[Robert Gall]

He said it would have been "Aliens with dinosaurs".


http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=35206

[ashvirtually]

Originally Posted by Robert Gall

He said it would have been "Aliens with dinosaurs".

http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=35206

I see what he's getting at when mentioning Spielberg's mindset and how dinosaurs are for kids, but honestly, the book is "further, nastier, much nastier" than the film that Steven eventually produced. It's brutal in some parts. I would have liked to have seen his vision, as "Aliens with dinosaurs" is more in keeping with Crichton's overall tone.

That said, I still love the movie. The last twenty pages of the novel with the raptor finale were probably the most suspenseful of any book I read during the 90's, and Spielberg absolutely nailed it.

[Patrick Bateman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkYAr_wyaZU

Like this?

[Robert Gall]

Originally Posted by ashvirtually

I see what he's getting at when mentioning Spielberg's mindset and how dinosaurs are for kids, but honestly, the book is "further, nastier, much nastier" than the film that Steven eventually produced. It's brutal in some parts. I would have liked to have seen his vision, as "Aliens with dinosaurs" is more in keeping with Crichton's overall tone.

That said, I still love the movie. The last twenty pages of the novel with the raptor finale were probably the most suspenseful of any book I read during the 90's, and Spielberg absolutely nailed it.

Yeah I love the book too. Would love to have seen Cameron's take on Ned's death and the part with the Tyrannosaur in the water.

[Captain Dills]

That sounds even more awesome. Cameron would have absolutely knocked it out of the park at the time.

[Stryder]

Nah I'm glad Spielberg did it. He was the right guy for the job.

Not to say I wouldn't like to have seen what James's take on it woulda been.

[gilaskan]

I love Spielberg's film, but I admit, I'd be intrigued to see Cameron's take on the source material. The book was quite a bit rougher-around-the-edges than Spielberg's take, with a bit more time spent pondering the implications of the science involved and a greater emphasis on the survival aspect over the course of the time spent there. Spielberg's film, love it though I do, definitely is different than the novel. As would be Cameron's proposed film, I'm sure, but I feel like it could be closer than SS.

[TeamCanada]

Reality was for the best. However I would love to see a fake trailer with Alien sound effects... you know of what I speak, the ones they use in real Alien trailers.

[jasper de large]

Interesting. If I didn't know better, I might think that "for kids" comment could be read as a slight; however, Cameron has the class to concede deference here, I think anyway, which is only fair since Spielberg must have undoubtedly influenced Cameron, and vice versa in turn.

There actually is something of a Cameron-esque polish to the refined, crisp infrastructure of the Park which contrasts with the anarchy and carnage. As surely as Jaws and Raiders impressed Cameron, I'd be certain Spielberg must have admired work like Aliens and Terminator.

I'd say The Abyss is Cameron's most Spielberg-ian movie. The rest of the debate in simplest terms is like a studio deliberation over "PG-13" versus "R." In the 2 decades since JP was released, and Cameron has since become the reigning 2-time single movie box office King, he's got all kinds of room to re-imagine how he'd do things with unprecedented, sky's-the-limit clout.

However, at the time Universal was developing the project, even considering Cameron's enormous success fresh off T2 and remarkable run of hits since '84, I think if the studio's sole condition was to get a cut for family audiences, then Cameron would have bit. So I don't think had the job gone to Cameron that we'd actually have gotten the ultra violent he would have campaigned for. I just have my doubts about that, as cool as it would be to consider.

And I'm a fan of Chrichton's books too, and the truest to source adaptation would most probably have to necessitate R ratings. But there's a bit of a double standard for videographic carnage versus written, so I have to understand the rationale for delivering something more suitable to wider audiences which still attempts to retain the thrilling spirit of the book. To the Beard's credit, the film did receive its share of criticism for being as violent as it is, despite being marketed to kids as well, didn't it? I understand critics' distaste for Spielberg's brand of sentimentality, but sometimes I think the importance of his appeal is overlooked.

The film itself isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it's hard to imagine it would have been more important because it had more gore. Au contraire, I'd say it is because this was a "family film" which featured such moments of shock and terror AND humor that made it something of the classic which today I think most would consider to be.

Aliens with dinosaurs sounds ****ing awesome. I hope someone is working on this. But James is right, and Steven's approach was the right one. Kids were owed a great live action dinosaur spectacle and we got one that entertained adults as well.

As a fan of both these filmmakers, I could debate this topic all day, but it's certainly an interesting point of comparison.

[High Score]

I want his vision for a JP sequel but hate it for a reimagining of the 90s.

If it is true that the original scared some people enough as kids to make it their "Top 10 Horror Films" (that may have been a troll) then how messed up would it have been to make that movie hard R? Kids were seeing it regardless because there were few things cooler than CGI dinos back in the day, it just would have been worse on them.

I am not so sure Hardcore Jurassic Park would have been better.

As it stood so many people loved that movie and consider it one of their favorite blockbusters. Making it dirtier, harder, more brutal maybe takes away the movie magic.

Bah damn I realize now I am kind of repeating jasper de larges post.

I would LOVE Cameron to not devote his life to making ****ty Avatar movies and do a Jurassic Park Hard R reboot/sequel for adults Terminator Style though. Hell, even have Arnold as the Dino Hunter. Kick ass!

[Bane]

Originally Posted by jasper de large

Interesting. If I didn't know better, I might think that "for kids" comment could be read as a slight; however, Cameron has the class to concede deference here, I think anyway, which is only fair since Spielberg must have undoubtedly influenced Cameron, and vice versa in turn.

There actually is something of a Cameron-esque polish to the refined, crisp infrastructure of the Park which contrasts with the anarchy and carnage. As surely as Jaws and Raiders impressed Cameron, I'd be certain Spielberg must have admired work like Aliens and Terminator.

I'd say The Abyss is Cameron's most Spielberg-ian movie. The rest of the debate in simplest terms is like a studio deliberation over "PG-13" versus "R." In the 2 decades since JP was released, and Cameron has since become the reigning 2-time single movie box office King, he's got all kinds of room to re-imagine how he'd do things with unprecedented, sky's-the-limit clout.

However, at the time Universal was developing the project, even considering Cameron's enormous success fresh off T2 and remarkable run of hits since '84, I think if the studio's sole condition was to get a cut for family audiences, then Cameron would have bit. So I don't think had the job gone to Cameron that we'd actually have gotten the ultra violent he would have campaigned for. I just have my doubts about that, as cool as it would be to consider.

And I'm a fan of Chrichton's books too, and the truest to source adaptation would most probably have to necessitate R ratings. But there's a bit of a double standard for videographic carnage versus written, so I have to understand the rationale for delivering something more suitable to wider audiences which still attempts to retain the thrilling spirit of the book. To the Beard's credit, the film did receive its share of criticism for being as violent as it is, despite being marketed to kids as well, didn't it? I understand critics' distaste for Spielberg's brand of sentimentality, but sometimes I think the importance of his appeal is overlooked.

The film itself isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it's hard to imagine it would have been more important because it had more gore. Au contraire, I'd say it is because this was a "family film" which featured such moments of shock and terror AND humor that made it something of the classic which today I think most would consider to be.

Aliens with dinosaurs sounds ****ing awesome. I hope someone is working on this. But James is right, and Steven's approach was the right one. Kids were owed a great live action dinosaur spectacle and we got one that entertained adults as well.

As a fan of both these filmmakers, I could debate this topic all day, but it's certainly an interesting point of comparison.

What he said.

[Maximal Van Maximus]

The book was quite a bit rougher-around-the-edges

The novel is pretty crazy. From what I can remember Muldoon has a seventies porn stache and blows a raptor's foot off with a rocket launcher, there are two occasions where characters (including the wimpy lawyer, described matter of factly as "strong" but then a wimp when faced with Grant), overpower dinosaurs which have stood on them, and John Hammond isn't the sympathetic, but misguided character from the film - he's a complete power-trip douche who gets attacked by (I think) a T-rex at the end of the book. The whole thing is tonally weird.

The book is inferior (or maybe just stupider) to the film this time. That said, the book of the Lost World, (with its chameleon carnotauruses!) is way more awesome than its film. Cameron should have been given Lost World.

[jasper de large]

Max, don't forget the babies that got eaten in their cribs. I forget if that was the first or second book.

[gilaskan]

Originally Posted by Maximal Van Maximus

The novel is pretty crazy. From what I can remember Muldoon has a seventies porn stache and blows a raptor's foot off with a rocket launcher, there are two occasions where characters (including the wimpy lawyer, described matter of factly as "strong" but then a wimp when faced with Grant), overpower dinosaurs which have stood on them, and John Hammond isn't the sympathetic, but misguided character from the film - he's a complete power-trip douche who gets attacked by (I think) a T-rex at the end of the book. The whole thing is tonally weird.

The book is inferior (or maybe just stupider) to the film this time. That said, the book of the Lost World, (with its chameleon carnotauruses!) is way more awesome than its film. Cameron should have been given Lost World.

There was a lot of weird stuff going on, yeah. Grant had a giant hippie beard (in addition to Muldoon's porn stache), and the book is pretty direct and unapologetic about painting Hammond as a (pseudo) villain. He wasn't a wide-eyed optimist who wanted the world to be able to enjoy dinosaurs- he was sort of a huckster, a man who could sell you your own car but didn't know anything about science and was completely out of his depth with the park. He openly rejected the idea of using the technology to benefit humanity, feeling that his personal profit is what needed to come first. He also sort of refuses to admit that anything is out of control until pretty late in the book, and even then, he refuses to take responsibility. Attenborough's take on the character in the film is a lot warmer.

I think Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm is another one of the film's odder takes on characters. In the novel he's something of a rockstar internationally, even if only for math and science- I think he's supposed to be part Carl Sagan, in a way. Whereas the film presents him as sort of... self-deluding, I suppose, the book seems to imply that his boasts are justified. [If memory serves] In one of the weirder plot-points of the novel, he explains that he had his Will and a letter goodbye in order before coming to the Island, because he used some insane Chaos Theory formula (think "The Mentaculus," from A Serious Man, or Psychohistory from the Foundation series) that precisely predicted down to the hour when the park would malfunction, when the dinosaurs would escape, and when he would die. Oh yeah, he also dies in the book. So does Hammond. I think Muldoon lives though. He later explains in the intro to The Lost World that reports of his death were in fact no more than rumor, substantiated by the Will and letter he left behind, but he actually ended up surviving on a 0.1% chance or something.

[Master King Sexington]

Originally Posted by Patrick Bateman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkYAr_wyaZU

Like this?

Knew what that was a trailer for before I even clicked it. Ha.

[some j.]

Oh no, imagine a James Cameron Jurassic Park...

Replaces Laura Dern's character with a sassy latino military chick

Dennis Nedry is now an army general and has a huge scar on his face and travels to the south dock in a giant robotic mech

The Australian hunter is replaced with Bill Paxton wearing an earring

Sigourney Weaver plays the 11 year old girl

[Mr Joker]

Thankfully Spielberg was the one to do it.

Cameron pretty much had the opportunity to bring us his own 'Jurassic Park" kind of world with Avatar and Pandora (and it did have Aliens!) and I was not impressed with that film.

[ashvirtually]

Originally Posted by gilaskan

There was a lot of weird stuff going on, yeah. Grant had a giant hippie beard (in addition to Muldoon's porn stache), and the book is pretty direct and unapologetic about painting Hammond as a (pseudo) villain. He wasn't a wide-eyed optimist who wanted the world to be able to enjoy dinosaurs- he was sort of a huckster, a man who could sell you your own car but didn't know anything about science and was completely out of his depth with the park. He openly rejected the idea of using the technology to benefit humanity, feeling that his personal profit is what needed to come first. He also sort of refuses to admit that anything is out of control until pretty late in the book, and even then, he refuses to take responsibility. Attenborough's take on the character in the film is a lot warmer.

I think Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm is another one of the film's odder takes on characters. In the novel he's something of a rockstar internationally, even if only for math and science- I think he's supposed to be part Carl Sagan, in a way. Whereas the film presents him as sort of... self-deluding, I suppose, the book seems to imply that his boasts are justified. [If memory serves] In one of the weirder plot-points of the novel, he explains that he had his Will and a letter goodbye in order before coming to the Island, because he used some insane Chaos Theory formula (think "The Mentaculus," from A Serious Man, or Psychohistory from the Foundation series) that precisely predicted down to the hour when the park would malfunction, when the dinosaurs would escape, and when he would die. Oh yeah, he also dies in the book. So does Hammond. I think Muldoon lives though. He later explains in the intro to The Lost World that reports of his death were in fact no more than rumor, substantiated by the Will and letter he left behind, but he actually ended up surviving on a 0.1% chance or something.

Yes, Hammond is an amoral huckster and dies at the end, killed by those little green dinosaurs.

Muldoon lives, as does the lawyer.

Grant and Ellie aren't a couple as they are in the film.

And yeah, Malcolm was a rock star in the mathematics world and was pretty much right about everything he predicted would happen at the park using Chaos Theory. But I thought his death was implied more than outright stated at the end of the first book? Not sure, been a LONG time I've read either of those books. But, I seem to recall that it being only implied was the reason I bought into the sequel novel since he was one of its main protagonists.

Now that one, the sequel, is the one that's begging a remake and a "hard" R take. That abomination that Spielberg made ... just ugh.

[Dead and Messed Up]

Originally Posted by ashvirtually

And yeah, Malcolm was a rock star in the mathematics world and was pretty much right about everything he predicted would happen at the park using Chaos Theory. But I thought his death was implied more than outright stated at the end of the first book? Not sure, been a LONG time I've read either of those books. But, I seem to recall that it being only implied was the reason I bought into the sequel novel since he was one of its main protagonists.

Yep. I wish I still had my paperback but I distinctly remembering someone "shaking his head" when asked about Malcolm.

I don't remember him predicting his own death so much as making out those papers as an ass-cover. He predicted that the park would fail, definitely.

The book is cool about that, because Malcolm says "wobbly" initial conditions will result in a butterfly effect, whereas the JP experts dismiss it, not without cause, because functional living systems are constantly "wobbly" - steady equilibrium is unachievable.

It's an interesting way of approaching the connection between math and biology.

One of the bummers with the movie is that Malcolm misrepresents chaos theory pretty severely. The movie has him state it to be "unpredictability," when in fact chaos theory is about observing seemingly unpredictable systems in mathematical charts and finding self-similar patterns. In truth, the opposite of what his movie character says.

And yeah, Hammond dies via compy bites. The scene was really creepy to read, since the compies have a slight poison in their bites that tranquilize their victims. So Hammond's kicking them away, then brushing them away, then lying down to rest...and not really minding at all as they swarm him and nibble at his flesh.

Sorry, that wasn't all directed at you, Ash. I got away from me.

[Remarkable Potion]

I'd rather see him make JP4 instead of 17 Avatar sequels that nobody wants or needs.

[UltimateHigh]

Spielberg of course did his thing but I would've liked to have seen that.

[max314]

Sounds like a good idea for JP4.

[Errol Flynn]

Oh, I took that literally.

I thought he meant he would have had actual aliens fighting the dinosaurs.

...

[wil-san]

I read the book when I was young, after seeing the film. I'm now 32 years old and don't really remember how the book was different. I do remember Spielberg's mesmerizing combination of practical and CG effects, and Williams' amazing score that made the movie an over-all great time. A James Cameron treatment doesn't sound that fun really.

[Mr. Burns]

I think Cameron is a sensational craftsman and probably could do something dazzling and tough with that material as a remake or something. But Spielberg was absolutely the right man for Jurassic Park and is the better director of the two.

[Smalley]

I always thought Steve took too campy a tone with JP (should've felt more like Jaws instead, IMO), so I might've been interested in a Cameron version.

[The Imp Speaks]

I certinaly don't mind being the odd man out on this board but I found Jurrassic Park, the movie to be extremely boring, I have never been able to finish the book. Cameron would have at least made the movie entertaining.

I have read the Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery and the Eaters of the Dead. All were excellent. The Andromeda Strain you can read in a single afternoon. Later I tried to read Congo, Sphere and most of Jurassic Park and there were all just so damn dull.

Andromeda Strain, Westworld and even the 13th Warrior (The Eaters of the Dead) were all suppior movies to boring shit that is Jurassic Park. Good lord even The Great Train Robbery Movie which Chrichton himself directed was more entertaining then Jurrasic Park.

[The Dark Focker Rises]

Originally Posted by The Imp Speaks

Good lord even The Great Train Robbery Movie which Chrichton himself directed was more entertaining then Jurrasic Park.

Now you're just piling on.

[Bane]

Rewatching Aliens again recently, I actually got bored in certain parts. I mean, yea, it's a cool movie, but that pacing is sooooo slow. Guess it's not my style.

[Jack Package]

Jurassic Park is a pretty much a classic. The special effects are amazing, the score is great, the first T-Rex attack in the rain and the Raptors sequence are cool and exciting, but I have never had an urge to watch this movie in a long long time. It's just not that exciting to me. I enjoyed it more as a kid which is a testament to what Cameron is saying, it was made for kids.