I learned pretty early on that saying Jurassic Park is both my favorite movie and my inspiration for wanting to pursue film isn’t a satisfactory (nor particularly academic) response for college level classes. In fact, I have been told not to divulge this information with professors or potential employers because it makes my knowledge of the industry seem stunted or limited to blockbusters that nearly everyone has seen – or at the very least, that everyone knows about. I usually play it cool, referencing other movies by independent companies or relying on my friend’s ever-growing list of obscure films he’s watched to make myself seem more hip to the current film-scene, but in my heart, there will always be the call of John Williams’s score and Spielberg’s greatest masterpiece.
For a long time, I was too scared to watch Jurassic Park. If I recall correctly, it had something to do with misleading and frightening reviews from fifth grade friends or maybe the mislabeling of it as a horror film. I knew my dad had loved the film growing up and had a booklet of sheet music for the piano from the movie. One day, my parents sat me down and we watched Jurassic Park and oh boy, was I obsessed. As soon as I could, I watched the second and third in the series and loved those in equal measure.
Before I had ever seen the first Jurassic film, I remember peeking through my bedroom door to catch a glimpse of what I thought was the fifth or sixth installment in the franchise – man, if I knew then that I’d be around to see the series revived, I would’ve lost my mind. Turns out my parents were actually watching Jurassic Park III, the one with the Spinosaurus and (in my opinion) the coolest looking velociraptors. I didn’t know it then, but that franchise was going to influence me for many years to come.
After my initial viewing, I wanted desperately to be a paleontologist, an archaeologist, or a paleo-botanist (a la Ellie Sattler). I wanted to leave fifth grade and start digging for dinosaur bones. Fate would see those dreams destroyed–pretty quickly, too. Living in Minnesota, being really, really not great at math (and thus really, really not great most sciences), and being far too young to live on my own were my greatest downfalls. So, I started writing my own imaginings for the future of the franchise. I thought I was really slick and essentially ended up writing fanfiction in which I became entrenched in a park gone wrong scenario. I called the finished product “The Forgotten Forest.” Funny as that may seem, it was actually the beginning of my love for writing fiction, for storytelling, and the inkling of realization that I could pursue a career founded almost entirely on my love for fantastical fiction.
Fast forward to 2015, a year of possibility and the reinvention of the Jurassic franchise. I religiously watched the trailers- every interview and article that surfaced was immediately consumed the second I set eyes on it. I was ready. This was my time, what I had been waiting for: to really prove to everyone just how obnoxiously excited I could get over a film about dinosaurs.
Jurassic World was a religious experience for me. I bought my ticket weeks in advance to attend the first screening in IMAX in Minnesota. Two of my friends invited themselves along for the ride, wanting to “witness me witnessing my dreams come true”. It was a dream come true, not because it was a phenomenal or flawless movie, but because it was the first time I got to watch with my own eyes a brand-new Jurassic film in theatres. I cried five times during that screening.
Jurassic Park taught me (and Jurassic World reminded me) what it means to be a woman, a power, a force to be reckoned with. Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing was an inspiration on screen just as Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler was so many years prior. She was intelligent, ran the entirety of the (then) fully functioning “Jurassic World” and was prepared to begin developing an emotional connection to her estranged sister’s children. At the beginning of the film, the audience actually isn’t inclined to like her, which honestly was pretty cool for a blockbuster film banking on the success of its lead’s likeability.
After I saw Jurassic World, I read dozens of artciles about the future of the franchise, but more commonly I ended down a rabbit hole of articles debating whether or not Claire Dearing was as much a feminist icon as Ellie Sattler. This was an important debate to me, a woman whose very identity had been shaped by how totally badass Ellie was throughout the original film and book. Ellie was a hell of a character who was passionate, clever, physically capable, and vocal about her intentions to be equally involved in the rescue missions occurring across the park. She wasn’t afraid to get dirty, to speak her mind, or to challenge the antiquated and at times, sexist, comments sent her way by John Hammond. Ellie restores the power to the park by rebooting the generators, runs from raptors, and is an all-around badass. Ellie even says my favorite iconic line- “Dinosaur eats man. Woman inherits the Earth” which I have affectionately kept in my Instagram bio as an immediate indicator of my interests: badass women & dinosaurs.
The problem with Claire was this: she wore heels – approximately three inches tall – through the entirety of the film, even in the final scene where she outruns Rexy. Critics were aplenty on the internet, as they always are, and they all had things they wanted to say. Here’s my take on the heel debate: If you look at her heels as a metaphor for the balance of femininity and heroics allowed by women in mainstream media, she’s killer. Claire doesn’t have to sacrifice her femininity to make the decision to save the (park of) 20,000 helpless guests, Owen, or her nephews, a decision which could’ve cost the price of her life if she had made one wrong step. She books it around the park at velociraptor speed and never complained about the down and dirty deeds she needed to do to protect the ones she loves. (A+ Female Bad-Assery).
Claire reflects something I have always struggled with, the balance between femininity and my desire to be respected in an environment dominated by male voices. The whole debate around her heels really felt like a reflection of the film industry as it currently stands: desperate for diversification and voices that won’t always immediately jump to the conclusion that women’s characters can’t be truly empowered for any given reason. I started writing all my frustrations down after I got fed up with the angry void the internet had trapped me in. That stupid heel debate changed my perspective on how to write and represent women – of all kinds – on screen. I don’t ever want my women to be devalued for an article of clothing or footwear they’re wearing when their actions are where attention should be focused.
I left the Jurassic World screening back in 2015 knowing I had made the right decision to pursue film in college. I left knowing that movies like Jurassic World were magical for all generations. As I exited, I watched young kids bounce out of the theatre whooping and hollering at their parents, asking a dozen questions about dinosaurs and what it’d be like if they were alive. I watched kids my age laughs and talk about how awesome they thought the whole flick was. I watched adults ranging from their twenties to their sixties leave the theatre in a satisfied daze. The Jurassic franchise is one that continues speaks to thousands of individuals and inspires equal thrill in all of them.
My freshman year of college was rough. It involved a long adjustment period of not seeing my old friends or my family every day, of figuring out how to juggle assignments and eating proper meals and being active. I really made it through by befriending other film kids. I found those friends by being vocal about my interests: what kind of films I wanted to make, the stories I wanted to tell, why I wanted to tell them. Being an honest version of myself earned me the companionship of some of my best friends at school. I still hang out with the lot of them and every single one of them knows how beloved Jurassic Park is to me.
My freshman year is really where I learned not to be ashamed to say that Jurassic Park is my favorite film. In college, I realized that a lot of people claim the Star Wars films as their inspiration or their favorite franchise. I didn’t really get that because Star Wars wasn’t really my thing growing up, but I related to the excitement, the thrill, the attachment that Star Wars fans felt towards their films. Jurassic Park and its subsequent sequels were that awe-inspiring epic that I wanted to watch over and over again. They were films my parents loved as teens that perhaps I’ve ruined for them because of how often I wanted to re-watch them. Dozens of other people love the Jurassic Park films and it’s way easier to make friends when you know you have that common interest. I’ve realized that people actually think dinosaurs are crazy cool when you’re willing to be vocal about your own personal interest in them.
My strength as a woman has been informed by the likes of Ellie Sattler who led me to love her actress, Laura Dern. That very same sentiment is echoed for Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire. Jurassic Park led me to SUE, which led me to endless nights spent watching documentaries about dinosaurs, which led me to wanting to pursue film. I used to speak passionately from the place of a fan about a movie I loved for its story and visuals, but now I’ve begun to understand it as an aspiring visionary who can only hope to create something that is as influential to others as Jurassic Park has been for me.