Sam Neill Is The Heart and Soul of JURASSIC PARK

We recently lost another pillar of popular culture as we currently understand it.

Sam Neill (whose full name was the extremely badass Sir Nigel John Dermott Neill) was one of those guys who we were just kind of used to having around. Besides starring in almost 100 films before his passing, part of what provided him a sense of longevity was the fact that he always looked roughly 45 years old, even when he was young.  And, of course, when you star in a movie as beloved and ubiquitous as JURASSIC PARK, well…you’re just always going to feel present.

Of course, Neill was so, so, so, so much more than just JURASSIC PARK.  Decades before that tale of a dinosaur theme park gone wrong, he starred in a wide range of movies, including thrillers, period dramas, an Omen sequel, and horror films (none more bone-chilling, IMO, than 1981’s POSSESSION).  Post-JURASSIC PARK, he continued to work with heavy hitters like John Carpenter, Chris Columbus, Jane Campion and Robert Redford, all the while cranking out noteworthy works like EVENT HORIZON and the TV miniseries MERLIN (in a world where JURASSIC PARK never existed, MERLIN would stand as the most beloved Sam Neill movie among millennials, and I don’t think it would be particularly close).  He even got to fuck around in the MCU, having leveraged his work on Taika Waititi’s HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE into a pair of hilarious and unexpected camoes in THOR: RAGNAROK and THOR: LOVE AND THUNDER.

Yet, as the slurry of obituaries proved, Dr. Alan Grant will remain Neill’s defining role, so much so that he’d return to it twice; once in the profoundly mediocre JURASSIC PARK III and again in the absolutely abysmal JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION.  The man and his character are so linked at this point that, frankly, it would seem a little silly to focus on it too terribly much.  What more is there to be said that hasn’t been said about Dr. Grant in the three decades since?

Anyway, this week for Spielberg Summer, let’s focus on Sam Neill’s portrayal of Dr. Alan Grant and how it centers one of the greatest summer blockbusters ever made.

JURASSIC PARK (1993)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, Samuel L. Jackson, Wayne Knight

Written by: Michael Crichton, David Koepp

Length: 127 minutes

Released: June 11, 1993

I’m assuming you don’t need the story or premise of JURASSIC PARK explained to you.  Even if you had never heard of a movie before, I suspect you’d grok the whole thing upon hearing the title.  “Ooh, is that a theme park with dinosaurs?  Cool!”

And cool it was!  JURASSIC PARK was a phenomenon almost instantly.  It raked in $47 mill its first weekend, and ended up earning about a billion worldwide against a frankly astonishing $63 mil budget.  Adjusted for inflation, it remains a top-twenty box-office champ to this day, and has spawned six live-action sequels, several animated TV series, and an arcade game that still lives in my dreams and memories (yes, there was a day when a friend and I managed to have enough quarters, will, and free time to eventually beat the LOST WORLD iteration of this game, and it stands as one of the proudest days of my life, up there with my wedding).

But, lots of movies generate sequels .  Many movies capture the imagination of a generation of kids.  How did this particular Michael Crichton book adaptation do it?  How did JURASSIC PARK manage to become one of the core tenants of American pop culture?

Well, as it almost alwsy turns out, there are a lot of factors, starting with that fact that, again, it’s one of the all-time ideas for a story.  Even if the rest of the script had been a turd, a movie set in a theme park filled with dinosaurs was almost assured to become a point of fascination for children across a generation.  And JURASSIC PARK crucially gets right all the little elements of what makes theme parks so fun.  The logo. The chintzy gift shop (that features a giant T-Rex skeleton as its centerpiece, which is such a cute choice for a theme park that already has real life dinosaurs).  The slow-moving cars on rails.  The disembodied guide voice.  

And then there’s my favorite theme-parky detail of all: the pre-show starring Jurassic Park’s very own mascot, Mr. DNA.  To be honest, if Sam Neill hadn’t passed away right before I started writing this, there’s a decent chance this entire article would have been about Mr. DNA.  There’s so much to love about him.  His buck teeth.  His humongous floating eyebrows.  His voice, oh my goodness, his voice.  As played by Greg Burson, Mr. DNA is the reason I pronounce it “dino-SAWRS” to this day.  I love him so much.  If the Republicans said they were nominating Mr. DNA as the 2028 candidate for President of the United States, I would be forced to vote for him.  All hail our future king, Mr. DNA.

But, at the end of the day, it’s (probably) not fully Mr. DNA that makes JURASSIC PARK an all-timer.  Maybe it’s the script!  It’s an amazingly efficient one, the type of screenplay where, for as fantastical and vaguely nonsensical as the story itself probably is, it all more or else hangs out perfectly in the moment.  The science behind cloning dinosaurs as presented to us probably isn’t based in any sort of reality (or else, we’d have a real life Jurassic Park already), but the concept of pulling prehistoric DNA out of amber-preserved mosquitos and splicing it with frog DNA (the closest match to dinosaurs) makes emotional sense, so therefore, we never question it even once when watching it. 

It’s also the kind of screenplay where nothing ends up being arbitrary.  Yes, we’re charmed by Jeff Goldblum waxing on about chaos theory, the idea that small variables can have immense consequences, so perfectly illustrated by Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm teaching/flirting with Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler via tracking water drops on her hand.  As children of the 90s, we’re also thrilled by SEINFLED/3RD ROCK FROM THE SUN’S very own Wayne Knight being featured so prominently throughout, as a disgruntled employee of John Hammond who is working to smuggle embryos to a higher bidder.  But the fact that they end up being inextricably linked (Knight’s character is the illustration of chaos theory; had Hammond addressed his issue with pay, the whole movie may not have even happened)?  It’s beautiful storytelling, expressed with a script made all the more impressive by the fact that it’s written by David Koepp.

To be clear, Koepp is one of the more accomplished writers in modern Hollywood history.  The scripts to his name include: DEATH BECOMES HER, 1996’s MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, 2002’s SPIDER-MAN, PANIC ROOM, PRESENCE and BLACK BAG.  It’s a wide array of successes spanning thirty years (and I’m not even including the first two JURASSIC PARK movies).  But…he also wrote that one Indiana Jones movie everybody hates, 2017’s THE MUMMY, ZATHURA, fucking MORTDECAI (which he also directed), fucking JURASSIC PARK REBIRTH, and DISCLOSURE DAY*.

*I actually really liked DISCLOSURE DAY.  Thankfully, given the nature of the “Spielberg Summer” decades project, I don’t need to explain myself in this space for another three years. 

My point being: Koepp is maybe the most up-and-down, unpredictable high-profile writer we have now.  But stuff like JURASSIC PARK proves why guys like Spielberg keep taking a chance on him.  His good work is transcendent!  So it goes with this, a story that effectively maps out the moral quandaries of playing god, and why the beauty of recreating life where it doesn’t belong can override all the things that make it a really, really bad idea.

To that end, maybe it’s really the groundbreaking special effects that make JURASSIC PARK so legendary.  Obviously, CGI creations are par for the course now in Hollywood, to the point where studios can now alter entire plot points via its usage.  But JURASSIC PARK really does make you believe in its magic.  After thirty years, some of the CGI dinosaurs are starting to show their age; if you focus too much on the brachiosaurus in that famous “let me show you” scene, you can take yourself out of the proceedings.  But most of it still holds up beautifully (the Gallimimus flocking scene being a prime example), supplemented by the fact that many of the dinosaurs are practical animatronics, up to and including that T-Rex.

Yeah, it’s kind of hard to believe that T-Rex being animatronic, or anything less than an actual fucking dinosaur being captured on camera.  It seems too articulate, too tactile, too real.  And that’s the point.  JURASSIC PARK presents to your eyes something that cannot exist.  Yet your brain accepts it as such.  This has always been the point of special effects, yet it’s a test that movies fail over and over, both then and new.  It’s a total victory for Stan Winston and crew, as well as for Industrial Light and Magic.

But, special effects alone rarely make a movie all by themselves.  They usually require a master storyteller to put them in their proper contexts, and it just so happens that JURASSIC PARK has just such a storyteller in Steven Spielberg.  Besides maybe 1982*, 1993 would stand as the most important year of his career.  The movie that would eventually snag Spielberg his first Best Director Oscar would be coming later in 1993 (and we’ll talk about it next week), but JURASSIC PARK is probably the most valuable movie he would ever helm.  Compared to INDIANA JONES, it’s proven to have spawned the more enduring franchise, possibly because its stars are the immortal dinosaurs, not the mortal Harrison Ford.

*With the dual release of the Spielberg-directed E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL and the Spielberg-produced POLTERGEIST.

But, also, it’s possible its value comes from the fact that Spielberg directs the hell of this thing.  There’s something like a dozen major action setpieces throughout JURASSIC PARK, and they all work, thanks to Spielberg’s unrivaled eye and instinct for building and escalating a scene (consider the ratcheting tension of Grant and the kids climbing the electric fence, cut between Ellie slowly turning the power back on).  Even a moment as relatively lower-stakes as the death of Dennis Nedry really sings, as we watch a cocky and conniving techie try to assess this little raptor that’s entered his space (and the raptor realizing how easy his dinner is about to be).

More than anything else, though, Spielberg’s instinct for wonder and awe serves the movie perfectly.  Even the “scary dinosaur” scenes have humor baked into its horror (who could forget the classic “objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear” shot?).  But, frankly, most of the moments that endure in my memory are quieter, deceptively simple ones, the ultimate being the aforementioned moment where Ellie and Alan see a brachiosaurus for the first time.  Yes, Laura Dern and Sam Neill are acting their asses off, and John Williams’ score hits a tender crescendo, but it’s all sold by Spielberg’s sense of scale.  The big close-ups of Ellie and Alan’s gobsmacked faces, followed by a David Lean-esque shot of the giant brachiosaurs (making our human characters seem impossibly small), is just one of those “Spielberg moments” that’ll stick with me forever.

Speaking of Dern and Neill, I think the most famous thing about JURASSIC PARK is its elite cast, with all of the major players unleashed to do their thing.  Laura Dern serves as the smart, calming voice of reason, a figure you just inherently trust.  Richard Attenborough, with his lovely and sweet portrayal of John Hammond, perfectly embodies the themes of this movie; it turns out no capitalist can ever control nature, even if it’s the noble pursuit of sharing incredible scientific advances with the public.  As for Jeff Goldblum, he will make you believe that a rock star mathematician could ever possibly exist in the modern world.  He had been doing all the little stutters and tics and noises for decades before JURASSIC PARK, but this is the moment where the “Goldblum” persona got unleashed onto the public.  He’s since become one of those guys who has bought into his own shit in order to sell you apartments, but in 1993, it felt transcendent, allowing him to walk away with the whole damn movie.

Even the smaller roles are so well cast!  There’s the aforementioned Wayne Knight as Nedry (who’s in the movie way, way more than I had remembered!  He dies with 40 minutes left!), there’s Samuel L. Jackson with his famous “hold on to your butts” quip, and BD Wong as the chief geneticist, and Martin Ferrero as the slimiest lawyer in the park.  I even think Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards are pretty good as the Hammond grandchildren.  Kid characters in these types of flicks often run the risk of being precocious and saccharine.  But here, they act and react like actual kids with personalities, and thus, you fear for them when they’re being chased around a kitchen by a raptor.  And, frankly, you cheer for Lex saving the day by “hacking” the power grid, rather than roll your eyes.  Nice work!

But, at the end of the day, the thing that ties the whole damn thing together is Sam Neill.  Was there ever any doubt?  His gruff-yet-sweet portrayal of Dr. Alan Grant is what makes the movie feel so “Spielberg-ian” in my opinion.  Here’s a man who is so flippant about children that he makes one practically crap his pants when explaining how raptors kill his prey.  When he meets one at the park tour (Tim), one who absolutely idolizes him and wants nothing more than to trade dinosaur facts with him, Dr. Grant tries hard to avoid him at all costs.

And, yet, when push comes to shove, when the lawyer hides in the bathroom from a T-Rex, and Hammond is too blinded by his ideals and ambition to jump to timely action, it’s Grant who saves the day, who (along with Ian Malcolm) puts himself in danger to save the children, who sits in a tree with them and listens to Tim’s lousy jokes, and teaches Lex about herbivores.  If the big “Steven Spielberg” thematic throughline is “lost children”, then JURASSIC PARK is about children who are ultimately found.  And Alan Grant is the beautiful soul that finds them.

And nobody could have embodied him the way that Sam Neill did. There were other options for the role; Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Tim Robbins, William Hurt and Harrison Ford were all looked at for the male lead here, but for various reasons (either turning it down entirely, or looked at as too expensive) it wasn’t to be. And they’re all great! But Neill specifically nails the wonder of being surrounded by a thought-lost creation of God that it’s genuinely hard to imagine anybody else doing it the way he did.

There are so, so, so many elements that came together exactly right in order for JURASSIC PARK to become the phenomenon that it was, and arguably Spielberg’s finest creation.  The plot.  The score.  The cast.  The dino-sawrs.  Spielberg himself.  Mr. DNA.  All of them give the movie verve, and style, and skill, and technological wonder.  

But without Sam Neill, JURASSIC PARK would be missing its soul.