Jurassic Park
Author: Michael Crichton
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Year: 1990
Genre: Sci-fi/Thriller
Age: Adult 18+
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I've always loved Jurassic Park. I watched the movie as a kid & have loved it ever since. My library recently got the audio CD & I decided to start listening on my trip last weekend. When I wasn't listening I have an old thrifted copy of the book I was reading. Overall I wasn't disappointed. Reading the book made me realize there was some serious differences between the book & the movie/movies. After the book review I'm going to include a book to movie comparison. There will be spoilers in this review so if you don't want to know turn back now!
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Our story begins in the fishing village of Bahia Anasco on the west coast of Costa Rica. A man is brought into the small medical clinic with serious life threatening injuries. The story provided is that he was run over during a construction accident on an island off the coast about 100 miles out. The island is called Isla Nublar, or cloud island. The Dr at the clinic doesn't believe the story given by Ed Regis from Ingen Cnstruction, it looks more like the man was mauled by some kind of large animal. In the end his injuries are too severe & as he lays dying on the bed covered in blood he whispers the name of the creature that killed him...raptor.
Next we see a happy family in the same area they are on vacation at the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve. Their little girl named Tina is excited to see the wildlife Costa Rica has to offer. But the trip is cut short when she is attacked by a small lizard on the beach. The girl is taken to the hospital in Puntarenas where is recovers just fine from her injuries. They call in a biologist from the mainland to come & look at a picture the girl drew to try & figure out what animal bit her. Dr. Guitierrez is pretty sure he knows what bit the girl but he has also never seen a lizard with 3 toes that walks on it's hind legs. To investigate for himself he goes to the area where the attack happened & finds a sample. He then sends it off to New York to be examined at the Tropical Diseases Lab at Columbia University. The people there are just as confused but they don't have any idea what they are really looking at so they need further info. A lab worker comes by & sees the picture Tina drew & wants to know who drew the dinosaur?
From there we are introduced to Dr. Alan Grant a paleontologist & professor at the University of Denver, & Dr. Ellie Sattler a graduate student & paleobotinist. They are on a dig in the badlands near Snakewater, Montana studying nests of duckbilled herbivores that once lived in the area. A lawyer comes to visit Grant because it appears that the Hammond Foundation is in a bit of trouble with the US & Costa Rican governments & Grant has a connection to them. He assures the lawyer that he has no idea what is going on at the small island in Costa Rica, Grant only did some consulting work years ago to help fund his research. It isn't but a few minutes later that a fax is sent to Grant of the "lizard" that bit the little girl asking for help on identifying it. Apparently there have been similar incidents all over that area of the island & possibly a few deaths from the bites. Hammond is quick on the lawyers tail though & he calls Grant wanting to know if him & Ellie want to come down to Costa Rica for the weekend & see his newest attraction in the flesh. Hammond agrees to pay a handsome fee to help continue to fund their dig so the pair agree. On the way down to Costa Rica the group of Hammond, Grant, Ellie, Donald Gennaro (Hammond's Lawyer), & Dennis Nedry (the computer guy) pick up the final consultant, a mathematician named Ian Malcolm.
Once the group gets to Isla Nublar they are joined by a few more including Tim & Lexx (Hammond's grandkids), Dr. Henry Wu (InGen's Geneticist), John Arnold (Jurassic Parks's Chief Engineer), Robert Muldoon (Wildlife Expert), & Ed Regis (the Park Manager). The group can't believe what they are seeing once they get there...real life dinosaurs! They begin their tour learning about how the dinosaurs were created through the process of harvesting amber then extracting the DNA from fossilized mosquitoes, finally using gene sequencing to complete the embryos & hatch dinosaurs. From there they head out into the park to get up close & personal with a few of the attractions. The tour has to be cut short because of a storm rolling in. This is where Dennis Nedry's part begins.
Nedry has been meeting with a man named Lewis Dodgson, he works for InGen's competitor called Biosyn. They are interested in the technology used at Jurassic Park & Nedry is desperate for money so he's willing to make a deal with them. He has to deliver dinosaur embryos to them but in order to do that he has to crash the park system, steal the embryos, then get it back online before anyone notices what he has done. This is where things start to go very wrong & it turns out life isn't just a walk in the park.
After Nedry crashes the system the whole park goes offline, Nedry leaves to make his delivery but never returns because he unfortunately gets killed by a poisonous Dilophosaurs. It's then up to the rest if the group to get Jurassic Park back online so they can get back home or face getting eaten by dinosaurs. The first attack comes from the Tyrannosaur where the cars are stuck. Tim & Lexx are thrown from the road & into the paddock, Grant is injured but finds both the kids, Malcolm is severely injured & lying half dead by the road, & Regis gets eaten by the baby T-Rex. Then Ellie & Muldoon go out to find them & bring back a bloody & broken Malcolm while Grant & the kids go through the park to get back to the visitor center. While in the park they encounter all kinds of different dinosaurs but their main concern is avoiding the T-Rex. Wu, Hammond, Gennaro, & Arnold are desperately trying to get the park back online while running into some problems along the way. Things take a turn for the worst when everyone realizes the T-Rex isn't their only concern...the raptors are loose as well. In the end the group that survives figures out the dinosaurs are breeding & everything in the park isn't as controlled as they thought. It turns out that Malcolm was right a life will find a way.
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Likes: The book was very different from the movie. There was a lot of science involved as well as quite a bit of backstory that you never see in the movies.
You get to see more dinosaurs & more of the park then in the movie.
There is lots of action, death defying escapes, & peril in the park.
It was fast paced & kept my interest. Overall I'm really happy I finally read it & I'm going to be reading the other one as well.
Dislikes: One of the main focuses of the book was Malcolm & his chaos theory. It is explained well in the book but it doesn't really add a whole lot to the story. I'm happy it's mentioned in the movie but isn't one of the main focuses.
Rating:
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Book to Movie Comparison
The movie opens with a raptor attack much like in the book but instead of seeing the after math we get to see the actual thing happening.
In the movie we get to see them mining the amber used to get the dinosaur DNA, that is mentioned in the book but not shown specifically.
Gennaro is in the book & the movie but Ed Regis isn't shown in the movie at all. Because of that Gennaro is the one who gets eaten by the T-Rex in the movie.
In both the book & the movie we get to see some of the technology used like the scene with the skeleton at the dig site.
One of the big parts of the book is Grant & the kids floating down the stream to get back to the visitor center & at one point they even fall over a waterfall & have to avoid the T-Rex the entire trip. This isn't shown in the movie at all. The closest thing to this is the river scene in movie #3.
In the movie the sick animal is the Triceratops & in the book it's a Stegosaurus.
In the movie Grant doesn't really like kids & he is very annoyed with Tim. In the book he gets along with them well.
In the movie Grant & Ellie are a thing but in the book Ellie is marrying someone else. I think this difference occurs because the characters in the movie are quite a bit different from how they are described in the book. In the book Grant is a 40 something man with a beard. Ellie is a 20 something young leggy woman. Malcolm is a older, balding, fatish man. Then there is the kids who are swapped in the movie. The movie shows Tim as the younger dinosaurs obsessed kid & Lexx as the bratty older sister. In the book Tim is older but still loves dinosaurs, & Lexx is a whinny little girl.
In the movie the Raptor is the main focus uin the book it's really the T-Rex. This has turned out to be a good thing for the movie franchise because they have really evolved the raptors throughout the movies.
In the book Grant is digging & studying duckbilled dinosaurs & their nests, this becomes a big part of the breeding at Jurassic Park. In both the book & the movie all the dinosaurs at Jurassic Park start off as girls.
Hammond comes to visit Grant & Ellie in the movie which is much more personal, whereas in the book they only know him over the phone.
In the movie they know that the T-Rex can;t see them if they don't move but in the book this is not a true fact. Grant believes that happened when thy used frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence caps.
Nedry & Dodgson's stories are pretty mthe same in the book & the movie.
The first dinosaurs they see at the Park in both the book & the movie are the Brachisousaus's.
In the movie & all the movies since the first one the vehicles used are Jeep's. This has become a big part of Jurassic Park over the years. In the book the tour is actually given in Toyota Land Cruisers & the Jeep's are used for maintenance etc.
The concrete moats, motion sensor tracking, & cameras etc. are a big part of the book because the system crash is a little bit different then in the movie.
The famous T-Rex chase with Muldoon, Malcolm, & Ellie never happens in the book!
Malcolm & Hammond are actually killed at the end of the book but survive in the movie.
There is a scene where Grant & the kids are sleeping in a maintenance shed in the book & they feed a little dinosaur, this scene is not in the movie. There scene where they are sleeping in the tree & see the Brachisousaus is in both the book & movie.
There is a nest of eggs found in the movie but in the book they actually find a whole colony of raptors & end up catching a live one that is a male to prove the theory of breeding in the park.
In the book Tim is the one that knows about computers where as its Lexx in the movie. I think it would have been the older sibling either way.
They use frog DNA in both the book & movie to complete the dino DNA & that also allows the animals to breed.
In the book you get to see more of the park like a restaurant & a hotel.
In both the movie & the book they have to rest the system. It's different in the book because they reset it but it's running on backup power & that's what leads to the whole run to the maintenance shed to reset the breakers. In the movie Ellie is the one who resets the system & finds Arnold got eaten. Arnold does get eaten in the book but Grant is the one that resets the breakers because Ellie is taking care of Malcolm.
The whole scene where Tim gets electrocuted never happens in the book!
There is a T-Rex stampede in both but in the movie it's a herd of Gallamimus & the book has a herd of Hadrasaurus.
Muldoon gets killed by raptors in the movie but her lives in the book.
One of the biggest changes between the book & the movie is the guns. In the movie they have emergency guns but in the book there are no guns at all just the shock sticks & tranquilizers. Hammond specifically doesn't have guns in the book so they dinosaurs can't be killed. His concern about the guns is very apparent in the movie.
That terrifying scene inthe kitchen with the raptors does hapen in the book which I was happy to see.
The little girl getting bit by the Compy is actually in movie #2.
The ending of the book & movie is where a big difference occurs. In the book the Costa Rican government comes in to save who is left & then bombs the island to kill the dinosaurs because they are dangerous. But in the movie the T-Rex saves them from the Raptors. Personally I like the movie ending better than the book!
