Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Richard Attenborough, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards, Samuel L. Jackson, B. D. Wong, Wayne Knight, Jerry Molen, Miguel Sandoval, Cameron Thor, Christopher John Fields, Whitby Hertford, Dean Cundey, Jophery Brown, Tom Mishler, Greg Burson, Adrian Escober, Richard Kiley
In Isla Nublar, an island 120 miles west of Costa Rica, a man wearing a tropical hunter’s outfit oversees a work crew as a tractor crane approaches through dense vegetation. The man, Robert Muldoon (Peck), tells his workers to be careful and positions several armed men as the tractor crane lowers a large metal box down onto a concrete platform. There is a loud roar from within the box and Muldoon orders tasers on full charge. A loading team pushes the heavy box so it abuts a large concrete and steel structure. Muldoon orders the loading team to back off and then calls in the gate keeper, who steps forward and uses steel rungs to climb atop the box. The man raises a metal gate at the end of the box, opening it to the concrete structure. As he does this, a roaring creature within the box yanks it away from the structure and the man loses his balance and falls to the platform. The creature immediately seizes the gate keeper and starts to drag him inside, screaming, but Muldoon rushes to the man’s aid and holds his arm. Guards step forward and fire tasers at the creature, but it does not release the worker. Muldoon then orders his men to shoot her and they fire their rifles until the roaring stops. The worker’s family files a $20 million lawsuit against the company owning the Isla Nublar operation. Investors are concerned about the safety of the project, and the insurers demand that two independent experts sign off on the island. In the Badlands of Montana, paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Neill) and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler (Dern) are directing an archeological dig. They are excavating the fossilized remains of a velociraptor, a predator dinosaur about six feet high. John Hammond (Attenborough), who has been sponsoring Dr. Grant’s excavation, flies in to the dig in a helicopter and tells Grant he is in urgent need of his assistance. Hammond, an eccentric entrepreneur, persuades Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler to travel to Isla Nublar for a few days to endorse his pet project, a resort with attractions never seen before. Traveling to Isla Nublar, Grant and Sattler are accompanied by Hammond, attorney Donald Gennaro (Ferrero), and mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), a self-styled chaotician. Their helicopter lands near a spectacular waterfall. The group is driven to the central resort and control building in Jeeps marked with a Jurassic Park logo showing the head of a ferocious dinosaur. Gennaro represents the interests of investors in Hammond’s theme park. He’s there to conduct a thorough safety inspection. Along the way, Hammond stops the Jeeps and treats the visitors to an amazing sight: living dinosaurs moving about freely in a fenced-off section of the island. At Jurassic Park’s control center, Hammond uses video animation to explain that InGen, the parent company, has succeeded in cloning dinosaurs from DNA recovered from mosquitoes that fed on their blood and were preserved for millions of years inside fossilized amber. Hammond’s dream of a resort where people can watch real dinosaurs in a beautiful tropical environment is almost ready for business. All that’s needed is taking care of a few pesky technical problems and convincing the improvised inspection team that the project is safe. Hammond’s grand children, Lex Murphy (Richards) and her younger brother Tim (Mazzello), join Grant, Sattler, Gennaro and Malcolm on a tour of the park. Specially-equipped Ford Explorers take them on a pre-programmed route. At the park’s control room, where computer experts Ray Arnold (Jackson) and Dennis Nedry (Knight) manage the various park facilities, Hammond tracks the visitors’ progress. Nedry is part of a conspiracy to steal InGen’s cloning technology. He disables the park’s security system to facilitate his absconding with stolen dinosaur embryos. This triggers system malfunctions that allow the dinosaurs to escape their fenced-off area. In the middle of their tour, the visitors are confronted with runaway prehistoric animals. While Hammond, Muldoon, and park technicians work to contain the animals, Grant and Sattler must use their knowledge of dinosaurs to try to save themselves and the others from ferocious velociraptors and the most dangerous of predators, Tyrannosaurus rex. Based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton.
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