Does Jurassic Park count as a Sci-Fi genre?
Vick
Yes, and there's another one that was a disappointment for me, having read the novel when it first came out.
I remember reading the book-another one that I read straight through in the space of a day, like other Crichton novels I've read-and thinking, "Boy, this would be a great movie, if only someone could figure out how to animate the dinosaurs realistically". The novel's themes are compelling.
Then Spielberg produced the movie. The special effects were astounding, raising the bar for all movies that followed. But he changed the story and several of the characters, in a way that ruin the story. Instead of being a cautionary tale about messing with things without trying to understand them, it's an adventure flick. In the novel, for example, Hammond isn't a kindly little elf, but an arrogant huckster, who doesn't see the hubris in what he's done, and he gets his comeuppance in the end.
I came out of the movie theater thinking, "Boy, if you could take out the scenes with the humans, leaving just footage of the dinosaurs, that would be a great movie." ("Walking With Dinosaurs" was produced a couple years later.)
I can enjoy watching it, certainly more than the sequels, but more often, I pick up the book are read it again.
Prost!
Brad
