Jurassic Park – 1993 (WINNER)
This movie was one of the big ones when it came to visual effects. Of course, the movie’s main draw were the incredibly realistic dinosaurs, and they were absolutely spectacular! They used a combination of animatronics and groundbreaking CGI animation to create the most realistic dinos ever seen on the big screen. The visual effects team really deserved the Oscar they took home. The effects were so good, they still hold up to today’s standards. Nobody had ever seen anything like it!
Consulting with real paleontologists, they tried to be as factual as possible in how the extinct creatures were displayed, how they looked, how they moved, how they behaved. Every detail was considered. Their skin had texture and depth, the lighting, the shadows, the compositing, everything was just about flawless.
The first dino we got to see was a brachiosaur. It moved slowly and smoothly, and almost gracefully. It was so far ahead of any stop-motion or even go-motion animation. It was a breathtaking scene, and the audiences of 1993 were just as captivated as the characters in the story. But it was the faster and more dangerous variety of dinosaurs like the velociraptors, that gave the film its best suspense and action sequences. And there weren’t any problems with the way they were composited onto the screen. They were complete three-dimensional images that really looked like they were just filmed with the actors. Then there were the animatronic versions that were used when all we saw were the heads and claws, or like when we saw the entire giant body of the triceratops, which was awesome!
Probably, the most iconic scene in the film was the one where the Tyrannosaurus Rex attacks the heroes in the trucks. I only have one problem with the scene. So, we see the Rex’s claw testing the electric fence. We see the fence’s cables break. Then we see her crawl through the fence. But then, when she knocks the car off the wall through the hole in the fence, we see that there is a two or three story drop on the other side of the fence. How did it get up high enough to break through the fence? Did it climb the tree? Anyway, the CGI effects were perfect!
But for me, one of the coolest shots in the entire film was near the climax. In it, the scientists and the children are in a secured room when a velociraptor breaks through the window. Its intended victims are climbing into the ceiling. The raptor tries to break into the crawl-space, itself, but Doctor Grant kicks it in the face, and it falls. There is a shot, seen from above, where the raptor tumbles to the floor and the girl nearly falls with it. As she is pulled back up, the raptor jumps and almost bites her. It was an awesome shot. The little girl’s face was even composited onto the stunt-woman’s body in that shot. Again, it was exciting, and perfectly put together, but then, I think the same can be said for the entire movie!