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Now Showing: Jurassic Park (1993)
Movie theaters are closed right now due to the coronavirus pandemic, and this has thrown the studio release schedule into complete chaos (more on that below). The only theaters reliably showing movies right now are America’s drive-ins, where business is booming. People, desperate to get out of the house and missing the cinema are rolling back the clock and taking in films the way they did on a regular basis 50 years ago. Most drive-ins show movies as double features, and with the dearth of new releases at this time, they’re showing lots of classics. This has made Steven Spielberg’s 1993 smash hit, Jurassic Park, the top box office performer in the country once again.
In the upstate New York town of Coxsackie, for instance, the Hi-Way theater is currently showing Jurassic Park as part of a double feature with Jaws (see last week’s issue of Highly Transmissible), and the local radio stations are broadcasting daily drive-in weather reports. As the sun set the other night, the crickets chirped and a few straggling cars rolled-in, the theater’s FM channels played songs from the 1950s and children bought last minute snacks from the the concession stand. For a moment, the Hi-Way felt like a time capsule from another era.
And then John Williams’ brassy score started and a velociraptor — unseen but deadly — devoured a park worker on the big screen. Jurassic Park is big again, not just because it’s one of the only movies showing right now, but because it — like Jaws — is an almost perfect movie for our moment in time.
The film, now deeply familiar to audiences, remains highly relevant, and it explores what happens when scientists and corporate interests bring back dinosaurs using DNA editing and cloning and put them in a theme park. With theme parks from Disney to Universal Studios to Coney Island closed or seeing just a trickle of guests because of a threat that modern science has thus far been unable to beat, a movie about a theme park where you might literally get eaten feels eerily familiar but also oddly reassuring given how concrete the threat posed by a t-rex is. Jurassic Park is also Spielberg at his biggest and best, and he makes use of all of the tricks he first experimented with in Jaws to tease the audience and keep the action going. He hides the most dangerous dinosaurs and what they can do until the midpoint of the film and slowly ratchets up the terror, beginning with the t-rex in the jungle and finishing with the velociraptors in that most human of spaces—the kitchen.
The movie also continues to serve up effective suspense and jump scares, even to viewers who have seen it dozens of times. The special effects, thanks to deft use of animatronics, stop motion animation and puppets, by-and-large hold up, despite the passage of time, and the performances from a cast including Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Knight are at turns campy and delightful. There’s no bones about it; Jurassic Park is the biggest film in America for a reason. Do yourself a favor, hop in the car, and get to your local drive-in right away. Just remember… objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
Jurassic Park is also streaming on Netflix.
Hollywood needs movie theaters. Or do they?
The coronavirus pandemic has pushed theater chains and the Hollywood studios to the breaking point. At first the studios responded by delaying release dates for films. Then Trolls: World Tour went straight to streaming, bypassing theaters altogether, and made a killing. Its success caused a host of other films, mainly smaller pictures such as The King of Staten Island and Palm Springs, to also go straight to streaming and video-on-demand. Now, for the first time, a true blockbuster is going to skip movie theaters altogether and go straight to a streaming platform. Disney announced earlier in the week that Mulan, which was supposed to be its summer tentpole, will be released directly on the Disney+ streaming platform for $29.99. Clearly, the internal calculus at the Mouse was that rather than having the movie gather dust on the shelf, they could eke out a profit—or at least offset losses—through digital fees and boosting subscriptions to their streaming service.
Seemingly, the Mulan decision could be a harbinger of doom for the mega theater chains—think AMC and Regal—that depend on dishing up blockbusters to the general public (I’ve written previously about how current trends may benefit independent theaters and smaller operators in the long-run). Yet Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Tenet just had its release delayed for a third time, joining other summer blockbusters—ranging from the latest Bond film to Wonder Woman 1984—that are currently sitting on ice. This indicates that as much as Disney may be able to justify bringing Mulan straight into people’s homes, Hollywood’s executives still believe the biggest budget films—including other Disney properties such as Avatar and Star Wars—are still going to depend on theatrical runs to make money.
Long term trends still look bad for chain movie theaters, though, given their cookie-cutter offerings, expensive ticket and concession prices and huge footprints at dying malls. Indeed, AMC has already caved and agreed to a 17-day theatrical window with Universal, a huge decrease from the previous 90-day standard. It’s not unreasonable to assume that when the pandemic passes, this will be the new normal.
Dinner and a movie
There’s obviously no definitive answer to that ageless question, “what is the best movie candy?” Indeed, this is a matter of personal preference, and it says a lot about the kind of person you are (I like Raisinettes, Sour Patch and those weird Crunch balls). But I’ll go out on a limb and say there’s no better combination than some kind of chocolate-based candy, a hot, buttery popcorn, and a coke. So when you’re on the way to watch Jurassic Park at the drive-in, why pack some Raisinettes, a bag freshly made microwave popcorn, and a cold bottle of cola.
Reading List:
Author Benjamin Rosenbaum has a great fantasy story, All These Guardians of Order and Clarity, None of Them Can Abide a Free Witch over at Light Speed. I don’t want to give it away, but it’s a good use of your lunch break.
Jurassic Park started its life as a fantastic hard science fiction novel from the late Michael Crichton. The movie is fun, sure, but the book totally kicks ass, and it’s a great summer read. Available for delivery nationwide from the Book House in Albany, NY.