Catalogue classic Jurassic Park → Ultra HD Blu-ray/3D Blu-ray, Universal

With Jurassic World: Dominion playing cinemas, Anton Van Beek takes a trip back into cinema's prehistoric past (well, 1993) to revisit a Hollywood blockbuster 65million years in the making...

- Anton Van Beek

WHEN STEVEN SPIELBERG'S Jurassic Park stomped through cinemas in the summer of 1993, audiences were left staring in wonder at what was unfolding on the screen. Just like Sam Neill and Laura Dern’s characters first catching sight of a brachiosaurus, viewers were awestruck as they witnessed a previously extinct prehistoric creature seemingly brought back to life via CGI. And in that moment, cinema was changed forever.

'They show extreme intelligence'

Jurassic Park was far from the first movie to put dinosaurs on the big screen, of course. The film history of these so-called 'terrible lizards' stretches back almost as far as the medium itself. As early as 1914 D.W. Griffiths was making Brute Force (aka Primitive Man), a silent short about a caveman dealing with various problems, including some rather iffy-looking dinosaurs, and Winsor McCay's legendary animated short about a caveman dealing with various problems, including some rather iffy-looking dinosaurs, and Winsor McCay's legendary animated short Gertie the Dinosaur appeared in the same year. By 1925, the world was gasping at the stop-motion creatures Willis O'Brien created for the silent adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, a trick he would repeat eight years later, alongside his most famous creation, in 1933's King Kong.