They Do Move in Herds: Dissecting the Jurassic Park Screenplay
Look. Jurassic Park is the greatest film ever made and you’ll never convince me otherwise. Steven Spielberg made an absolutely iconic adventure film with characters, special effects, and auto-erotica that still hold up to this day.
What’s even more incredible is to study the journey from Michael Crichton’s heavy original tome to the first draft to the final shooting draft. The film adaptation took the best parts of the novel and improved on others then managed to simplify the scientific details in order to deliver exposition in clever and easy-to-absorb ways.
Add in John Williams’ heart-swelling soar and you have a masterpiece.
So let’s study the blue print that led to the final product.
OPENING IMAGE
Spielberg brilliantly waits to reveal the dinosaurs — but he opens with a tense monster sequence anyway. We catch a glimpse of an eyeball. We hear the shrieking. We see the power of the attack. All of this, without actually seeing the raptor inside the cage. The opening scene is a warning: this park does not have its animals under control.
SET UP
Then it’s back to the mainland, where we meet “DONALD GENNARO, forty, in a city man’s idea of hiking clothes and a hundred dollar haircut.” He is visiting a mine where mosquitos in amber are being excavated. While talking with a worker, ROSTAGNO, we get a little more exposition — the park has had some insurance liabilities and Gennaro, the lawyer, is being sent to investigate.
More importantly, we get a little introduction into one of our main heroes, an expert needed to sign off on the island: Alan Grant.
(Oh, and Jeff Goldblum’s you-had-no-right-to-go-this-hard IAN MALCOM is also mentioned as a “trendy” expert as well.)
INCITING INCIDENT
With that introduction, it’s time to go find Grant on an active paleontological dig in Montana. DR. “ALAN GRANT, mid-thirties, a ragged-looking guy with intense concentration you wouldn’t want to get in the way of,” consults with “DR. ELLIE SATTLER, late twenties, athletic-looking. There’s an impatience about Ellie, as if nothing in life happens quite fast enough for her.”
They are trying to learn what they can about the dinosaurs they’ve found and these two are symbolically on the brink of the new age of paleontology; while they are digging up bones with their hands, new technology (which Grant “hates”) offers a way to shoot radar into the ground and bounce the image of the bones right back.
Ah, yes, we also learn that Grant hates kids.
Their dig is disrupted by a helicopter carrying “JOHN HAMMOND, seventyish, spritely as hell, with bright, shining eyes that say ‘Follow me!’” Hammond has helped himself to the dig team’s celebratory champagne and voluntells Grant and Ellie (notably, the man is referred to by his last name in the dialogue, the woman by her first) to come to his island for the weekend — in return for fully funding their dig for three years. How can they resist?
Before we make it to Isla Nublar, there is one more important character to meet — the villain of the film. Oh no, gentle reader, that’s not the T-Rex; it’s “DENNIS NEDRY, late thirties, a big guy with a constant smile that could either be laughing with you or at you, you can never tell.” He’s hired by a competitor of Jurassic Park to steal dinosaur embryos. Trouble is a-brewing!
FUN AND GAMES
After a helicopter ride with “DR. IAN MALCOM, fortyish, dressed all in black, with snakeskin boots and sunglasses,” we’ve made it to the park, and along with it, seamlessly placed foreshadowing about the dangers within the thirty foot high electrified fences.
But pay you no mind to those warnings — Hammond isn’t — because here, with William’s sweeping score, our experts — and the audience — finally get to see their first dinosaur.
Their wonder is our wonder. The characters’ reactions remind us that dinosaurs were enormous, creatures almost out of legend, the extinct beasts we fell in love with as children. This moment is everything Hammond dreamt of when designing his park. If only it could remain this idyllic.
Grant and Ellie are thrilled to have their scientific theories confirmed, “They do move in herds.” Gennaro realizes that he’s gonna make a fortune off this place. Malcolm realizes Hammond is a “crazy son of a bitch.”
And what’s more — they’ve got a T-Rex.
But before we meet her, a bit more exposition — again, seamlessly done, courtesy of “MR. DNA, a cartoon character who is a happy-go-lucky double-helix strand of recombinant DNA” — and, of course, Hammond’s grandkids (sorry, Grant).
As the experts get the presentation, so too does the audience: the scientists of Jurassic Park discovered dinosaur DNA courtesy of mosquitos that fed on the blood of dinosaurs and then were trapped in amber. By filling in the genetic codes with modern frog species, they were able to bring dinosaurs back from extinction.
Including velociraptors, a choice that was met by Grant and Ellie with astonishment.
After a pop by the raptor pen for a violent cow-feeding, we meet “ROBERT MULDOON, the grim-faced man who was present at the accident in the beginning, fortyish, British,” the game warden, who asserts that the raptors “should all be destroyed.” They’re too intelligent for captivity, as evidenced by the attack in the opening scene.
We’re not at the midpoint yet, oh no. Jurassic Park manages to deftly hold off on the action for a little while longer, still. The idea of the park is so exciting that natural curiosity allows for so much exposition without it feeling boring.
The raptors have their lunch and then the guests have theirs, along with a discussion about the pros and cons of the park. Hammond wants to delight. Gennaro wants to charge thousands for tickets. Malcolm adamantly warns of the dangers.
Grant echoes the themes of the film — warning of the dangers of rapidly advancing technology without building in safeguards and humility in the face of nature’s design. Ellie joins in, pointing out that the park has poisonous plants just because they look nice.
The only thing to do is to go tour the park — along with TIM and ALEXIS, of course.
MIDPOINT
As a storm rolls in, the visitors take off in the fancy electric vehicles while the control room — “RAY ARNOLD, fortyish, a chronic worrier and chain-smoker,” Muldoon, Hammond, and Nedry — monitor them from park and vehicle cameras.
Of course, things begin to go wrong. The dilophosaurs are nowhere to be found. The triceratops is sick and splits the party, sending Ellie with the veterinarian to care for her. And then the vehicles stop working in the Tyrannosaur paddock.
BAD TO WORSE
With the storm worsening, Nedry realizes he’s going to have to rush to get the embryos to the boat. He makes an excuse for different programs going down and then steals away to the embryo room.
Meanwhile, in the Control Room, Arnold notices door security systems shutting down followed by the electrified fences in the park.
We follow Nedry into the park and the full-on tropical storm as he pushes his way through unlocked and un-electrified fences. Unfortunately for him, his tires lock up and he crashes into one of the signs pointing the way to the docks.
Finally, on page 67 of a 126-page script, we get the first ominous warnings of T-Rex.
I love the behind-the-scenes of how they accomplished this effect, by the way. The crew figured out that if they pluck guitar strings beneath the cup of water, it would make the concentric circles called for in the script. And what an introduction it is before we finally see her — the absolute set-piece of all set-pieces, the 40-foot long Tyrannosaurs Rex.
The attack is terrifying; T-Rex rips down the fence, throttles anyone out of a vehicle, and attacks the children’s car before hurling it off a cliff. Gennaro is eaten. Malcolm is wounded. Tim flies off the cliff in the car, leaving Grant and Lex to scramble down after him.
Grant has to climb a tree to retrieve Tim from the car trapped within it and then they rapidly scurry down the tree as the car plummets above them.
Meanwhile, the Control Room realizes that getting Jurassic Park back online is going to take hours, and Nedry runs into a little karmic justice of his own.
Paralyzed by the dilophosaur, we are left to imagine his gruesome death. Spielberg really spares us from most of the carnage that could have been depicted with such attacks. What he shows us is wondrous and at times menacing — but so much else is left to the imagination.
By the time Ellie and Muldoon arrive on the scene in a gasoline-powered Jeep, the destruction is frightening and the T-Rex is long gone. Or so they thought. They pull a groaning Malcolm into the Jeep as T-Rex erupts from the jungle and chases them.
Meanwhile, Grant and the kids realize they will have to walk through the park back to safety, but first we are given the reprieve of a night’s sleep, high in the trees where the Brachiosauruses sing.
Notably, there is a lot of dialogue with the children that is cut from the film, but which resembles conversations and interactions in the book. Just goes to show that even the best in the biz have to kill their darlings.
ALL IS LOST
The next morning, Grant and the kids are awakened by a Brachiosaurus feeding from their tree before they set off into the park. Meanwhile, back in the Control Room, there is no choice but to reboot Jurassic Park fully — something that has never been done before. It seems to work except that it tripped the circuit breakers, meaning someone will have to go to a maintenance shed at the other end of the compound to turn the power back on.
Grant and the kids encounter T-Rex again; luckily this time they go unnoticed as she hunts a pack of Galimimous.
In the Control Room, Arnold has yet to return. Something is wrong. Ellie and Muldoon grab weapons and prepare to follow him to the shed.
With tension rising, Grant and the kids encounter a thirty-foot fence. As the electricity is turned off, he determines they must climb it.
Of course what they don’t know is that Ellie is working her way to the shed to turn the power back on.
And what Ellie doesn’t know is that she is being hunted.
The raptors have escaped. Muldoon covers for Ellie, sending her sprinting into the maintenance shed. Muldoon takes off into the jungle after a raptor. Who is hunting whom?
While the kids climb the fence — and Tim panics at the top — Ellie manages to flip the breakers and get Jurassic Park back in business, unknowingly blasting Tim from the thirty foot fence. Then, the raptor attacks.
BREAK INTO THREE
The tension will remain taut for the rest of the film. Ellie is attacked — and, judging by the dismembered arm she finds, Arnold was too. She manages to trap the raptor in the shed and limps back towards the Control Room.
Meanwhile, Grant resuscitates Tim and hobbles with the children to the Visitors Center.
Muldoon meets his end as he stumbles into a trap wrought by a team of raptors. Notably, the line “Clever girl,” is not in the shooting draft. Something they came up with on set?
Grant leaves the kids in the cafeteria to look for a doctor. While he finds Ellie instead, he doesn’t realize that he left the kids to be preyed upon by raptors.
The kitchen scene is expertly done, with the children hiding amongst the counters and utensils, evading the raptors by luck and instinct. They trap one in a freezer and flee from the other one into the arms of Grant and Ellie.
These scenes are pages and pages of text — something emerging writers are warned not to do. It just goes to show that we must learn the rules so we can know when to break them.
FINALE
Grant and Ellie bring the kids to the now-abandoned Control Room with a pack of intelligent raptors hot on their trails. Of course, the doors are modern and will not lock without electricity. Luckily, Lex — young and hip to modern technology — is able to fix the system and reboot the phones, security, everything.
But that won’t keep a raptor from launching itself through the glass windows.
The four humans climb into the ceiling and crawl away from the advancing hunters. They evade attack through an air duct and into the Visitor Center rotunda, using the dinosaur skeleton exhibits to try to climb down to the lobby floor.
But they are attacked by raptors who followed through the duct — and more who advance through the doors. They are surrounded with nowhere to hide. But then:
Deus Ex Machina? Who cares? It’s done so well — the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that, not to mention William’s score again — that I’ll never forget the first time I saw it in a theater.
Malcolm and Hammond squeal to a stop out the doors; Grant, Ellie, and the kids sprint towards them; and the next thing you know, they’re all safely on a helicopter flying over the ocean towards home and safety, escorted by a flock of birds, descendants of the mighty beasts they left behind.
