8 Reasons It’s Tough to Watch Jurassic Park Today

While Steven Spielberg is famous for the original Jaws, Jurassic Park (1993) is a close second when it comes to thrilling creature features. Though The Land Before Time was the first well-known dinosaur movie, the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World series have become the most popular. The incredibly realistic dinosaurs, John Williams’ exciting music, and the sense of wonder in the first film have made Jurassic Park a lasting part of pop culture. However, many viewers feel that the sequels haven’t lived up to the quality of the original.

Despite being a beloved classic for over 30 years, Jurassic Park isn’t perfect. While it still stands out as the best dinosaur movie ever made – and remains as thrilling today as when it first came out – some aspects haven’t aged well. Today’s audiences, accustomed to modern filmmaking techniques, notice things that don’t quite hold up. Though it’s still a shining example of cinema, it’s fair to critique it with a modern perspective.

Jurassic Park’s Extinct Animal Science Is Overly Optimistic

The idea of bringing extinct animals back to life isn’t new. As early as 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about dinosaurs still living in the Amazon. However, Jurassic Park was groundbreaking because it introduced the possibility of using cloning – a technology that seemed far-fetched at the time. Interestingly, the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep, wasn’t born until three years after the movie came out, which made the film feel remarkably realistic and a powerful combination of science and filmmaking vision.

Looking back, the idea presented in Jurassic Park is overly simple and inaccurate. While it’s theoretically possible to get dinosaur DNA from an ancient mosquito, DNA degrades over time, meaning scientists would only recover tiny pieces of the dinosaur’s genetic code. Modern tools like CRISPR, which are now being explored for genetic modification, including in humans, show just how ambitious – and unrealistic – the film’s vision truly was. It now seems both impossible and fundamentally flawed.

Jurassic Park’s Framework of Morality Is Far Too Simplistic

Moviegoers are no longer satisfied with simple stories of good versus evil. The world is complex, and morality is often a matter of opinion. Jurassic Park presents a clear contrast between the beauty of nature and the dangers of human greed, a theme that still resonates today. However, the film doesn’t fully explore the consequences of this idea. Beyond its impressive visuals, Jurassic Park offers a lot to discuss, especially how it connects capitalism and scientific advancement.

Although Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler do the right thing by respecting nature, they still participated in John Hammond’s risky experiment at Jurassic Park. Some supporting characters, like the dishonest lawyer who is ultimately eaten by the T. rex, feel like over-the-top caricatures of corporate behavior. While satisfying to watch, this outcome feels heavy-handed. Modern audiences generally prefer nuance and subtlety, making Jurassic Park’s clear-cut morality seem a bit old-fashioned.

John Hammond’s Visionary Billionaire Archetype Wouldn’t Fly Today

Richard Attenborough’s portrayal of John Hammond captures the earlier admiration for wealthy visionaries who seemed capable of solving global issues with their resources. Before 2020, figures like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were often praised for using their fortunes for charitable causes. Hammond was seen in a similar light – an unusual but well-meaning character whose flaws were overlooked because of his apparent good intentions. Recently, however, many viewers have begun to question whether Hammond’s motivations were truly as selfless as they seemed.

It’s easy to see the appeal of ambitious ideas, like Hammond’s plan to bring back dinosaurs, if you overlook the often-harsh realities of business. While the story tries to redeem him by showing the failure of Jurassic Park – and acknowledging the lives lost due to his actions – figures like Hammond now seem less like benevolent visionaries. Recent public perception of people like Mark Zuckerberg, who are seen as driven by ego and profit rather than genuine innovation, has changed how we’d view a character like Hammond today. He wouldn’t be seen as a kindly, eccentric grandfather with a beautiful dream anymore.

Modern Action Fans May Not Enjoy the Slow Build-up

Steven Spielberg is known for his excellent control of a film’s rhythm, as seen in Jaws, where the mystery surrounding the shark built suspense. Jurassic Park uses a similar approach, taking time to explain things and create anticipation. While audiences aren’t necessarily less patient now, they’ve become used to the fast-paced action and immediate excitement common in movies like those from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This isn’t anyone’s fault, but it does mean that older films can feel slower when compared to today’s action movies because expectations have changed.

Jurassic Park builds its world and story carefully and deliberately, creating a strong foundation for the exciting events to come. This patient approach requires viewers to pay attention and think about what’s happening, which is something many modern blockbuster movies don’t ask for. In fact, today’s franchise films often pack in more action than the 1993 classic. Longtime fans of Jurassic Park might not notice this difference, but newer viewers might find the movie a bit slow-paced.

Dinosaurs Never Looked Like the Way They Do in Jurassic Park

As a huge film fan, I always thought the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were genuinely frightening – some of the best movie monsters ever, honestly. It’s fascinating to learn that the paleontologist Jack Horner, who ended up being the science advisor for the whole series, basically aimed to add just enough science to make it believable without sacrificing the fun. The film really shifted how people saw dinosaurs, moving away from thinking of them as just large animals and back towards seeing them as something truly monstrous. But Spielberg made a key decision – he felt bright, colorful dinosaurs just wouldn’t be scary, so he pushed for a more muted palette of grays, browns, and blacks for most of them.

The Jurassic World films had a chance to correct some inaccuracies about dinosaurs. Evidence increasingly shows dinosaurs had brightly colored skin, and the Velociraptors—which terrified audiences in the original Jurassic Park—were very different from how they were portrayed. Being closely related to birds, they were likely fully covered in feathers, unlike the sparsely feathered versions seen in Jurassic Park III and later films. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that scientists now believe dinosaurs didn’t roar, but communicated using sounds more like birdsong. Despite efforts to maintain a consistent look, these issues make the original Jurassic Park feel quite outdated by today’s scientific understanding.

The Ethics of Cloning Hit Completely Different in the 21st Century

Before Dolly the sheep was born in 1997, cloning was purely science fiction. It was perfect movie material, allowing writers to bend the rules of science and rely on imagination to fill in the details. However, Dolly fundamentally shifted how people thought about cloning. Suddenly, the ethical implications of this powerful technology became a major concern, moving it from a distant idea to a real-world issue about our responsibility to the environment and life itself.

When I first saw Jurassic Park, it struck me as a story about how humans think they can control nature, like we need to ‘play God.’ But rewatching it now, it makes me think about the ethics of bringing back extinct species. Is it right to resurrect them just to put them in an environment they’re not built for? And honestly, that messed-up hybrid dinosaur? It felt like the movie was telling us that cloning gone wild is a terrible idea. I think audiences today really get how risky and complicated this stuff can be – it’s not just a fun sci-fi concept anymore.

The Ecological Subtexts of Jurassic Park Feel Shallow

While Jurassic Park hints at environmental themes, it doesn’t fully explore them. The idea of letting nature run wild works well as a story element, but it doesn’t feel like a deeply thought-out environmental message. It’s perhaps unfair to expect the film to perfectly capture these ideas, considering it was made before environmental issues were widely discussed. However, today’s audiences, more aware of climate change and extinction, are less forgiving of stories that only scratch the surface of these important topics – and with good reason.

While Jurassic Park presents nature as chaotic, with dinosaurs embodying its dangerous side, the film ultimately overlooks the real issue: human disruption of natural habitats. Dr. Malcolm’s famous line, “Life finds a way,” doesn’t delve into the problems of habitat loss, excessive consumption, or how humans exploit the environment. Unlike films like Annihilation and Okja, Jurassic Park doesn’t fully explore the serious risks of humans interfering with nature. A real-life Jurassic Park could have led to dinosaurs becoming dominant predators or unleashing devastating diseases. However, the film simplifies the ecological disaster, blaming it on the mistakes of John Hammond and ultimately portraying him as a flawed but redeemable creator of an unsustainable system.

Sequel Saturation Has Dimmed the Original Movie’s Brilliance

Many popular movie series eventually lose their appeal. While fans often assume their favorites will always be well-received, later audiences may disagree. Despite sometimes showing flashes of quality, the recent Jurassic Park sequels keep reviving a franchise that arguably should have ended with the original, but continue to earn huge profits at the box office, despite not matching the first film’s lasting impact.

Let’s be honest, seeing the original Jurassic Park today is tough. It’s nearly impossible to watch it with fresh eyes, divorced from everything that came after. That first glimpse of the T. rex – the sound, the water shaking – doesn’t hit quite the same way when you’ve already seen dinosaurs tearing each other apart in later films. The jeep chase, the gentle giants being fed, even that iconic flashlight beam on the T. rex‘s eye… they just don’t feel as groundbreaking anymore. We’ve seen so much of this now, and it’s starting to feel…stale. Cinema really needs to focus on originality and give us something truly new before we get completely oversaturated.

2025-11-09 04:44