Hold On To Your Butts: How Jurassic Park Can Teach You Everything You Need to Know About Storytelling

Moreover, while every scene should service the story in some way, it’s the job of the inciting incident to lay out the central conflict. By that definition, our opening encounter passes with flying colors. In a literal sense, Jurassic Park’s conflict is essentially dinosaurs vs. humans. In an abstract sense, it’s about exploring the dangers of “pla

It doesn’t always take long-winded speeches or epic drama to showcase your characters and their qualities. Something as simple as how they put on a seatbelt can tell the audience almost everything they need to know about

It’s simply not essential. This—ladies, gentlemen, and hermaphrodite dinosaurs—is cinematic exposition of the highest order: giving the audience the maximum amount of necessary information in the least amount of possible time. And these rules of thumb aren’t just arbitrary instructions; this is how the film establishes pacing. We’re getting just en

Dr. Grant vs. The Movie We hover above a smattering of as-yet-unrevealed paleontologists unearthing a prehistoric skeleton as titles onscreen reveal we’re in (you guessed it!) Montana. Someone offscreen shouts: OFFSCREEN GUY Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler…we’re ready to try again! Our leading man stands up into frame and introduces himself: GRANT I hate co

benchmark, even for you mystery writers out there. So, we’ve now reached the first milestone of the movie, and we have the basic marching orders of who is involved and why. But beneath that lies a tension sustained by what we don’t know. We know there’s something dangerous about the park (re: minor inciting incident) and we know that Hammond’s mora

Gennaro is going to panic (and pay for it), Malcolm is going to stay aloof and pretentious (for the most part) and Grant is going to have to overcome unforeseen obstacles.

And ever in the service of the story above all else, this scene communicates new information to us while reaffirming what it’s already established: Hammond wants experts, and the experts want the means to keep expert-ing.

As the scene stands in the movie, it conveys everything the audience needs to know about the characters and then some. Part of it emerges in dialogue, just as much (if not more) emerges from the staging of the scene and organic interaction amongst everyone involved. And we’re not even 15 minutes into the movie.

OK, we get it: Dr. Grant and technology? Not good bedfellows! Is that it? Not even close. Immediately after his computer gaffe, he solicits some polite laughter for the suggestion that dinosaurs are more closely related to birds than reptiles. While it’s since become more widely accepted, at the time of Jurassic Park’s release this was a fairly new