How 'Jurassic Park' Uses Theme To Craft Character

We’re still in the midst of celebrating 25 years of Steven Spielberg‘s “Jurassic Park.” The film is an enduring blockbuster classic that hasn’t aged a day. While the same can’t be said of its sequels, the original “Jurassic Park” lives on as much more than just a technical achievement. The screenplay for “Jurassic Park” is crafted to comment on an ethical and moral dilemma that becomes a monstrous disaster of our own making, all the while placing its characters in varying positions where their ability to adapt is tested, and their stances eventually shifted.

Lesson From The Screenplay tackles the way “Jurassic Park” forms its characters by using theme as the vehicle. When we first meet Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) their motivations are conflated by the opportunity to be a part of something historic. Well, in this case prehistoric. The central theme of “Jurassic Park” questions whether things we label as progress have a positive pay off. The answer to the question isn’t very simple. And so, to explore this further, writers Michael Crichton and David Koepp position Hammond and Grant on opposing sides of the same question.

Grant, right from the beginning, is anti-progress. He’s not regressive, exactly, but his relationship with technology is anything but positive. To add an even deeper symbolic posit of his dubious relationship with the future, Grant isn’t the biggest fan of children. With the intro to Hammond, we meet Grant’s opposite. He not only wants to plunge into the future, but he will “spare no expense” to do so. To the point of even putting his beloved grandchildren in danger.

With the ensuing chaos, the idea of progress is challenged in strict upheaval. The lives of Hammond’s grandchildren are placed in peril at the hands of his progress. And Grant must come to terms with the technology around him in order for him and the children to survive. “Jurassic Park” has layers. There are ethical questions asked, notions of corporate greed at play, and the promise of the future begins to unravel when we cannot control it. “Jurassic Park” will always live on as an impressive feat of moviemaking. But its script will continue to astonish, masking the important questions with monstrous horror and wonder.