Why Jurassic Park (1993) Still Works

I watched Jurassic Park (1993) again in IMAX 3D, and I did not expect to feel as moved as I did. I know the film almost by heart. I know when the water will tremble, when the T. rex will appear, when the children will hide in the kitchen, and when John Williams’s music will rise. There is no real surprise left in the plot for me, and yet the film still surprised me.

That is what I find fascinating about certain films. They do not stay with us because we do not know what will happen. They stay with us because, even when we know everything, they still make us feel something real. It is the same with a song we have heard many times or a painting we have seen before. The work has not changed, but somehow the experience changes because we bring more life to it each time we return.

Jurassic Park (1993) is clearly a popcorn movie. It was made to entertain a huge audience. It has suspense, jokes, children in danger, dinosaurs, big music, and all the pleasure of a perfect blockbuster. But that is exactly what makes it so interesting to me. It entertains us completely, and at the same time, it leaves us with questions that are still alive 33 years later.

I was thinking about this during the screening because this was not just another nostalgic re-release. The film was shown as part of London Climate Action Week, with an introduction by Craig Bennett from The Wildlife Trusts. That already changes the way we watch it. Suddenly, a film many of us first met as a dinosaur adventure becomes a film about conservation, extinction, science, and responsibility. The island is still exciting, but it is also much darker than we may have noticed when we were younger.

When Jurassic Park (1993) came out, cloning and DNA were already becoming part of the public imagination. Science was moving fast, and the idea that life could be decoded and recreated felt both exciting and dangerous. Dolly, the cloned sheep, was born three years later and announced to the world in 1997. Today, that context feels even more current. We now talk about de-extinction, genetic preservation, biobanks, artificial intelligence, endangered species, and climate collapse. The film has not changed, but the world around it has made its questions more urgent.

That, for me, is part of the magic of art. A film can belong completely to its time and still speak clearly to another time. Jurassic Park (1993) belongs to the early 1990s, to the birth of modern digital effects, to the age of the Hollywood blockbuster, and to the moment when DNA became a cultural symbol. But it also belongs to 2026, when the idea of bringing lost or threatened species back is no longer only science fiction. The film keeps moving with history.

One scene brought all of this back to me very strongly: the first appearance of the brachiosaurus. I remember how this scene hit me when I first watched it with someone who, at the time, was a very close friend and also a film fanatic. We were both around 17 and had recently started university. We were excited by computer visual effects, so of course the dinosaur itself amazed us. But the moment that really stayed with us was not simply the full reveal of the animal. It was the palm tree.

The brachiosaurus reaches up, bites the top of the palm tree, pulls it down, and the tree moves. That detail may seem small, but for us it was enormous. It was the moment when the computer-generated dinosaur and the physical world seemed to touch each other. The digital animal was not floating separately from reality. It was interacting with something real, and because the tree moved, the illusion became complete.

I remember feeling that cinema had changed in that moment. Not because the film was showing off technology, but because the technology disappeared into the scene. We were not thinking, “Look at the CGI.” We were thinking, “This creature is there.” The real set, the actors, the landscape, the music, and the digital dinosaur all worked together. That blend is one of the reasons the film still feels so alive.

This is even more impressive when we remember how little dinosaur footage the film actually uses. The first full, clear dinosaur reveal only arrives around the 20-minute mark, and the dinosaurs appear for about 15 minutes in total. Of that, only around six minutes are computer-generated. The rest depends on practical puppets, animatronics, editing, sound, performance, and Spielberg’s control of suspense. The film gives us fewer dinosaurs than we remember, but it makes every appearance count.

That is probably why the effects still matter. The question is not only, “How good were the effects?” The better question is, “Why do these effects still move us?” I think the answer is that Spielberg never treats technology as the point of the scene. The point is the human reaction. Alan Grant sees the dinosaur first, then Ellie Sattler, then we see it with them. Their faces teach us how to feel before the film gives us the full image. The effect works because it is connected to wonder, not just spectacle.

That is one of the great lessons of Jurassic Park (1993). It understands that awe needs a human body. We need the shaking hand, the open mouth, the stunned silence, the person who cannot process what they are seeing. The dinosaur is impressive, but the emotion comes from watching people encounter something impossible. The film gives us the creature, but it also gives us the feeling of seeing the creature.

The same balance appears in the rest of the film. The dinosaurs are spectacular, but they are never only attractions. They are also living beings placed inside a system that misunderstands them. The park has fences, cars, computers, logos, merchandise, safety procedures, control rooms, and guided tours. It looks organized, but it is built on arrogance. Hammond believes that because he can create life, he can also control it, sell it, and turn it into entertainment.

That is where the film becomes more than a fun adventure. It is not against science. It is not saying that curiosity is wrong. The film is full of curiosity and wonder. What it questions is the lack of humility that can come with power, money, and technology. The problem is not that humans dream too much. The problem is that they dream and then immediately build a business plan around the dream. The raw capitalism of the park is one of the film’s clearest criticisms.

This is why the film’s cultural context still feels so alive. In 1993, it spoke to fears and hopes around genetics, computers, corporate entertainment, and the future of cinema itself. In 2026, it speaks to climate anxiety, conservation, species loss, and the belief that technology might save us from the damage technology and industry helped create. The same film now reflects a different world, but it does not feel old. It feels newly relevant.

That may explain why I felt so moved in the IMAX. I was not only watching a film from my past. I was watching a film that had travelled with me into the present. I was remembering the first time I saw that palm tree move, and I was also thinking about the world my students live in now. A world where artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and environmental crisis are not future ideas. They are part of daily life.

This is why Jurassic Park (1993) remains such a good film to teach. Students can enjoy it as a blockbuster, and they should. The pleasure matters. But we can also ask them to look more closely at how the film creates meaning. How does the mise-en-scène turn the park into a place of control? How does the sound move from wonder to fear? How does the editing delay the dinosaurs so that our imagination works before the image arrives? How does the film use genre to entertain us while asking serious ethical questions?

That is the kind of cinema I love most. Cinema that welcomes everyone in with entertainment, then leaves something behind. A question, a feeling, a doubt, a memory. Jurassic Park (1993) gives us dinosaurs, but it also gives us a way to think about science, nature, responsibility, and the limits of control.

Maybe that is why it still works 33 years later. Not because the effects are still the most advanced. They are not. Not because the story can still surprise us. For many of us, it cannot. It still works because the film connects spectacle to emotion and emotion to cultural context. It gives us pleasure, but it also keeps asking what kind of world we are building.

When I watched it again in IMAX 3D, I knew everything that was going to happen. I knew the island. I knew the lines. I knew the danger. And still, when the brachiosaurus appeared, when the tree moved, when the music rose, I felt it again.

That is why, on 28 June in London, I felt in conversation with the 17-year-old who watched the film in Rio in 1993. Different city, different screen, different life, but the same feeling. Some movies do not simply return to us. They show us that a part of us has been sitting there in the dark all along.