Part 1 of 9 Days of 90s - Movies that Defined a Decade

When looking back at the decade of cinematic milestones of the 90s, we have to address the elephant (or T-Rex) in the room that is JURASSIC PARK. There is simply no denying the powerhouse of a release that it was and how it has impacted arguably everything that has come since - for better or worse.

Still, the film holds up surprisingly well for it celebrating its 30 year anniversary this year. The CGI itself is maybe a little dated, but not as much as you would expect and sometimes feels more impactful than what we're force-fed these days.

What's astonishing about the movie is that it actually has very little dinosaurs on-screen, in relation to its runtime. Spielberg had learned to use his movie monsters sparingly and to make them count.

It should also be noted that this is a film that deserves a big screen. Even if you have seen it before - even if you've seen it multiple times before - nothing compare to witnessing this in an auditorium.

In 1993, everything I'd learned about movies began changing.

History was being made by prehistoric creatures inhabiting the year's biggest hit, Jurassic Park.

At the risk of sounding like a dinosaur myself, you shoulda been there, in a darkened theater watching the most realistic behemoths ever manufactured on screen, before spectacle became so common. If you were, you know what I mean.

Steven Spielberg's $60 million adaptation of Michael Crichton's page-turner wasn't simply a game-changer. It was an entirely new stadium for filmmaking, utilizing the developing technology of computer-generated imaging on a grander scale than any movie before.

"Watching Jurassic Park," Steve Persall of the Tampa Bay Times declared, "one gets the same feeling of wonderment, glee and old-fashioned fright that moviegoers must have felt 60 years ago when King Kong roared out of the jungle and scaled the Empire State Building."

Jurassic Park was also the first movie utilizing the then-new Digital Theater Systems audio format, that in addition to Dolby is today's standard in multiplexes. In 1993 only four Tampa Bay theaters had installed DTS, in only one auditorium each. All four of those theaters are closed now.

Nothing before ever looked or sounded like Jurassic Park. Countless movies have since.

There are certain milestones in our lives we remember exactly; where we were, how we felt when JFK was shot or the World Trade Center crumbled. One of mine is the first dino-sighting in Jurassic Park, a gigantic Brachiosaurus filling the screen, slowly strolling by. The stop-motion monsters of Ray Harryhausen's heyday were immediately outdated, replaced by a fluidity of motion and physical detail previously unimaginable.

- Steve Persall, Tampa Bay Times