AFTIRTM: Jurassic Park

I did The Matrix way back when (and honestly, I don't remember the entire list), but Jurassic Park is definitely on it.

Why?

What it was:
An epic adaptation of an epic novel by an awesome (now sadly departed) author, realized by an awesome director and an awesome (now sadly departed) effects wizard.

What it gave the hacks:
Look! CGI! Now we don't need to hire real actors!

Look, Sam Neill can act. I'm not saying anything contrariwise in that respect. Spielberg explicitly cast people who would not overshadow his dinosaurs, and who could act convincingly against golf balls (both on sticks and being fired at them from behind - how did you think they did the Gallimimus chase?) Also the film had Richard Attenborough in it (who according to Wikipedia hadn't had an acting job since 1979), and some guy named Samuel L. Jackson... but none of these people were real stars back in 1993. No, not even Jackson.

Some background here on my own philosophies: I'm now burning through the back catalogue of How I Met Your Mother because Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan are in the cast. You're not going to convince me to see a film or a television show because the monster looks particularly convincing; you're going to convince me to see a film based on who's in it, or who wrote it, or who directed it, or even who did the score or the freakin' cinematography (The Omen -the 1976 original - has direct connections to Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who in this way; Star Wars's cinematographer, Star Trek's most epic composer, and Doctor Who number 2 Patrick Troughton). (And for that matter, I got hooked on Doctor Who after seeing City of Death, which was written by Douglas Adams.)

So anyway, yeah, acting's important. And as I mentioned in one of my Who Reviews, I generally don't knock acting unless it's impressively bad... which brings us directly to the hacks. Let's look specifically at Transformers. ...Okay, once you're done ogling Megan Fox and the CGI, notice what a terrible, terrible actor Shia is. You get the feeling he was cast to offset the special effects budget (again - Sam Neill, not the biggest-name star in the business in 1993, but at least the man could act). And then he got to pop up in Indiana Jones IV: Lucas Kills His Other Legacy. And thus a "star" is born. Ugh.

And then there's the other complaint about Jurassic Park, the obligatory nerd one: with both of the movie's most famous monsters hailing from the Cretaceous Period instead of the Jurassic, the whole thing was misnamed. (In fact, of the 7 dinosaurs, only Brachiosaurus and Dilophosaurus came from the Jurassic Period.) So it set a precedent for not doing the research.