Welcome to the first of what I hope will become a weekly blog entry on movies, fantastic and otherwise. Since I went and saw this movie in Imax yesterday I thought I would start out with this one. Of course I went and saw Jurassic Park at the theater when it first came out. And then bought the DVD as soon as it came out (or was it a VHS, I really can’t remember). It was much better than either of the sequels, which is not unusual. I have always been a big dinosaur fan, growing up like most kids with a love of the big guys. Of course, at that time most believed that dinosaurs were slow moving, cold blooded creatures. I read a book called Hot Blooded Dinosaurs by L. Sprague de Camp (yes, the scifi and fantasy writer) in which a new viewpoint was put forth that the creatures were actually warm blooded and quick moving. I embraced this theory, and was ridiculed by many friends. I was later vindicated, as now most scientist believe dinosaurs were indeed warm blooded and fleet of foot. So I grew up watching all the dinosaur and other big creature movies. My father told me about seeing King Kong in the theaters, and how the Willis O’Brien ape and dinosaurs looked very real to him. O’Brien did many other animated features (moving models around and photographing them) over the years, as did his protege’, Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen extended the art to its ultimate, and the dinosaurs in The Valley of Gwangi looked very real to this child when I saw that movie. And of course there were the monsters that were nothing more than men in suits, Godzilla, Gamera, and the English takeoff, Gorgo. And I remember the awful slow moving animatronic beasts in The Lost World with Doug McClure. Like most zombies, you could slowly walk away from these creatures. And then along came Jurassic Park, and Dinosaurs were made real on the big screen. Of course there were some very well done beasts in movies before this, the dragon in Dragonslayer comes to mind, but most were only good because we hadn’t seen anything better. (Saw Dragonslayer recently and the dragon holds up well in modern times). I remember reading somewhere that originally the movie was to use animatronics, though I hope better ones than The Lost World (or was it The Land That Time Forgot?) And then someone told Spielberg that they could do something much better with computers. And now we have all those wonderful BBC dinosaur shows.
The dinosaurs in the new presentation of Jurassic Park looked much like those in the old one. Very well rendered, they looked like living creatures. I remember when I first saw them on the big screen I thought we had arrived, now we had animals that looked real. So Jurassic Park Imax 3-D did not really improve on the animals. They were on a larger screen, which made them look bigger, and the 3-D to me really didn’t improve on the experience. Oh, it was good 3-D, but again 3-D sometimes looks really cool, and at other times just seems like a wasted trick. And it still had the one complaint I had about the original presentation (since that’s basically what it was). There were not enough shots of the dinosaurs. I wanted to see more Brachiosaurs, Duckbills and others. Instead there was a lot of talking, with Laura Dern telling the old park developer how he had made a fatal error. If you liked the original Jurassic Park (which I did) the movie is still good. I really didn’t think the 3-D and the larger screen did anything for it though. You can buy the original movie on Blue Ray for just a bit more and watch it as many times as you want.
Jurassic Park
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Unless you lived in a cave or just came down from another planet, you have either seen Jurassic Park, read the book, or heard a reference to it in some post of popular culture. And not just from the official movies or books. Since it came out there have been dozens of movies made along the same theme, bringing dinosaurs back to life. Now in the movie they found dinosaur DNA in mosquitoes trapped in amber, and plugged the gaps with frog DNA. From what I have read this would not have worked. Either the dinosaur DNA would not have been well enough preserved, or the frog DNA would have altered the organism beyond recognition. So does that mean we will never see these big creatures again? As one of my favorite sports personalities says, not so fast. While it’s true that we may never see the exact same beast again, minus some kind of time travel that allows us to go back and collect eggs, or at least DNA, from the living beast, we may be able to construct some kind of facsimile. Whether we should or not is another question, but that has never seemed to stop us from doing anything.
Now most people have heard of the Human Genome Project, which is mapping the genetic structure of humans and finding out what does what in the Chromosomes. What many people don’t realize is that we are doing the same thing with other organism, plants, animals, fungi and microbes. Eventually we will have a complete map of the genome of just about every organism on Earth, and soon to follow will be an understanding of what each gene does. From there it is a simple step to design organism with the traits we want, sheep with better wool, fruit trees with multiple crops each year, guard dogs with more intelligence, you name it. There are many who are protesting this technology, saying it leads to dangers from the engineered foods, or falling back on religious objections that only God should design living things. The fact of the matter is there is no way to stop it, short of forming a world government and police force, which raises objections with other people. You may be able to stop crops from being grown in your country. You will not be able to do anything about a private lab in Singapore.
Once every gene is coded then designer organisms can be planned and basically built. Computer studies can show us what to expect from certain genetic combinations, probably not one hundred percent, but still in the ball park. Then comes the difficult part, the trial and error of growing the beasts. So we want a fifty ton sauropod that generally looks like an Apatosaur. Or a Tyranosaur. And we build it. And suddenly we have zoos with animals that have never existed on Earth, but have a close enough resemblance to the originals that we can hang signs on the enclosures and let people come to ooh and ah over them. Of course there may other uses for smaller animals that have been genetically engineered. I don’t see where a giant sauropod or a large carnosaur would be all that useful in the modern or future world. But velociraptors or other smaller forms might be useful for security or warfare. Or modifications of modern animals, such as the war jaguars in Michael Moorcocks Dorian Hawkmoon series. Or genetically modified house pets for space colonies. People may protest, but if it can happen it will happen. I for one look toward it with mixed feelings. But the decision is not in my hands. Nor, really, is it in yours.
Like most lovers of the fantastic I love movies about the fantastic. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, comic heroes, James Bondesc spy movies, sometimes even big dumb Japanese monster movies. I loved them all despite the bad special effects which included guys in really bad monster suits and claymation dinosaurs. I suspended my disbelief to see the type of story that I loved brought to life. I saw Jurassic Park on the big screen, and fell in love with the new CGI dinosaurs. Never mind that raptors were actually smaller animals than portrayed in the movie. Technology had brought living breathing animals to the screen. And then I saw the first Spider-man movie and I knew that movie making had arrived. Here was my childhood hero on the big screen, and he was not just crawling up sideways walls like Batman did in the 60s. No, he was jumping, leaping, twisting with incredible, one could almost say super, agility. I was in love with the movie makers art. Now not all of these movies were action and suspense. There were some very human scenes as well. The old man discussing his dreams for Jurassic Park with Dr. Grant while they eat ice cream and the children are lost in the dinosaur haunted wilderness. Toby McGuire crying over his dead uncle. While these scenes were important to the movies in question, I would have walked out of the theater disappointed had these scenes been all of the movie. They would not have been what I came to the theater for that day.
This morning I read a critique of the soon to be released movie John Carter on a Site called Flick Filosopher or some such. They state that they watch the bad movies so you don’t have to, which to me seems to sum up their philosophy going in. They seem to feel that a movie like John Carter should be an emotional, tear jerker kind of movie that the critics all seem to love. She actually criticized the movie for having too much action. To me this is the kind of movie that fans of the genre expect to see. That they love. Of course no movie is exactly like the book. Most are not even as good as the book. It is still a treat to see them come to life, to suspend disbelief, to ooh and ah over the great backgrounds and ground breaking special effects.
Last year I remember getting ready for the Thor movie release. This had been a favorite character of mine while growing up. Of course the one in the comic didn’t have a beard, but I was willing to forgive that mistake. Before seeing the movie I read a review. The critic thought the superhuman scenes were over the top and kind of stupid. He thought that the scenes of Thor as a human trying to figure out the Earth were wonderful, and the movie would have been much better if there had been more of that. Sorry, but I didn’t pay my eight bucks to see a story about a young man estranged from his father, falling in love with a girl from a different class, while trying to reconcile with dear old dad. I came to the conclusion then that the critics just don’t get it. They don’t get the love of the fantastic that those who truly enjoy it bring with them to the movies. They watch those same movies without the joy and come to a completely different conclusion. That’s OK. They can have their opinion, just as I have mine. But I don’t pay much attention to their opinions anymore. If it looks good to me I go and see it, and most probably enjoy it.
Critics seem to love to criticize. And almost all of their negative comments are at variance with what I enjoy. I don’t have to pay attention to their blather, and neither do you. If the papers want to get it right maybe they should hire specialist critics just for the fantastic genres. People who grew up enjoying pulp fiction and comic books. People who get it.
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