Jurassic Park - American science fiction adventure film

Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. It is the first installment of the Jurassic Park film series. It is based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton, with a screenplay written by Crichton and David Koepp. The film centers on the fictional Isla Nublar, an islet located off Central America's Pacific Coast, near Costa Rica, where a billionaire philanthropist and a small team of genetic scientists have created a wildlife park of cloned dinosaurs

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Before Crichton's novel was published, four studios put in bids for the film rights. With the backing of Universal Studios, Spielberg acquired the rights for $1.5 million before publication in 1990; Crichton was hired for an additional $500,000 to adapt the novel for the screen. David Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel's exposition and violence and made numerous changes to the characters. Filming took place in California and Hawaii between August and November 1992, and post-production rolled until May 1993, supervised by Spielberg in Poland as he filmed Schindler's List. The dinosaurs were created with groundbreaking computer-generated imagery by Industrial Light & Magic and with life-sized animatronic dinosaurs built by Stan Winston's team. To showcase the film's sound design, which included a mixture of various animal noises for the dinosaur roars, Spielberg invested in the creation of DTS, a company specializing in digital surround sound formats.

Following an extensive $65 million marketing campaign, which included licensing deals with 100 companies, Jurassic Park grossed over $900 million worldwide in its original theatrical run. It surpassed Spielberg's 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial to become the highest-grossing film worldwide until Titanic (1997). Jurassic Park was well received by critics, who praised its special effects, John Williams' musical score, and Spielberg's direction. The film won more than 20 awards (including 3 Academy Awards), mostly for its technical achievements. Following a re-release in 2011, and a 3D reissue in 2013 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, Jurassic Park became the 17th film to surpass $1 billion in ticket sales, and is currently one of the highest-grossing films of all time.

Jurassic Park is considered a landmark in the development of computer-generated imagery and animatronic visual effects. The film was followed by three commercially successful sequels, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001), and Jurassic World (2015). A fifth film is scheduled for a June 22, 2018 release.

John Hammond, the founder and CEO of bioengineering company InGen, has created a theme park called Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar, a tropical island populated with cloned dinosaurs. After a park worker is killed by a Velociraptor, the park's investors, represented by lawyer Donald Gennaro, demand that experts visit the park and certify it as safe. Gennaro invites the mathematician Ian Malcolm while Hammond invites paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. Upon arrival, the group is stunned to see three Brachiosaurus and a herd of Parasaurolophus in the distance.

At the visitor center, the group learns during a laboratory tour that the cloning was accomplished by extracting the DNA of dinosaurs from mosquitoes that had been preserved in amber. The DNA strands were incomplete, so DNA from frogs was used to fill in the gaps. The dinosaurs were all cloned genetically as females in order to prevent breeding.

The group is then joined by Hammond's grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy for a tour of the park, while Hammond oversees the trip from the park's control room. The tour does not go as planned, with the dinosaurs failing to appear and a Triceratops becoming ill. As a tropical storm approaches Isla Nublar, the tour is cut short. Most of the park employees depart on a boat for the mainland and the visitors return to the electric tour vehicles, except Ellie, who stays with the park's veterinarian to study the Triceratops.

During the storm, as night falls, Jurassic Park's computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, who has been bribed by a corporate rival to steal dinosaur embryos, deactivates the park's security system to allow him access to the embryo storage room. The power goes out, and the tour vehicles become stuck. Most of the park's electric fences are deactivated, allowing the Tyrannosaurus rex to escape and attack the tour group. Grant, Lex, and Tim narrowly escape while the Tyrannosaurus devours Gennaro, injures Malcolm, and pushes one of the vehicles over an embankment. On his way to deliver the embryos to the island's docks, Nedry becomes lost in the dark, crashes his Jeep, and is killed by a Dilophosaurus.

Sattler assists the park's game warden, Robert Muldoon, in a search for survivors, but they only find Malcolm before the Tyrannosaurus rex returns. They escape in one of the vehicles. Unable to decipher Nedry's code to reactivate the security system, Hammond and the park's chief engineer Ray Arnold opt to reboot the entire park's system. The group shuts down the park's grid and retreats to an emergency bunker, while Arnold heads to a maintenance shed to complete the rebooting process. When he fails to return, Sattler and Muldoon head to the shed as well. They discover the shutdown has deactivated the remaining fences and released the Velociraptors; Muldoon distracts the raptors while Sattler turns the power back on. She discovers Arnold's severed arm and escapes. Soon after, the raptors ambush and kill Muldoon.

Grant, Tim, and Lex discover the broken shells of dinosaur eggs. Grant concludes that the dinosaurs have been breeding, which occurred because they have the genetic coding of frog DNA — West African bullfrogs can change their sex in a single-sex environment, making the dinosaurs able to do so as well. On the way back to the visitor center, the trio encounter a herd of Gallimimus, when suddenly the Tyrannosaurus emerges from seemingly nowhere and kills one. Grant, Tim and Lex reach the visitor center, and Grant leaves them there as he goes searching for the others. After finding the bunker, Grant and Sattler head back to the visitor center, where the children successfully evade two Velociraptors. The four head to the control room, where Lex restores full power, allowing the group to call for help. While trying to leave, they are cornered by the raptors, but escape when the Tyrannosaurus suddenly appears and kills both raptors, ignoring the humans. Hammond arrives in a jeep with Malcolm, and the entire group flees together. Before they board a helicopter to leave the island, Grant decides not to endorse the park, a choice with which Hammond concurs.

Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel,which he had finished by the time Spielberg was filming Hook. Crichton noted that because the book was "fairly long" his script only had about 10 to 20 percent of the novel's content; scenes were dropped for budgetary and practical reasons, and despite the gory descriptions, the violence was toned down.Malia Scotch Marmo began a script rewrite in October 1991 over a five-month period, merging Ian Malcolm with Alan Grant.

As Spielberg wanted another writer to rework the script, Universal president Casey Silver recommended him David Koepp, co-writer of Death Becomes Her.Koepp started afresh from Marmo's draft, and used Spielberg's idea of a cartoon shown to the visitors to remove much of the exposition that fills Crichton's novel. While Koepp tried to avoid excessive character detail "because whenever they started talking about their personal lives, you couldn't care less",he tried to flesh out the characters and make for a more colorful cast, with moments such as Malcolm flirting with Sattler leading to Grant's jealousy.Some characterizations were changed from the novel. Hammond went from a ruthless businessman to a kindly old man, because Spielberg identified with Hammond's obsession with showmanship.He also switched the characters of Tim and Lex; in the book, Tim is aged eleven and interested in computers, and Lex is only seven or eight and interested in sports. Spielberg did this because he wanted to work with the younger Joseph Mazzello, and it also allowed him to introduce the sub-plot of Lex's adolescent crush on Grant. Koepp changed Grant's relationship with the children, making him hostile to them initially to allow for more character development.

Two scenes from the book were excised, with Spielberg removing the opening sequence with Procompsognathus attacking a young child as he found it too horrific, and Koepp cutting for budgetary reasons the T. rex chasing Grant and the children down a river before being tranquilized by Muldoon. Both parts eventually saw inclusion in the film sequels.Spielberg suggested the addition of the scene where the T. rex pursues a jeep, which at first would only have the characters driving away after listening to the dinosaur's footsteps.