Why HBO Max's $1 Billion Dinosaur Movie With Near-Perfect RT Score Has Become A Global Streaming Hit

From Amber to Apex Predator · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Jurassic Park? “Hold onto your butts.”

🦟Frozen AmberWhere it all started

🧬Mr. DNABingo — dino DNA

🦖Paddock 9She's looking at the goat

⚡10,000 VoltsUntil Nedry kills the grid

🌴Isla Nublar120 miles west of Costa Rica

01

Jurassic Park (June 1993) was directed by a filmmaker who, during the dinosaur film's post-production, was simultaneously shooting a starkly different black-and-white drama in Poland. He famously had to remotely supervise the ILM and Stan Winston effects work via satellite link from Krakow. Name him.

✓ Correct! Steven Spielberg. He shot Jurassic Park first, then took the unprecedented step of cutting it remotely from the Schindler's List set in Poland — producer Kathleen Kennedy and editor Michael Kahn FedExed VHS dailies between Krakow and Universal. Jurassic Park went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, a record it held until Spielberg's friend James Cameron broke it with Titanic in 1997.

✗ Wrong director. The answer is Steven Spielberg. The film he was simultaneously shooting in Poland was Schindler's List — the two films were released six months apart in 1993 and Spielberg won his first Best Director Oscar for Schindler's, not Jurassic Park. He famously refused to let himself watch Jurassic Park dailies until he'd finished a Schindler's day's shooting, fearing tonal contamination.

02

Universal secured the film rights in May 1990, several months before the source novel was even on shelves, paying $1.5M plus $500,000 for the author to write his own screenplay draft. The novelist had already written The Andromeda Strain (1969) and written and directed the original Westworld (1973). Name him.

✓ Correct! Michael Crichton. The Harvard Med School grad turned techno-thriller novelist later created ER (1994) and wrote Sphere, Disclosure, Timeline and Prey. His Crichton screenplay was eventually rewritten by David Koepp, who is the credited co-screenwriter alongside Crichton on the finished film. Crichton also wrote the 1995 sequel novel The Lost World — which exists, in part, because Spielberg literally asked him for one.

✗ Wrong novelist. The answer is Michael Crichton. Tom Clancy was the Hunt for Red October / Jack Ryan techno-thriller giant of the same era. Stephen King wrote the unrelated Pet Sematary / Misery. Robin Cook wrote medical thrillers like Coma. Crichton owned the dinosaur-cloning techno-thriller niche and would later write the 1995 sequel novel The Lost World, which Spielberg adapted in 1997.

03

InGen's billionaire founder John Hammond — the avuncular, ice-cream-eating, fly-swatter-with-amber-mosquito-cane patriarch who insists he “spared no expense” building the park — was played by an English actor and director who came out of a fifteen-year acting retirement at Spielberg's personal request. He'd just won two Oscars for directing Gandhi (1982). Name him.

✓ Correct! Sir Richard Attenborough. He hadn't acted on screen since 1979's The Human Factor — he'd been busy directing Gandhi (8 Oscars), Cry Freedom and Chaplin. Spielberg flew to London to convince him; Attenborough returned for The Lost World in 1997. (Yes, he is also brother to David Attenborough, the natural-history broadcaster — a coincidence the Jurassic Park casting did not invent.) The amber-tipped cane is a reference to Hammond's own dinosaur-DNA enterprise.

✗ Wrong knight. The answer is Sir Richard Attenborough. Anthony Hopkins won his Best Actor Oscar in 1992 (Silence of the Lambs) but isn't in any Jurassic film. Sir John Mills and Sir Ben Kingsley are also separate British acting knights of the era. Attenborough is the Gandhi director who came out of acting retirement — and also, yes, brother of David, the natural-history broadcaster.

04

The film's leather-clad, motorcycle-riding, “life, uh, finds a way”-muttering mathematician — played by Jeff Goldblum and credited in the film as a “chaotician” — specialises in a specific branch of nonlinear dynamics that the script repeatedly demonstrates with butterflies and water droplets on Ellie Sattler's hand. Name the field.

✓ Correct! Chaos theory. Crichton modelled Malcolm partly on the real mathematician James Gleick, whose 1987 book Chaos: Making a New Science had popularised the field. Goldblum's casting was so signature he reprised Malcolm in The Lost World (1997), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Dominion (2022). The water-droplet scene with Laura Dern is deliberately structured to seduce the audience into Malcolm's worldview before the park starts collapsing.

✗ Wrong branch. The answer is chaos theory — the “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” field that says you can't predict where the water droplet will roll. Game theory (von Neumann), topology (the rubber-sheet geometry one), and combinatorics are all real branches but not Malcolm's. He famously calls himself “a chaotician” on screen, which is the same field.

05

The animated “Mr. DNA” explainer in the visitor centre says InGen's geneticists filled the gaps in their reconstructed dinosaur genomes using genetic material from a particular kind of modern animal — the same species whose ability to switch sex in single-gender environments lets the all-female park population secretly start breeding. Name the donor animal.

✓ Correct! Frog. Specifically, in Crichton's novel, the West African tree frog — certain species of which can switch from female to male in a single-gender environment. The film simplifies it to “some West African frogs” in the Mr. DNA cartoon and lets Dr. Grant work out the implication for himself when he finds the broken eggshells in the jungle. Real-world: actual frog DNA, while flexible, can't fix dinosaur DNA gaps that have decayed past about 6.8 million years.

✗ Wrong donor. The answer is frog — specifically, in Crichton's novel, the West African tree frog. Komodo dragons can do parthenogenesis (virgin birth) in captivity but aren't the film's answer. Newts can regenerate but don't switch sex this way. Crocodiles famously have temperature-determined sex but aren't the gap-filler. The frog DNA explanation is what lets the all-female park population start breeding — “life finds a way.”

06

The film's two-theme score — including the soaring, French-horn-led main melody first heard as the helicopter banks toward Isla Nublar and the cathedral-organ-like “Welcome to Jurassic Park” cue at the gates — was composed by the same five-time-Oscar winner who scored Jaws, E.T., Schindler's List, Indiana Jones and Star Wars. Name him.

✓ Correct! John Williams. He scored every film Spielberg directed from Sugarland Express (1974) onward, with the lone exception of The Color Purple. The Jurassic main theme is one of two written for the film — the other, more action-oriented “Journey to the Island,” is the helicopter cue. Williams handed the franchise to Michael Giacchino for the Jurassic World films starting in 2015, but returned briefly to score the trailers for Dominion (2022).

✗ Wrong composer. The answer is John Williams. Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Inception) is the other titan of the era but isn't a Spielberg regular. Danny Elfman is Tim Burton's go-to. James Horner scored Titanic and Avatar but not Jurassic Park. Williams is Spielberg's near-continuous composer of choice and the man behind the cathedral-organ “Welcome” cue.

07

Dennis Nedry — the disgruntled, embezzling InGen programmer played by Wayne Knight (Seinfeld's Newman) who's smuggling frozen embryos off the island in a Barbasol shaving-cream can — gets stuck in his Jeep in the storm and is killed by a smaller dinosaur with a frilled neck and a black, blinding venom-spit. Name the species.

✓ Correct! Dilophosaurus. Crichton invented both the retractable neck-frill and the venom-spit — the real Dilophosaurus is closer to 20ft long with neither feature. Spielberg shrunk the on-screen version to about 4ft so Nedry would underestimate it, then dialled up the Frilled-Lizard cosplay to make the kill scene work in PG-13. The Barbasol can — reused as an Easter egg in Jurassic World — is one of cinema's all-time great MacGuffins.

✗ Wrong dino. The answer is Dilophosaurus — the small frilled venom-spitter. Velociraptors get Muldoon (“Clever girl”) and corner Lex and Tim in the kitchen later. Compsognathus (the small “compies”) appear in The Lost World, not Jurassic Park. Gallimimus is the ostrich-like flock that stampedes past Grant and the kids: “they're flocking this way!” Dilophosaurus is the one that kills Nedry.

08

InGen's chain-smoking chief engineer — the one trying to reboot Nedry's locked-down park systems from the control room, who delivers the immortal “hold onto your butts” line before flipping the breaker, and whose severed arm later falls onto Ellie Sattler in the maintenance bunker — is played by a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson. Name the character.

✓ Correct! Ray Arnold. Jackson shot Jurassic Park between Patriot Games and Pulp Fiction. The famous “hold onto your butts” line was an ad-lib that became one of his signature deliveries. Hawaii's hurricane-curtailed shooting schedule meant Jackson never got to film Arnold's actual death scene — he was supposed to be shown being attacked by the raptors. The severed-arm gag is, to this day, one of the few jump-scares Spielberg has ever publicly admitted to enjoying putting in a film.

✗ Wrong InGen employee. The answer is Ray Arnold. Donald Gennaro is the lawyer (Martin Ferrero) eaten on the toilet by the T-rex. Robert Muldoon is the Australian game warden (Bob Peck) killed by the velociraptor with the “Clever girl” line. Henry Wu is the chief geneticist (BD Wong), the only original-cast scientist who returns for the Jurassic World films. Samuel L. Jackson plays Arnold — control-room engineer and one-line wonder.

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InGen consultant — or fed to the raptors?