RichardLess wrote: ↑April 19th, 2020, 5:55 amrobbritton wrote: ↑April 19th, 2020, 2:45 am Possibly controversial, but Jurassic Park is the point Spielberg forgot how to make big high octane adventures for me. It’s badly shot, badly edited, badly costumed and criminally dull. Maybe I was just slightly too old for it, but I’m always staggered to see it regularly at the top of my friends’ “top 10 Spielberg’s” in a world where Jaws exists.
It still towers over Jurassic World, mind.
That’s an interesting take. It’s nowhere near his best film but I don’t think there is such a thing as a poorly shot Spielberg film. I do think it’s one of his least visually dynamic films. But that’s more of him trying to put a lid on the tendencies he got criticized for on Hook, one of his most wildly lit films(which I LOVE). Interestingly enough, JP marked the last time Spielberg would ever work with a cinematographer other than Janusz Kaminski.
Imagine being Spielberg in 1993. You release the highest grossing movie of all time for the 3rd time in your career and completely evolve as an artist with Schindler’s List, winning best picture and director in the process. Crazy.
JP is flawed, definitely, especially the final 3rd of the movie. But it’s still a helluva a movie with imagery and symbolism that you don’t often get in blockbuster filmmaking anymore.
By the way, I don’t think Spielberg forgot how to make big high octane adventure films. The Adventures of Tin Tin shows that. I just think his priorities changed and that he changed as a filmmaker.
I also think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard someone call JP “criminally dull”. I gotta disagree big time with that one. I find JP mesmerizing. “Dinosaurs? But how? Oh, really? That’s how? Cool! But how can Hollywood realistically make Dinosaurs work? Oh. Wow. They actually look pretty darn real. Ok well what about the moral and ethical arguments for bringing an extinct species back to life? Oh ok, they cover that too and it’s actually a really great, well written scene!”.
Is it one of the more lesser visually impressive Spielberg films? Yes. Is it poorly edited? There are a few awkward cuts here and there but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s poorly edited. Are there some silly 1990s tropes? Oh yeah. I cringe every time I hear the word “hacker” come out of Lex’s mouth.
Here’s an interesting tidbit. Apparently Steven Spielberg was so confident in the film, he let George Lucas oversee post production of JP while he shot Schindler’s List in Poland.
How old were you when Jurassic Park came out?
I was 15, and firmly in my music over films phase, so I'll admit I wasn't in the best headspace with it. I absolutely agree with what you wrote later in the thread about the best shot in the film - the lake with the dinosaurs is incredible, so you have me there. you're dead right about the Triceraptops too. Maybe those bits being so good make the rest of it annoy me even more, though!
I don't know, I think I'm just so in love with Jaws and Duel that I was hoping he'd do the same with the book of Jurassic Park. It just feels a bit cheap next to the grand sweep and small emotion of his other blockbusters (and I totally agree it was an understandable reaction to Hook, I was being a bit grouchy about "badly shot"). Compare Brody's kid mirroring him at the table to the John Hammond restaurant speech. One conveys more than a thousand other movies in gesture alone, the other is a slightly hammy speech.
I just can't get past Jaws.
Every frame of that movie feels alive and true, and that gives the threat such weight. I don't believe in a single one of the characters in Jurassic Park, and thus I don't care about their peril.
And to Coover5, I adore Duel. it is one of my two "No, you need to look at this..." when I hear the old 'emotionally manipulative' accusation levelled at Spielberg. As Richarless says, to achieve that with none of his regular fallbacks, and for TV to boot! People ought to hold him up to Hitchcock standard on that one alone, never mind the excellence that followed. for what it's worth, for my money pre-JP Spielberg goes:
1. Jaws
2. Duel
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark
4. Poltergeist (I know, I know, but...)
5. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
6. E.T.
7. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
8. Sugarland Express
9. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
10. 1941
(caveat: I'm not really sure of the relative quality of Temple of Doom and Last Crusade - I was caught up with a couple of other films when they came out and never really gave them a fair crack of the whip, as it were!)