Jurassic Park
TLDR: “The movie was better”
As it turns out, this started as a screenplay, then got turned into a novel, with the full knowledge that it would become a movie. The novel was released in 1990, and the movie in 1993, which means movie prep must have begun immediately after the manuscript was complete.
Not surprisingly, it reads like a movie.
I decided to read it after reading Cracking the Genome. I have no idea why I thought that this was the best use of my new-found knowledge of DNA, but had a couple of plane flights that day, so I needed something light.
It was okay. Clearly, I saw the movie 30 years ago, and there are some key differences. Many of the characters are quite different in the book (one of the good guys is actually kind of a bad guy in the book), and they have different fates (more people die in the book).
The main problem is that as the book goes on, it basically becomes a tactical exercise in running away from dinosaurs. That’s easier to make sense of on a movie screen than in print. In some extended sequences, I had a hard time figuring out who was where, doing what. I got the locations jumbled up in my head, and had no visual clues to sort them out. (I had the same problem in the final action climax of Reamde).
Even outside of the action scenes, there are a just lot of characters, and they get spread out all over the island. It’s hard to keep that straight. The entire group of humans is never all together, so you’re constantly trying to remember who is where and why.
Also, it’s interesting that several scenes from the book made it into later movies in the Jurassic Park canon. There’s a whole thing with a raft and a sleeping T-Rex that I think only appeared in the latest Jurassic movie. And another scene of a little girl getting bitten on the beach that was in another one of the movies (the third, maybe?).
I finished the entire book in an eight-hour travel cycle (two flights and a long layover). It was fun, just not revelatory.
Book Data
- Author
- Michael Crichton
- Year
- Pages
- 401
- Acquired
- Not recorded
- Open Library
- OL46881W
- Wikipedia
- Jurassic_Park_(novel)
- I have read this book. According to my records, I completed it on .
- I own (or have license to) an electronic copy of this book.