Jurassic Park - First Viewing Memories From Around the Office

TelltaleGames

The Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy just released and it's once again brought to the forefront the incredible subject matter that fuels our upcoming release, Jurassic Park: The Game. Making a huge impression with the technological advances put forward in bringing realistic looking dinosaurs to the big screen for the first time, Jurassic Park is now a cinema classic. As our staff has always been packed to the brim with huge fans of the properties we work on, Jurassic Park, is no different, so I've taken this opportunity to gather some responses from some of the Telltale team on the feelings and experiences they had when seeing Jurassic Park for the first time.

The above limited edition poster by JC Richards is from an upcoming sale at Mondo. 

Read some of the Telltale staff's thoughts on their first viewing of Jurassic Park and share your own in the comments below! What was your take on seeing the movie that was 65 million years in the making? Did you see it in theaters or later on?

Read a sampling of the Telltale staff had to say after the jump! [readmore]

Ryan Weller -

When Jurassic Park hit the movie theaters I was 12 years old and my sister was eight. At the time, my mom was, well, a little over-protective. She had expressed her misgivings about her 12 year old son seeing a movie about "dinosaurs eating people." However, knowing that I would eventually find a way to see the movie (seriously, what kid didn't want to see it?!?), she took my little sister and I to go see a showing.

After we sat down and the movie started playing, there was this almost hushed like wonder that was present throughout the room. You have to remember, this being 1993 no one had seen computer graphics to this level. So when the dinosaurs were on screen there wasn't a single person moving, eating, or drinking - just stillness. It was amazing how life-like they were, how the leather skin moved, bunched, and stretched as they darted across the screen. The only time I took my eyes off the screen was when my Mom freaking out. Somehow, my sister found herself sitting on my mom's lap. My mom had her hands around my sister's head, ready to cover her eyes at the first sign of anything "gross" or "scary." Remember near the end of the movie when the Velociraptors were chasing after everyone in the main compound and they were up in the vents? There was a moment when Lex (Hammond's granddaughter) almost got her leg bit by a Velociraptor and Dr. Alan Grant pulled her leg away at just the right time. At that moment I heard both my Mom and my sister scream. I looked to my left and my mom had her hands clamped around my sister's eyes/head and was whipping her around left to right. My Mom was screaming because she got scared from the movie, while my sister was screaming because she was getting thrown about like a rag doll. I couldn't help but laugh as these two made a scene.  And of course as a loving caring teenage brother who loves his sister very very much, I was just happy it wasn't me being thrown about!

It was an amazing movie with "one of those" family stories that gets passed around whenever I want to embarrass my mom.

J.D. Straw -

Going to the movies with my dad growing up was one of the few ways we could bond over things that interested me. I was just starting high school when Jurassic Park came to theaters. Fortunately, the theater we saw the film in had just prepared itself for DTS Digital Surround. I can honestly say, we'd never heard anything like it. Hearing T-Rex growl behind you, or raptors skitter about behind the camera - behind you - was something else. It's funny to think how we reacted in a way similar to film goers at the turn of the 20th century, fleeing from the oncoming train in The Great Train Robbery. I remember constantly fighting the urge to look behind me.

The film really impressed my father and I. At the time, I was too inarticulate to put it into words - probably a lot of "awesomes" and "mind blowings."

Jessica Lozano -

I was six years old when Jurassic Park came out. I remember my dad being super excited about the movie, so he took us all to go see it in theaters. The only thing I really remember is the part when everyone sees the brachiosaurus for the first time and being awestruck - like it was the coolest thing ever.

Nat Dart -

I was eight years old when I saw Jurassic Park in the movie theatre with my dad. The scene where the tyrannosaurus flips the tour vehicle stands out as being the most nerve racking moment in the movie for me at the time. My dad recalls that I pulled out half of the hairs on his arm because I was gripping it so tightly! 

Joe Pinney -

My jaw dropped just like Sam Neill and Laura Dern's. I still think of it as the first time I saw "real" dinosaurs. My animator friends try to point out glitches in the FX, but I can't figure out what the hell they're talking about.  Those are DINOSAURS!

Dave Bogan -

I remember that I was so excited by the shot of the T-Rex's foot stepping down into the mud just after Dr. Grant pulls Lex out of the overturned tour car - excited to not see the rubber bouncing toe syndrome that comes along with animatronics or costumed creatures. The attention to detail of the compressing flesh and seemingly correct physics of the feet and toes made this a believable moment for me that was far beyond anything I had seen in past films. You could fully believe these dinos were living and breathing.

Sean Vanaman -

I saw the original with my parents at a matinee the day after my dad had broken his wrist. My mom lost her silly mind during the velociraptor scenes and would grab my dad's arm - he'd shriek in pain as my mom clawed at his tender and swollen arm during the kitchen scene. It added a certain charm to a movie that was already blowing my tiny mind.

Richard Iggo -

Like many people, I grew up loving dinosaurs. I knew all the names, would correct my teachers on pronunciation and had a vast collection of models either bought from museum shops or made from kits with my dad's help. So, when Jurassic Park came out, even though I was now twenty years old, I was pretty excited. I remember seeing the brachiosaurus and I think that my reaction was just like Dr. Grant's on-screen response, except I didn't stand up in my theater chair and turn someone's head to look; that would have been weird. But still, I was sat grinning ear to ear because this was the first time that dinosaurs looked like I'd imagined them as a kid. They were no longer low-grade puppets or jerky stop-motion animation - they looked like they were alive. In the movie, John Hammond said "We've made biological attractions so astounding that they'll capture the imaginations of the entire planet!". Eighteen years after that line was uttered, they still do.

Dennis Lenart -

I saw Jurassic Park in the theater for my 13th birthday party with a big group of my closest friends. It was playing at the newly upgraded DTS surround sound system "dome" theater by my house. I remember vividly how when the DTS logo came up for the first time and the theater started to rumble, everyone went silent and a great deal of "this is going to be intense" looks were exchanged. A few people even covered their ears it was so loud. Then the film started and all of us sunk back in our seats a bit, bracing for the impact of what we were about to see.

The opening scene with the raptor in the cage had me so on edge that I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Jaws made me terrified of sharks and now Jurassic Park was making me scared of dinosaurs. But the moment that had the most impact on me was yet to come. There's a well-known scene where the group goes out into the field for the first time to experience the park. The music began relatively light hearted, but I was braced for impact, sure that going out into the wild under no more cover than the roll cage of an open-top jeep would definitely bring about another action scene. Then the jeep stopped and all of a sudden the music became low and uncertain, a bit of mystery, a bit of tension. I gripped the arms of my chair a little more tightly and started scanning the frame for any hints of oncoming predators. "Here we go," I thought. My heart rate started to rise again. The music began to build toward a crescendo, which I thought could only end one way. Then at the peak of the tension, it seamlessly transitioned into the now classic John Williams theme and I got a look at a hundred foot tall brachiosaurus for the first time. It was real in that moment and although I was obsessed with special effects and ILM at the time, I didn't even contemplate how they brought a 65 million year old dinosaur back to life because it didn't matter. The music, the cinematography, the special effects...everything was in perfect sync and I was forever changed.

I sat in that theater for the next hour and a half in complete awe and when I came out into the harsh mid-day summer sun of reality, I made the decision to go into storytelling. It was really that simple. I immediately begged my parents to buy a camera and started making short films. The first feature length film that I ever fantasized about making was a sequel to Jurassic Park, which was oddly enough followed by the first script I ever worked on...a sequel to Back to the Future. I had no idea that 15 years later I'd be working at a company that would bring back both licenses. The worst part was that they were both in production at the same time so I could only work on one.

Andrew Langley -

Just like every other 12 year old boy in the world, I saw Jurassic Park in the theater as soon as absolutely possible. Five years later while in high school, I was hired as an intern at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. They asked me to help put an exhibit together in their new technology showcase to demonstrate all the cool ways computers can be used. I immediately thought of Jurassic Park and created a kiosk that demonstrated how 3D art and animation was used to create realistic dinosaurs on film. This was still a completely new concept to most people at the time. I sat in that exhibit for an entire year while Jurassic Park played on and endless loop, and I still never got tired of watching it.

It's been surreal to be working 14 years later as a programmer and director on the Jurassic Park videogame. If I knew back then that I'd be working on this today, I would have totally flipped out.