I learnt young to mistrust the excitement of hearing that a beloved book is being turned into a movie (thanks for nothing, Disney). It’s a sentiment shared by many bookworms after the latest Hollywood attempt to boil a favourite down to 90 minutes of entertainment: the book was better. But is this always true? For SciFi Month, I revisited Jurassic Park to see how it held up.
Full disclosure: I’m pretty sure I saw the film first, and I think that makes a difference. When you don’t know what you’re missing, you judge a film on its own merits. And this was the first film I ever saw twice at the cinema, leaving me with a grin plastered on my face and agonising muscle spasms in my neck induced by trying to leap out of my skin during a T-Rex attack.
However, I bought and adored the book, and went on to read most of Crichton’s back catalogue. It was only when I tried to pick it up off the shelf for SciFi Month that I realised it had gone missing. Given the tattered state of The Andromeda Strain, I suspect it fell to bits somewhere down the track.
Rereading it, three things hit me: just how few of the scenes haven’t ultimately been adopted by Hollywood, if not for the original film then for one of the sequels; just how brave Crichton was in building his plots (like all good scientists, he liked to show his workings); and how much I appreciate Steven Spielberg.
Jurassic Park has a prologue that is dry, almost journalistic and – if I’m honest – adds nothing that isn’t delivered by the novel itself. The First Iteration feels like several more prologues, thankfully written in a more engaging style. All these details soon become relevant, but it’s a long time until we meet our actual protagonists. Still, give Crichton his due – it’s tense and engaging from the start, with its mysterious construction accidents and reptile bites.
None of this detail made it to the movie. Instead, Spielberg gives us an amber mine and a worker being attacked by… something. As you’d expect from the director who gave us Jaws, he knows not to show too much too soon. He also knows not to keep us waiting; Crichton was writing a scientific thriller, but Spielberg was directing a blockbuster for kids people who wanted to see dinosaurs.
And once the book reaches Isla Nublar, there’s little to pick between it and the film in terms of the action sequences: Spielberg cheerfully adopts as much of Alan Grant’s thrill ride through the park as his budget (and the CGI available at the time) could comfortably stretch to. As dramatisations go, it’s remarkably faithful – although it will inevitably have cut out some readers’ favourite set piece.
The big difference is in the characters themselves. This is where I almost always end up having a bit of a whinge (for all the things I like about The Lord of the Rings, I will never forgive Peter Jackson for what he made of Aragorn. Or Thorin – but that’s a rant for another post). In an unusual twist, however, I’m going to whinge about Crichton.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Jurassic Park is a great book. It’s inventive, it’s thrilling, it’s got more action than you can shake a stick at and while there’s some soapboxing along the way it’s not too overbearing – although I did find myself arguing out loud with some of Malcolm’s more absurd angles. But it’s also incredibly sexist – in a way that Spielberg’s film isn’t.
The prologues are relentless in their dismissal of their female characters (Ed clearly doesn’t think Roberta will be suitably qualified to look after the injured construction worker; Ellen Bowman is unbearably vapid, entirely absorbed by her looks; and Alice is dismissed by her senior lab colleague as being given to flights of fancy, which includes him minimising her fear that a co-worker is stalking her. GAH). I’d love to think Crichton was trying to illustrate what shits men can be, but that’s not how any of it comes across.
When we get to Ellie, Spielberg faithfully embraces Crichton’s description – tall, blonde, shorts, shirt knotted at the midriff – but he cuts all the subsequent sexualisation. There’s not a male character in the book (even Tim, here the older grandchild) who meets her without letting their gaze linger on those long legs. Ian Malcolm doesn’t even bother silencing his inner voice. Ellie handles it with the long-suffering grace of a woman in the 80s.
The only other female character (after the prologues), Lex, is a whinging brat who constantly derides her dinosaur-mad brother and who has no saving graces. Where Tim is wide-eyed, level-headed and knowledgeable, she repeatedly puts the others in danger with her propensity to do exactly the wrong thing at any given moment. She even prevents Tim from getting the security systems back online.
Even the dinosaurs get undermined. They’re all female, Henry Wu assures the dubious scientists. But they refer to the dangerous ones as ‘he’, he adds. He’s not wrong – the book exclusively uses male pronouns for both T-Rexes (yes, there are 2 in the book) and the velociraptors. There’s no excuse for this. The narrative goes out of its way to tell us the animals are all female; it’s a key plot point. But we can’t possibly think of them that way.
It’s safe to say I gnashed my teeth a lot. For this point alone, I’d cheerfully stick my vote in the film bucket and walk away.
That said, not all of Spielberg’s changes are so successful: there was no real need to suggest Alan and Ellie are romantically linked, nor to over-egg Alan’s distaste for technology to the extent he can’t even buckle himself into the helicopter – especially given the changes to the film’s finale, which removes the tension of the temporary suggestion that Alan will have to successfully use a computer. As for why Spielberg felt it necessary to introduce the theme of Dr Grant’s paternal instincts, I’m not sure. But all this is window dressing at most.
The big loser in the dramatisation is the lawyer, Gennaro. The film captures his venal ethics, but by killing him very early on (in place of a Park PR drone) it forgoes the book’s efforts to rehabilitate him. In the book, it’s Gennaro who goes out into the Park with Muldoon to try and find Grant and the children; Gennaro who follows Arnold to the maintenance shed to bring the generators back up; Gennaro who stops the ship docking at the mainland with its cargo of baby velociraptors. In spite of his efforts, he’s still taken to task by Grant for dodging his responsibilities – this speech, along with most of the final act, never made it into the film.
Unexpectedly, it’s still easier to like Gennaro than it is to warm to Ian Malcolm, who abandons the children during the T-Rex attack and spends the rest of the book tub-thumping and prophesying (however accurately) from his sickbed. However, outside of John Grisham, lawyers rarely make good heroes – and Spielberg was clear that his film only had room for dinosaur anti-heroes. Who are clearly and repeatedly called out to be female.
Ahem.
Sorry, Gennaro. Malcolm benefits from this, although mostly from the casting – it’s hard not to warm to Jeff Goldblum, who has the charm that Crichton failed to bring to book Malcolm, and gets some bonus heroism (Spielberg was never going to show a headline star as a coward).
It’s not a faultless film. Where the book is written to thrill adults, the film widens the net to appeal to children – it’s a dinosaur movie, after all – which means simplifying some of the ethical questions and refraining from feeding Sir Richard Attenborough to the compys; I always loved that Hammond got his comeuppance in the book. For the most part, I think the changes are handled well, and while the film feels lighter-weight, the main ideas come across clearly.
Who am I kidding? I once told my beloved that The Lord of the Rings would live or die by Gollum; Jurassic Park was always going to live or die by its dinosaurs. It had me at hello.
Result: this is a really close call, but I’m going to give it to the movie by a nose for ditching the sexism and serving up the dinosaurs.
November 30, 2016 at 11:58 am
I think the LOTR films’ treatment of Faramir is the most annoying. Like, take a really noble, overlooked, brave, wise character and just… empty him of the whole reason why he was awesome, why don’t you.
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November 30, 2016 at 1:25 pm
Oh hell yes. While I appreciate a lot of Jackson’s dramatisation, there’s other bits that just make me angry. Aragorn. Faramir. ‘Let’s hunt some orc’. WTH PETER JACKSON. ALL THAT EPIC PROSE TO WORK WITH AND YOU JACKHAMMER IN ‘Let’s hunt some orc’???? Ahem.
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November 30, 2016 at 3:19 pm
It’s been years since I read the book so don’t quite remember the sexism or maybe I failed to notice it. But I have watched the movies so many times that I have lost count. Did you like Lost world book? I felt it was almost as good as Jurassic Park.
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November 30, 2016 at 4:46 pm
I honestly don’t remember it. I remember going to see the movie (I saw it in Amman in Jordan on a weekend off during a dig!) and I remember owning the book… but I don’t remember if it was any good. I’m prepared to get hold of a copy to do a follow up side by side next year 🙂 The movie is pretty bad; the villains are so over the top, and … well, I guess I never did like Ian Malcolm much, even with Jeff Goldblum playing him 😉
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November 30, 2016 at 4:54 pm
AND the book doesn’t have the best quote: ‘God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs, God creates Man, Man kills God, Man brings back dinosaurs.’ … ‘Dinosaurs eat Man, Woman inherits the Earth’, complete with smug look 😀
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November 30, 2016 at 5:03 pm
I’ve always loved that line 🙂 Ellie gets way more to say and do in the film; she does reasonably well in the book (in spite of the ‘o hai sexy’ vibe), but I was a bit iffy about the subtext in the scenes where she distracts the velociraptors and then gets overconfident – and other people die/get injured trying to rescue her. I wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a loaded scene or just another example of Malcolm’s principles playing out…
I much prefer that she gets to be unquestionably heroic in the film and do the run to the generator shed.
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November 30, 2016 at 10:22 pm
I like the movie better too- and I saw it first as well. I just read the book a few years ago. It’s good, and I was surprised how different it was in places (when the kids went over the waterfall after being chased by T-rex, I was like THAT’s not in the movie lol). But I think I prefer the movie. It has some genuinely touching moments, especially that moment when Alan and Ellie see the dinos for the first time.
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November 30, 2016 at 10:55 pm
That T-Rex scene is great – it’s one of the surprises for me that it didn’t make the movie, but I suspect budget got in the way. There’s a nod to it in the second film IIRC.
The thing I felt the book played down was how inappropriate everyone’s responses to baby dinosaurs were. They always reverted to awwww how cute – and the animals sort of responded accordingly. I kinda expected the baby raptor to rip a chunk out of Tim’s arm to make the point 😉
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December 1, 2016 at 2:19 am
Ah, tough one. I don’t remember much about the sexism (it was a long long long time since I’ve read the book) but I’ve always thought the decision to make all dinosaurs in the park female (because they were supposedly more “docile”) was an ironic one. Almost like the author’s way of saying “ha, let’s laugh at the stupidity and hubris of these know-it-all scientists.” I’ll need to read it again to see if it still comes off that way.
Crichton’s still a favorite though, I’ve read and loved (almost) all his books. The movie was great too, I still have a soft spot for it in my heart. It was also what made me pick up the book, and then to read more by the author.
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December 1, 2016 at 8:08 am
I don’t think the choice to make the dinosaurs female was sexist (flawed, as it turned out, but absolutely scientific hubris as you say). It’s the misgendering that bothers me, and thankfully they dropped it in the movie. All those angry dangerous female dinosaurs are ‘she’ again.
“Clever girl” <- still one of my favourite moments in the movie 🙂
Crichton does remain very readable. While I've had a bit of a rant about the undertones, the story is hella good and I raced it through it happily. I've always adored The Andromeda Strain, so I'm going to reread it soon I think – I'd happily reread Sphere, too (now there's a case where my recall tells me the book is way better than the film), but my copy seems to have gone walkabout.
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December 1, 2016 at 6:29 pm
Sometimes movie characterizations veer wildly from the portrayal of the original book, but in this case they do it for a good cause 😀
And let’s not start on what Peter Jackson did to some of the book characters… Turning staid, dependable Gimli into comic relief; turning wise Legolas into Prince Obvious; and so on and on…
No, let’s not go down this road… 🙂
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December 1, 2016 at 9:22 pm
That’s a rant for another day. I forgive a lot for Gollum. And New Zealand.
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December 2, 2016 at 5:08 pm
Yes, the location was nothing short of perfect, and it felt *right* for my mental image of Middle Earth. And Moria… ah, the scenes in Moria seemed to have been taken straight from my brain… 🙂
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December 2, 2016 at 2:23 am
I haven’t read the book, but I do know there have been a couple of cases where I actually did prefer the movie/show to the book (True Blood is one)
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December 4, 2016 at 5:34 pm
This was honest to god the first book that I liked both. But, they were different. If you’ve read both JP books (Jurassic Park and The Lost World), you’ll quickly realize that elements from both books were pulled into all 4 books. That’s pretty incredible in my opinion. When 2 books can spawn numerous movies (even by using little bits and pieces).
I did the same thing you did recently Jurassic Park was one of my all time favorite books and is definitely in my top 3 favorite movies of all-time. I was amazed at how well JP held up to the time (for how long ago it was written).
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December 4, 2016 at 9:34 pm
It is amazing how much material is in there – rereading just the first book I found scenes from the first 3 films; I am tempted to get hold of a copy of The Lost World to follow up next year. As you say, it’s held up surprisingly well given its age – I’ll cheerfully hang on to it for future rereads.
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