The dismal summer blockbuster season is finally wrapping up, and it’s safe to say there hasn’t been a hit quite like last year’s mega reboot “Jurassic World,” which appeased critics and wowed audiences. But that film, in a way, was almost just as far from its original, Steven Spielberg‘s timeless tentpole “Jurassic Park,” as any movie this year — more CGI than story propping up its bloated, spectacle-driven core. To break it down into hard numbers (courtesy of the video essay “‘Jurassic Park’ – Pushing The Limits Of Visual Effects”) it’s easy to see just how much Hollywood has changed: “Jurassic Park” has just 63 shots with CG, “Jurassic World” has more than 2,000.
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The 5-minute video essay, put together by KaptainKristian, tackles just how revolutionary Spielberg’s 1993 classic is; it wasn’t the first film to utilize CG, but it was the first to really put it to good use, employing the still-young computer generated effects more to enhance traditional practical effects (including a massive animatronic T-rex), than to be the sole source of the movie’s fantastic dinosaurs. (Which is also where “Jurassic Park” excelled.) As the video makes note, people working on the film put in thousands of working hours studying the movements of alligators and elephants to beautifully reimagine how the dinos moved.
It’s fascinating stuff, especially seeing just how much craft and love went into “Jurassic Park,” not only in pushing the boundaries of film, but also in revolutionizing a bit of science in the process. Check out the video above and weigh in with your thoughts on CG in the comments below.
