10 Things I Learned Watching All 6 Jurassic Park Movies In Order

Summary

• Watching all six
  Jurassic Park
  movies in order is a fun experience with important lessons to learn.
• Jurassic Park
  movies offer suspense, impressive animatronics, and a cautionary tale about playing God.
• The original 1993 movie captured the spellbinding power that subsequent sequels have struggled to match.

I highly recommend watching all six Jurassic Park movies in order, any time of year – there’s silly fun to be had, but also some surprisingly important lessons to be learned. Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel, on which the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie is based, is a short, sharp burst of a dinosaur thriller with a message. Spielberg’s movie captured this spectacularly. The subsequent Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies were in the same vein as the original, offering action, adventure, and dinosaurs.

Jurassic Park is one of the highest-grossing movie franchises ever, and it’s not hard to see why. Adding these six movies to a movie marathon itinerary is a crowd-pleaser par excellence, from the 1993 original movie through to the Jurassic World era. Crichton followed his novel up with the sequel The Lost World in 1995, which was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for eight weeks. Spielberg’s movie sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park was loosely based on this, forming a solid foundation for the non-adaptation movies in the franchise to follow.

10 It’s Just About Possible To Watch All Jurassic Park Movies In A Day

A Movie Marathon Could Take 12 Hours

It isn’t always advised to spend a full 12 hours straight watching TV, but sometimes it is just what the doctor ordered. The Jurassic Park references dropped by movies and TV shows alone are enough to create the legendary status of this series. However, watching them all in a row may take some planning, as I discovered, starting this movie marathon quite late in the day.

With the Jurassic World 4 movie currently being planned, it’s as good a time as any to start getting through the impressive day’s worth of drama to be received from the Jurassic Park movies. While most movies have a respectable running time, you may want to split the whole marathon in two to make it more manageable. Or, start in the morning and work your way through.

We Can Access Very Old DNA

We are able to extract insect DNA from fossilized amber, which is something I wouldn’t know if it wasn’t for the Jurassic Park movies. Dominican amber, in particular, provides exciting possibilities. Rewatching the movies in order gave me a revitalized curiosity about the science of Jurassic Park’s premise, precipitating an enjoyable rabbit hole into the world of genetics.

The Jurassic Park sequence showing the animated molecule informs us, correctly, that we can work carefully to extract DNA from ancient sources. For example, fossil eggshell fragments can be powdered and subsequently processed and heated to release DNA from the calcite substance. Paleontologists and archeologists working today use diverse techniques to recover DNA from different types of fossils.

8 Frankenstein & Jurassic Park Are Horror For The Same Reason

Body Horror Speaks To Our Deepest Fears

I remember that I felt a bit sick the first time I watched the original Jurassic Park DNA explainer demo scene, suffering some dawning realization that I struggled to voice at the tender age of 5. This scared me more than the dinosaurs, but the combined effect of both resulted in what I still see as one of the horror genre’s best and most unique entries. Maybe this was my first experience of one of my favorite genres, body horror.

The fear at the heart of body horror is the mutative possibility in biology, the fear of the unknown biology of the other and the known biology of the self, and the despicable reckoning of which is worse.

Jurassic Park may not be immediately obvious as body horror, but it strikes fear for the same reasons that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein did, along with its movie and TV adaptations. In a way, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein precipitated Jurassic Park by embodying the fear of the mutated self. The fear at the heart of body horror is the mutative possibility in biology, the fear of the unknown biology of the other and the known biology of the self, and the despicable reckoning of which is worse.

7 Dinosaurs Regulated Their Body Temperature

Dinosaur Homeostasis Was Intriguing

One of the scientific facts I gleaned from watching the Jurassic Park movies was that dinosaurs regulated their body temperature through their bodies and behavior in interesting ways. Animals alive today, including humans, regulate their body temperature in a number of ways. But if it weren’t for the Jurassic Park movies, I would be missing some particular tidbits of biological trivia about dinosaur homeostasis.

Scarlett Johansson is set to lead the next
Jurassic Park
movie,
Jurassic World 4.

The movies go into the Brachiosaurus and how it could get rid of excess body heat through its long neck and tail. While we’re a long way off from being able to prove this conclusively, there is good evidence to suggest that this is true. Likewise, velociraptor may well have generated heat through their metabolism. Despite numerous scientific inaccuracies, exploring dinosaurs in the original Jurassic Park trilogy and beyond is a good gateway to understanding dinosaurs.

6 The Risk Of Playing God

Humans Have Terrifying Power

Part of my fear watching the original Jurassic Park DNA demo scene was founded on the deep-seated understanding that we have a truly horrible power to create and destroy, and what can seem like creation may well not be so clear-cut. Jurassic Park is a cautionary tale about playing God, riffing on social fears around emergent genetic technology. While these fears shouldn’t discourage vital medical research, they hold science accountable for meddling in affairs that are out of our depth.

Watching the movies back, of course, comes with its fair share of scientific clarity. I now understand that despite being able to extract DNA from fossilized amber, the chance of being able to recover full dinosaur DNA from amber is slim. So the playing God that happens in Jurassic Park, while terrifying, is at least not a real threat – for now.

5 Jurassic Park Has Untapped Potential

Recent Movies Haven’t Scratched The Surface

Not the most important, but perhaps the most glaring of my realizations rewatching the Jurassic Park movies was the huge lack of other dinosaur movies in the mainstream. Unless you’re six – or 36 – and want to watch The Land Before Time over and over again, dinosaur nerds are fairly restricted in the realms of cinema. Fantasia must get a special mention as the animated dreamscape containing Jurassic beasts.

Numerous low-budget to medium-budget action movies recreated the Jurassic Park atmosphere. However, cinematic accomplishments on the scale of the Jurassic Park franchise, with meaningful contributions to any kind of dialogue, are few and far between. The dinosaur genre is untapped, there are modern parables to be investigated around AI and body horror, and the Jurassic Park franchise could get the budget and approvals. I long for the day this franchise starts using its power correctly.

4 The Importance Of Ethics In Technology

Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Should

This is one of the coldest realities of the Jurassic Park movie and, to a certain extent, its sequel – unethical technology can be fatal. Jurassic World captured this to a certain extent as well, especially in its nostalgic T-Rex reveal. Rexy was always central to the horror of Jurassic Park and its sequels, so this iconic beast hammered home the message.

The ethical exploration of technological advancement remained a theme in the franchise even after the original trilogy, which I followed with enjoyment by watching all the movies again. This is particularly relevant nowadays, with the dangers of AI a hot topic on everyone’s lips. The same fear of our own power pervades the more recent Jurassic World movies, though not with as much power as the Steven Spielberg set.

3 Hollywood Never Understood High Heels

Hollywood’s Serial Misuse Of The Shoe Still Astounds

Bryce Dallas Howard’s exasperating Claire running away from dinosaurs in high heels is inevitably one of the more memorable aspects of the silly side of this franchise. While Spielberg’s movies plumbed a depth that the more recent movies have been unable to reach, I still enjoy laughing at the misuse of the high-heeled shoe in this movie. While it isn’t one of the things that happen in every Jurassic Park movie, it speaks to Hollywood’s wider misuse of the high heel.

Howard herself actually finalized the decision to keep the shoes on, rather than wear sneakers, according to her interview with USA Today. Jurassic World’s team speculated on the decision for a while, and Howard’s choice to go with heels makes her scenes less realistic, but more entertaining. Hollywood never knew what footwear to give women, and sometimes laughing at a movie is as good as laughing with it.

2 The Risk Of Privatizing Science

Profit And Science Hang In A Fragile Balance

I have always found one key message of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel and the 1993 movie adaptation of the same name to be the risk of privatizing science. Spielberg’s 1993 movie was a groundbreaking genre surprise at its time and dealt with the conflict between capitalism and science. Profiteering resulted in Jurassic Park and Jurassic World in the movies, without reducing the difficult subject matter. Crichton and Spielberg made it clear that, in their work, commodifying science could be dangerous.

I don’t think privatizing science is categorically bad, but medicine is just one industry that has been fraught with corruption and terrible profit-oriented choices over the years. Crichton was concerned about a shift away from research happening in universities and guided by academics. As Crichton saw funding for this research get taken away, he saw big business working on this research instead. This research happening in private labs was profit-orientated, sometimes to the detriment of the majority, and the Jurassic Park movies challenge this trend.

1 No Sequels Captured The Magic Of The 1993 Original

The Original Is The Best

The Jurassic Park franchise is full of action-adventure moments, but no sequels captured the spellbinding power of Steven Spielberg’s original 1993 movie. This movie was formative for me as someone growing up in the ’90s, and I know I speak for many of my peers. While I’ve been following the Jurassic Park timeline from its inception to the modern day, I’ve not encountered any movie that’s been a match for the first.

While I am enjoying the
Jurassic World
era, it’s
Jurassic Park
that changed cinema and made paleontology cool.

In fact, after Spielberg stopped directing and the movies were no longer based on Crichton’s work – Jurassic Park III onward – I did notice a change in tone. I noticed a welcome improvement in CGI and animatronics, despite the pioneering work of the original, but also a rehashing of the same ideas. The absence of original stories made for bulked-out action sequences. While I am enjoying the Jurassic World era, it’s Jurassic Park that changed cinema and made paleontology cool, providing new visibility and opportunity to important research.