Talk:Jurassic Park

Former featured articleJurassic Park is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Good articleJurassic Park has been listed as one of the Media and drama good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 9, 2008.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
July 11, 2006Good article nomineeNot listed
March 19, 2007Good article nomineeListed
March 18, 2007WikiProject peer reviewReviewed
May 15, 2007Featured article candidatePromoted
April 12, 2013Featured article reviewDemoted
January 25, 2014Good article nomineeListed
Current status: Former featured article, current good article

Box Office

I hate to be a downer but I think Numbers has the box office messed up. Jurassic Park (1993) - Financial Information (the-numbers.com) 71.81.37.38 (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Numbers currently says $1.058 billion. Box Office Mojo says $1.104 billion, and an editor has changed the article to use the latter.
As of 2022, there was an issue with Box Office Mojo over-counting grosses for certain re-releases and including that as part of the original gross, taking it from $913 million to $978 million. Box Office Mojo still lists the original gross as $978 million, so I assume we should continue using the overall figure provided by The Numbers.  AJFU  (talk) 16:40, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Budget

The budget is listed as $63 million and sourced by Box Office Mojo, without any further details on its claim. In a Variety article from November 30, 1992, Spielberg claims the movie was labeled at $70 million, but actually budgeted at $56 million and even brought down to a little less than that. This is eight months before release of course. The NYTimes in 1993 claims the same budget number as Spielberg. Entertainment Weekly in 1993 alternatively claims "$60 million-plus".

I would argue a $56 million budget is a more likely to be the case than $63. Are there other sources to support/counter this? HalfBlueCheese (talk) 06:16, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In case it's noteworthy, the New York Times article says the $56 million budget is before advertising.
I found three other articles from the month of the film's release. This article says that estimates range upward from $60 million, while also noting Spielberg's denial that it cost more than $56 million. This says $60 million, excluding the marketing efforts. This one says $60 to $70 million. Another article (January 1994) calls the $63 million figure an estimate which excludes marketing costs and talent salaries. The Numbers also says $63 million. In other words, it looks like most sources place it at more than $56 million.  AJFU  (talk) 20:53, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Godzilla

In the article it says this

Another inspiration was the 1956 film Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, which Spielberg grew up watching. He described it as the most masterful dinosaur film because it made him and viewers believe it was really happening.

That quote is taken out of context. When Steve Ryfle mentioned this in his book "Japan's Favorite Mon-Star" he made it seem that Spielberg wanted to do Jurassic Park because he was inspired by Godzilla. Spielberg was asked what some of his favorite dinosaur movies were as a youth and he mentioned Godzilla alongside Gorgo and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms giving his reasons why he liked each film. But he never cited any of these films as an inspiration. The book even mentions that he was looking for something all together different with Jurassic Park. So if he wanted to make something all together different from his supposed influences would the film really be considered an inspiration?

Here is the page from the book "The Making of Jurassic Park by Don Shay and Jody Duncan" where the quotes is from https://i.ibb.co/rGWdhM95/Screenshot-20250212-101610-Chrome.jpg45.3.22.142 (talk) 13:38, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think what is meant is that Spielberg wanted Jurassic Park to have the same realism as Godzilla (but without the movie monster carnage, thus something different). I don't know if that's enough to count as an inspiration and it's true that he doesn't outright call it one. I reworded the Godzilla info a bit (removing "inspiration") and placed it next to his "realistic" quote, as they seem to go hand in hand.  AJFU  (talk) 17:26, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Jurassic Park which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 10:03, 7 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 17 August 2025

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 04:12, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

– Let's try this again. I can see that proposing several major moves in one go was clearly a mistake, and I'll be sure to avoid that this time. This is a straightforward primary topic swap, franchise for film. If this passes, the franchise page will be included in a hatnote, as will the novel. Now, repeating from my previous RM:

I believe that the 1993 film is the primary topic for the term "Jurassic Park". As a reminder, the two criteria for a primary topic are usage, and long-term significance. It isn't really necessary that a topic hits both criteria (see Madonna vs. Madonna (art), or conversely Avatar vs. Avatar (2009 film)), but fortunately the film does meet both criteria.

A topic hits the usage threshold "if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term." This is true of the film, which in the last five years got over 30% more views than the franchise article, which is the second most popular, and more than the pageviews of every other article that could be titled "Jurassic Park" combined (excluding partial title matches), which means that more readers seek the film than all other topics combined. Link. There is also the possibility that some of the people that want the film ended up at the franchise article by mistake, which is what happened to me. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine exactly how often this happens, but one hint is that over 10,000 more people a month go from Jurassic Park to Jurassic Park (film) than the reverse, which would work out to about 120,000 extra views for the franchise a year.
Long-term significance is trickier, because the film is an adaptation of a novel, which inherently is both older and also the first work to be called "Jurassic Park". However, as the guideline notes, neither age nor the source of the name are determinative. Considering a film adaptation of a prior work to be the primary topic is relatively unusual, although not unheard of: First Blood, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Fight Club, Forrest Gump, and The Descendants are all primary topics over the novels they are adapted from, among others. I would say that Jurassic Park belongs in this group. The Crichton novel is good, and was generally well-received when it came out, but the movie is much more significant. It won several Academy Awards, was the highest-grossing film of all time upon release and is the oldest film ever to gross over $1 billion, pioneered visual effects that inspired many other, also enormously popular films, has essentially created the cultural image of dinosaurs for the past thirty years, is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, and was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. It is legitimately difficult to overstate the significance of this film. The novel, to be frank, is probably most significant for spawning the movie. The franchise, while clearly still popular, also has substantially less long-term significance; it is generally viewed as something of a "diminishing returns" franchise, with every subsequent film failing to match the critical acclaim and (adjusted for inflation) box-office of the original. Nothing else in the franchise has had nearly the impact on filmmaking or the cultural significance that the 1993 film had. We have several instances where, for various reasons, the first film in a series is considered the most important one and therefore is the primary topic, including The Matrix, Toy Story, and Die Hard; this should also apply to the Jurassic Park franchise.

Note: I want to reiterate, because it came up in the previous move request, that there is no discernable rule, explicit or implicit, that says that franchises are the primary topic unless the first film "is ludicrously more notable than the rest of the franchise". In fact, based on how Wikipedia tends to structure franchise articles, it seems it merely has to be more notable than the franchise (and everything else), which is the normal standard for primary topics. To give some examples:

The Matrix was outgrossed by its successor The Matrix Reloaded, but the first film is primary because it is the best-received and has the largest cultural impact.
Toy Story has been outgrossed by all three of its sequels, and all four films are critically acclaimed, but the first film is primary because it is a landmark technical achievement.
Shrek was outgrossed by all three of its sequels and Shrek 2 received similar critical acclaim, but the first film is primary because of its cultural impact.
The Godfather's direct sequel is considered one of the greatest films of all time, but because the first one was the highest-grossing film ever at the time, it is primary and not the film series.
The Karate Kid has had very popular sequels as well as a hit TV series, but the film is primary because it has had the most cultural influence.
Back to the Future has had successful sequels, but the original is primary because it grossed most, had the best critical reception, and the largest cultural influence (even though the sequels also did well on all three counts).

As you can see, one work can be the primary topic even when it is not drastically more important than the rest of the franchise. All of these films are the most important in their franchise, but not enormously so. And Jurassic Park fulfills all of the same criteria as the above films. It is, among the films in the franchise, the best-received film[Note 1], the highest-grossing film[Note 2], has had the most cultural impact[Note 3], and was a landmark technical achievement in visual effects. It meets the usage requirements and has already shown a degree of lasting relevance outstripping anything else in the franchise, a trend that is likely to continue. It is, by a considerable margin, the most important topic titled "Jurassic Park".

References

  1. ^ critically acclaimed, one of the greatest movies of all time, only one to win Oscars.
  2. ^ highest grossing movie ever upon release, still the highest-grossing Jurassic Park film inflation-adjusted.
  3. ^ large influence on film history, created what most people picture when they think of dinosaurs, selected by Library of Congress.
Ladtrack (talk) 05:23, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy pinging people from the previous RM: @Vestrian24Bio, Randy Kryn, Zxcvbnm, Joeyconnick, and Chickenxcat: Also, notifying WikiProjects Film, Science Fiction, Dinosaurs, Library of Congress, and Palaeontology. Ladtrack (talk) 05:40, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom and other users’ comments RyanAl6 (talk) 01:04, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sean Connery

@AJFU, you removed the information about Sean Connery being considered for Hammond because it probably originated from IMDB trivia. At the time, I figured you were probably right, but I was looking through the August 1993 issue of Cinefantastique Magazine and it had the following paragraph:

"Neither Attenborough nor Goldblum was Spielberg's first acting choice. According to a production source, "He initially wanted Sean Connery and Kevin Costner who both turned him down.” Ironically, Connery, Spielberg's INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE star, then went on to topline Phil Kaufmann's RISING SUN, based on another Crichton bestseller, one of JURASSIC PARK’s summer rivals at the boxoffice."

Obviously, this predates IMDB trivia. Also, we don't mention anything about Costner. I think Cinefantastique is probably a reliable source, but I'm not 100% sure. Should it go in? Ladtrack (talk) 04:13, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any more context about why Connery or Costner turned Spielberg down? To me it feels both trivial and WP:UNDUE if/when the most we can say about an actor is that they were "considered" for a role, and the actors being approached but turning Spielberg down is better, but not much better. DonIago (talk) 06:21, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we already have the following piece in the article: "Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss were considered for the role of Alan Grant, but were deemed too expensive. William Hurt, Harrison Ford, and Tim Robbins turned down the role, which eventually went to Sam Neill. Laura Dern was cast as Ellie Sattler, after Robin Wright and Juliette Binoche turned down offers to play the character. Embeth Davidtz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Helen Hunt had also auditioned for the role."
This sort of thing is pretty standard for film articles, and we could basically just include their names into the casting section, and it wouldn't take too much space. I'm not so much concerned with whether it's undue as how likely it is to be true. Ladtrack (talk) 15:26, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That source seems fine to me. Thank you for finding that. I never could find anything that predated IMDb. If there's a consensus for this being undue here, we do have character articles (like John Hammond (Jurassic Park)) that already cover casting info.  AJFU  (talk) 16:25, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be more amenable to information of this nature being added to those articles. I'm not opposing it being added here, exactly, but I think there's been an unfortunate trend on the part of some editors to try to add each and every actor of note who was even momentarily considered for a film role to the article for the film (this may have been a topic at WT:FILM), and I don't think we should go further down that path. DonIago (talk) 02:55, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jurassic_Park_(film)