written by Malia Scotch Marmo, which had omitted Malcolm. Although they didn't use her draft, they were still considering leaving the character out, which Spielberg told Goldblum. Goldblum had read the book and advocated heavily for the character's inclusion.
Richard Attenborough and Joseph Mazzello worked together again in 1993 on the film Shadowlands. That films starred Anthony Hopkins, who later played a park owner on Westworld, which was based on a film written and directed by Michael Crichton.
The baby Triceratops scene may have been cut, because it was too comical a scene, for the latter half of the film.
In storyboards, the second scene with the T-Rex, plays out with Muldoon, who has a mustache; Muldoon and Ellie are back in the Jeep already with Malcolm when the T-Rex attacks; more dialogue with Muldoon saying they'll find Grant, Lex and Tim when the motion sensors are working again, just as Malcolm hears the T-Rex.
Steven Spielberg's first toy was a Triceratops, which led to a fascination with dinosaurs, since they don't exist anymore; this interest culminated in the Jurassic Park film franchise.
Phil Tippett's Animatic version of the kitchen scene, was essentially the same, except the Raptors had snake tongues, the freezer door was shut, Tim fell by the door, and there were two exits; Lex and Tim went through the second one, etc.
Work began at Stan Winston's studio, in 1991, with the look of each character; Winston felt it was important in convincing the audience, otherwise the film would fail, no matter how good the performances were.
Ray Arnold always has a cigarette between his lips, or between his fingers, every time he is seen in the film. In the scene where he and Muldoon tell Hammond that the tour should be halted due to the storm, he is not smoking a cigarette but has one lit nearby, hence the small cloud of smoke behind him.
While several cast members of Jurassic World (Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and several others) starred in Marvel movies, Samuel L. Jackson, who played Mr. Arnold, would go on to do several Marvel movies, and a guest spot in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as Director Nick Fury.
Is one of two films in 1993 in which Laura Dern co-starred with a veteran actor/director. The other film was A Perfect World, in which Dern co-starred with Clint Eastwood.
One of two 1993 releases in which Laura Dern has had a young co-star - Joseph Mazzello in this film - with brown eyes. The other young co-star of Dern's was T.J. Lowther in A Perfect World (1993).
The blip sound on the Silicon Graphics computers, and the blip on the Apple Macintosh Quadra 700, is a blip sound from a Motorola cell phone.
Since the Gallimimuses were precursors to birds, they had sophisticated flocking mechanisms; the parents keep the smaller ones in the middle of the group for protection. Details like that enhanced the scene subliminally.
Animations for the computers in the labs and control room were lent from Silicon Graphics and Apple.
Brian Cox was interviewed for the part of Muldoon.
The film abandons somewhat Michael Crichton's attitude that dinosaurs are wholly dangerous, but also takes the time to see the wonder in them as well.
Michael Crichton adapted the script from his own bestseller.
Some of the film's changes to the novel were criticized, like having Ian Malcolm voice all of Michael Crichton's ethical concerns in the novel.
The Jeep being chased by the T-Rex was allegedly going forty miles per hour, and the film no doubt exaggerated the T-Rex's running speed; a real one could run up to 25 miles per hour.
Laura Dern's character first appears at a dig site in Montana. Aside from this role, Dern is best known for her work with director David Lynch, who was born and raised in Montana.
The scenes in the maintenance shed were filmed on Stage 23. The Dilophosaurus scene was filmed on Stage 27.
The second choice for the role of Ian Malcolm was Jim Carrey. He and Jeff Goldblum appeared together in Earth Girls Are Easy (1988). Carrey also appeared in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), in which he remarks "Man, I'm tired of being right!" Malcolm in this film say "Boy, do I hate being right all the time!"
Cameo
Gerald R. Molen: film's producer played Dr. Gerry Harding, the character who was out on the field with the sick triceratops.
Excision: Jeff Abel, better know as Canadian dubstep producer Excision, has a small cameo appearance.
Director Trademark
Steven Spielberg: [Signs] Using a sign with directions or instructions as a joke. In this case, the T-Rex's jaws filling the side-view mirror of the car, with the mirror reading, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."
Steven Spielberg: [father] Grant is averse to the idea of being a father. In Crichton's novel, Lex and Tim's parents are going through a trying divorce.
Spoilers
The original ending, had a rib from the T-Rex skeleton skewer one of the Raptors, and the jaw drops and kills the other. But, it seemed too phony, and the crew approached Steven Spielberg to come up with a better ending. They all pitched ideas, but Spielberg came up with the finale himself. He needed the T-Rex to be the star at the end.
Samuel L. Jackson was supposed to fly to Hawaii to film Arnold's death scene, but a hurricane destroyed the set, and the scene had to be scrapped. He regrets this, because he was physically chased by them and killed, and he really wanted to do it.
Wayne Knight felt Nedry deserved to die, but it bothered him that it happened off-camera, and was not as gory as in the novel, where he was also decapitated.
In the original novel, John Hammond is killed by a flock of small dinosaurs called Procompsognathids, (compys), a species which does not appear in this film. However, this death scene was resurrected and reworked for another character in the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997).
Two scenes from the book were removed from the film: an opening sequence with Procompsognathus (compys) attacking children, because Steven Spielberg deemed it too horrific, and for budget reasons, a sequence with the T-Rex chasing Grant and the children downriver, before being tranquilized by Muldoon. Both sequences were reworked for the sequels.
During the kitchen scene, it may seem very convenient for Tim that the freezer door is already open, and there is ice on the floor that causes the Raptor to slip. However, it actually makes perfect sense, and shows considerable attention to detail. Since the power had been cut off the night before, the freezer would slowly start to de-frost. John Hammond knew this, and it is why he can be seen eating ice cream during his conversation with Ellie Sattler, as he knew it would spoil otherwise. He probably left the freezer door wide open, since there was no power anyway, causing the ice in the freezer to melt away quicker, and form chunks of melting ice on the freezer floor. When Sattler later turns the power back on, this would cause the chunks on the floor to re-freeze, and make the surface very slippery.
The ending, where the T-Rex saves the day, was added when Steven Spielberg decided that she was the hero of the film.
In the original script, the T-Rex skeleton in the lobby was hooked up to pulleys like a giant marionette. In the ending, Grant was going to man the controls and act as puppeteer, using the skeleton's head and feet to crush the raptors.
The T-Rex, and the SUV it knocked over, were animated. The scene was shot bare, and then the T-Rex and the SUV were composited in later. It was the same for Gennaro's death. From the rear, its a stand-in, but after the attack, its all CGI.
In the original script, Gennaro and Malcolm were combined into one character, and Muldoon survived in the end. In the book, Gennaro and Muldoon both survived, and Hammond and Malcolm died (though Malcolm returned in the book "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton, explaining that "The doctors did excellent work.").
When shooting Gennaro's death, Phil Tippett wanted the camera tilted to see him get ripped to shreds. Although the budget couldn't cover it, Steven Spielberg liked the idea so much, he said they'd find the money.
Nedry's reasons for betraying Hammond are clearer in the novel, who is misled, and never told anything about what goes on at Jurassic Park, forcing him to accept a bribe from a rival company.
Gennaro's Hail Mary before being killed was an idea Martin Ferrero stole from The Godfather: Part II (1974). Another idea he had that didn't make it in, was he wanted Gennaro to spray the T-Rex's face with pepper spray; you can see it hooked to his belt. Steven Spielberg thought it an interesting idea, but said no to it.
The sound of the T-Rex killing Gennaro and a Gallimimus, was Gary Rydstrom's Jack Russell terrier Buster, shaking a rope toy in his mouth, recorded and slowed down, because he thought a T-Rex would sound just like that. Buster also provided the sound for the T-1000 eye-spiking a prison guard in Terminator 2 (1991).
All surviving characters from the first film, appear in a sequel. Ian Malcolm, John Hammond, Lex Murphy and Tim Murphy appear in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler appear in Jurassic Park III (2001), and Dr. Henry Wu appears in Jurassic World (2015).
Laura Dern was crying for real and was genuinely frightened in the scene which Ellie (Dern) encounters the raptor in the maintenance shed scene.
In the novel, Donald Gennaro and John Hammond have completely opposite physical traits, and personalities. Gennaro is a former football player, (he actually manages to fight off a velociraptor, much smaller in the novel), and is a frank, sympathetic family man, who quickly copes with the situation, helping both Muldoon and Dr. Grant in time. On the contrary, Hammond is, in fact, the main antagonist of the book. He is portrayed as being very short, as well as cold, egotistical, hot tempered, and manipulative, using his grandchildren to soften Gennaro, and completely neglecting them when they go missing. In the end, he refuses to accept reality, making absurd plans about other parks, and getting killed by dinosaurs, while Gennaro survives the ordeal.
Out of all the characters left on the island during the storm, John Hammond is the only one not to be attacked by a dinosaur.
When Juanito (Miguel Sandoval) is inspecting the amber encased mosquito at the digsite in the beginning, he say's in spanish "Que lindo eres vas hacer a much gente feliz" which in english means. "You are so beautiful, you will make a lot of people happy".
In one of the first drafts of the script, the character of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) was not included. Instead, the character of Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) is injured in the scene where the T-Rex attacks the SUVs.
With every new draft of the script, there was a different set of survivors and a different set of characters dying. At various points during pre-production, Hammond, Malcolm, and Dr. Wu were going to die, and Gennaro and Muldoon were going to live.
Although Malcolm is sidelined for the latter half of the film, in the novel, he delivers most of his most memorable lines, while incapacitated due to his injuries (and being attended to by Dr. Sattler, and an increasingly agitated Hammond).
During Muldoon's death scene, as well as some of the kitchen scene, the Raptors were played by men in suits.
The Raptors seem far more interested in hunting the humans on the island. The only time they ever attack another dinosaur, is when the T-Rex attacks them at the climax.
During the arrival at the island, Grant comes up with two female ends of a seat belt, then ties them together to make them work. He later discovers that the dinosaurs - who are all female - have figured out a way to reproduce.
There is a popular fan theory that the boy, who gets scared by Alan for scoffing at the velociraptor in the Utah scene, is a young Owen Grady from Jurassic World (2015).
In the novel, John Hammond was the antagonist, not Dennis Nedry and is described as an arrogant, flamboyant and idealistic dreamer and that he frequently upset his employees and seemed to care more about the safety of the expensive animals and is killed by a pack of Procompsognathus.
There is a scene in which Ellie is in the maintenance shed to reboot the power and finds Ray Arnold's bloody severed arm. This is similar to Steven Spielberg's previous film Jaws (1975) in which the shark kills the man in the red rowboat, and the audience sees his bloody severed leg.
In "Return to Jurassic Park", the 2 hour making-of documentary released for blu-ray, Steven Spielberg admits that the shot of the Barbasol can falling away from Nedry and being covered in mud was intentionally inserted to set-up a potential sequel. It was not until Michael Crichton's second book, "The Lost World", where Spielberg then realized the story would go in a different direction.
When Nedry slips and falls down the hill from his vehicle while attempting to run its winch cable, a cartoon sliding sound can be heard.
For the original ending, Stan Winston wanted three-creature shots per day. As it was storyboarded, Grant starts working the controls of the condor and it starts moving; a Raptor emerges from the ducts; Grant moves the condor away but the Raptor leaps towards it and lands on it dangling from it with the crane moving forward towards the dinosaur skeleton's tail breaking it off and a Rex leg; one of the Raptors tries to get into the lift cage so Grant works the controls back and forth, smashing the Raptor into the Rex jaws; some of the buckles come loose; the Raptor smashes into the other skeleton, a Brachiosaur; the Raptor thrashes and Grant tells everyone to hold on; the lift crashes down on the Raptor and it screams; blood runs beneath the condor; Alan, Ellie, (a younger) Lex and Tim watch all this as the Raptor dies; they see the other Raptor attack but (a younger) Hammond shoots it and waves them to the exit.
The Franchi SPAS-12 shotguns used by Robert Muldoon and Alan Grant in the film, have the first generation stock option. The first generation shotgun stock was designed so that a spring loaded stud mounted on the interior of the stock locked into the rear sight. By pulling this stud rearward it clears the sight and the stock can be unfolded. Muldoon can clearly be seen depressing this stud when he is hunting the Velociraptors moments before his famous "clever girl" last words.
The squeak that the modified Barbasol shaving cream can makes, which sounds like a raptor in the "Dodgson, we've got Dogson here!" foreshadows Nedry's death.
There seems to be a color code to a character's chance of survival. All of the main characters who survive are colorful in their costumes (Alan Grant wears blue, Ellie Satler wears pink and blue, Ian Malcolm wears black, and John Hammond wears white.) Meanwhile, the characters who die all wear very bland colors (Gennaro wears brown and white, Nedry wears gray blue and brown, Arnold wears striped off-white and Muldoon wears brown.) Tim and Lex wear a combination of colors and browns; they survive but arguably go through the worst attacks. Black is considered a lack of color, so although Malcolm survives, he suffers one of the worst injuries of the group. White is considered a mix of all colors, so John Hammond is the only one of the group to never once be attacked by a dinosaur.
