"Jurassic Park": Like Grad School, Plus Raptors

A Merry Valentine's Day to you all!

Today is a holiday associated with many well-founded misgivings.  While I'm not unduly obsessed with Valentine's Day, I subscribe to the school of thought that teaches that it never hurts to have yet another excuse to be nice to people you love, to do something special with your partner, and to maybe give them a present.  As far as presents in the PsychoCinematic household go, the rule of thumb is that you can tell how much someone loves you by how big a piece of meat they... buy you.

In my case, I am clearly a well-loved human.  To celebrate Valentine's Day making-a-nice-dinner-at-home style, Boyfriend procured the following impressive slab:

Jeal?

Since Mondays are lame and school/work-filled, we cooked that moo cow up and celebrated yesterday.  It was glorious.  Food comas ensued.  And unexpected tertiary perk: I have time to write a little post today!  So I present to you: my Valentine's Day gift to my beloved blog-reading friends.

True to the spirit of the day, I will be discussing "Jurassic Park" (1993).

Oh yes.  We had the great pleasure of re-watching this epic classic while some friends were visiting over the weekend.  It was quite the ancient reptilian treat.

I'll admit it: I still got antsy during the terrifying opening scene (this being the first time I actually watched it, without averting my eyes), and I still got goosebumps during the first Brachiosaurus reveal.  Somewhere deep within there still lives the complete dinosaur nerd I was as a child.  For being almost 20 years old (which, in turn, makes me feel old), the special effects in "Jurassic Park" hold up remarkably well.  The sick triceratops still seems bracingly real, and the climactic T-Rex v. Raptors fight is still incredibly dramatic and exhilarating.  Not to mention John William's score is still pitch perfect.

Raptors: pwned.

Brief aside: This movie, I'm sure, has definitely contributed to the warding-off-attack-by-scary-things dreams I have semi-regularly, even as an adult.  I'm typically barricading my home against zombies or vampires, but dinosaurs are definitely among the cast of characters in my head.  Clearly, if xkcd is any indication, I'm not alone in this.

Credit: The delightful xkcd.com

Beyond the surprising timelessness of the movie's special effects, I was struck by how strong the scriptwriting was.  There are SO MANY great one-liners in "Jurassic Park"!  It remains quite entertaining based on its many witticisms alone.

A selective sample:

On excrement: "That is one big pile of shit."

 On lawyer mockery: "Are those heavy?  Then they're expensive.  Put them back."

For the raptor lovers in the audience: "Clever girl!"

And, my personal favorite, BD Wong's fabulous lifting-pencil-from-clipboard flourish with the line: "You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will... [pencil lift] breed?"

Another brief aside: I have to say that I am desperately in love with BD Wong for many reasons, not the least of which being that a) he plays an FBI profiler on Law & Order: SVU (psychology swoon), and b) he made this, which makes me cry every time I watch it.  I love him love him love him.

Now, if I may daintily alight on my feminist soapbox for just a moment...

I think I've made it clear that I really do like this movie.  I really do.  It's an excellent piece of entertainment.  And I know it was made almost two decades ago.  It is therefore not wholly fair to hold it to the standards to which I would hold a movie made today.

...That being said, it is still irritating as hell that when Sattler marches off to find Arnold with Muldoon and Hammond attempts to go in her place, wordlessly reasoning with her that he should be the one to go, she snipes at him, "We can discuss sexism in survival situations when I get back!"  And then she DOESN'T TAKE A GUN INTO DINOSAUR TERRITORY, in spite of the fact that we just took a look at a rack full of them.  Instead, she takes a stupid giant flashlight with the universe's longest cable, which she will subsequently drag behind her all gimpily as she flees a raptor, blubbering like a big baby.

Gahhhhh.

I find this annoying for the following reasons:

1. I interpreted Hammond's protestations as age-based, not sex-based.  I may be misreading his intentions, but it does seem appropriate that a much older person--not to mention the dude who's essentially responsible for the mess everyone's in, unlike Sattler--should put themselves at risk, rather than someone with presumably decades of life still ahead of her.

2. Guns are typically interpreted as "male" manifestations of "power" in film, so GOD FORBID a woman should wield a gun.

3. It's just irritating to get all snotty with a dude who's trying to do the right thing, posturing as a self-sufficient feminist, and then fail to appropriately protect yourself (with non-gender-conforming weapons or no).  Sattler is contradicting herself without even realizing it.  It pisses me off.

That aside, seriously, this movie is definitely worth a re-watch.

With that... happy love day, everyone!

<3 <3 <3