Back in the early ’90s, watching a film was like a picnic. We hoarded enough chips and bottles of soft drinks. And it wasn’t very often that our parents took us to the movies. But the excitement of an outing that included a film viewing was enough to get us excited days before the glorious day.
It was on one such day that my parents took me for a film which I knew nothing about. Obviously, I didn’t know what to expect.
And then Jurassic Park happened.
Nobody could convince us that those dinosaurs in the movie were unreal.
We stepped into a world that existed 65 million years ago but the impact was such that we still feel that the way Jurassic Park introduced us to dinosaurs was nothing short of perfection. It was fantasy that translated beautifully on screen and there was nothing that our parents could say that would dissuade us from believing that those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were not real.
The world of Jurassic Park felt like a parallel universe that could totally exist.
Jurassic Park was the first English language film that I saw and that probably stands true for a lot of ’90s kids. And boy oh boy was it an experience! The first sight of those giant reptiles left me in awe and there was no way that I could believe that it was all done with computer graphics. Sure the film had better CGI than most of the films we watch today, but it had more to do with the fact that my innocent mind was so accepting of the world where man could ‘create dinosaurs’ from the DNA that had stayed on trees for millions of years. The world of Jurassic Park felt like a parallel universe that could totally exist.
It felt like an amusement park which had replaced rides with something even more magnificent.
We lived vicariously through those kids in the film.
My younger self was so jealous of Tim and Lex. They got to go on an adventure of a lifetime. Of course, it wasn’t a pleasant ride but watching them struggle in near-death situations and still coming out on top made me want to be in their place. The scientists in the movie had such cool jobs that gave me aspirations to be like them when I grew up.
But the real star of the film was the T. Rex.
The star of the film, the one who left us all in shock and awe was the T. Rex. I still get the chills when I think about the scene where we can hear its footsteps and see the ripples in a glass of water. The gravity of his terror was such that the impending doom became obvious and unavoidable.
For me, the T. Rex was both the hero and the villain in the film.
The one who was kept in captivity and was probably just trying to figure out a way to make sense of everything. The sounds he made scared me for numerous nights thereafter. It took the silly kid in me months to actually believe that it was all computerised.
Even though the film used quite a lot of technical jargon but at no point did it alienate the audience. Rather, it made us believe that anything in the world was possible. Before I saw the film, I couldn’t have even imagined the magnitude of those creatures who existed ages before mankind.
The dinosaurs, the story telling, the thrill of the film was something that happens once in many years. But the film imparted lessons that have stayed with us. The most important one being that the power of nature is greater than all. It can create and destroy anything and we shouldn’t be interfering with its course.