We just rewatched Jurassic Park (1993) — funny how the reaction I remember to the movie at the time was fans of the book complaining that Spielberg had softened the story too much, oversimplified it and toned down the violence

Watching it now, I could imagine Spielberg challenging himself to outdo the theme park thrill machine feel of his own blockbuster Jaws, to the point that the script is stripped down almost to the gears

There almost isn’t a stray line or moment that doesn’t pay off somewhere else in Spielberg’s Jurassic Park

Little Timmy is scared to climb? He’s going to be encouraged to climb by Dr. Grant over and over, because Grant is indifferent to kids and needs to learn to parent, because everyone thinks these dinosaurs can’t be parents but it turns out they can

The rock star mathematician Ian Malcolm thinks he’s smarter than Ellie and can charm her, but she’s ahead of everyone at thinking through the movie’s one unresolved mystery—why the cloned animals are getting sick—and might’ve puzzled it out except that she has to keep saving Ian

By the climax of the movie, the swaggering genius Malcolm ends up in a torn shirt on his back, the way the damsel in distress always used to

The screaming teenage girl has to be protected through the whole movie, until they get her to the exact place where she’s the only one who can restart the park computers and save everyone

Grant explains how velociraptors hunt and kill to a little boy at the start, so when we’re finally shown the raptors late in the movie we’re afraid because we understand how they’re going to trick and kill Muldoon before he does (“Clever girl!”)

Spielberg a stage magician who tells you the preposterous thing he’s going to do, and then proceeds to do it right in front of you

I just realized I stole all the storytelling credit from David Koepp—who actually constructed that taut screenplay—and now I’m annoyed with myself

Also there are typos. I should just delete my account