Jurassic Park...Revisited. (aka HOLYFUCKINGSHIT, DINOSAURS!)

In June of 1993 I was seven years old. I was sporting a badass tomboy haircut, I'd just learnt to ride a bike, and I loved dinosaurs.

What the...!

Not Barney. NEVER Barney. I mean DINOSAURS.

Actual exhibit at the ROM that I frequented...'cause it's got freakin' dinosaurs!

Big, bite-y, scary-ass dinosaurs.

RAWR!

I was obsessed with dinosaurs, as is every child under the age of 10. I read books, I went to museums, I drew pictures...shit, I even have my old school project on the extinction of the dinosaurs from Grade 3...it used a surprising amount of glitter glue and cotton balls...

As the sun shone down on the end of my Grade 3 year, something wonderful happened...Jurassic Park was released in theatres...


OH. MY. GOD.


I begged my parents for weeks to be allowed to see it in theatres. For ages (likely a day or two) they refused, saying it would be "too scary"...I was undeterred. I pointed out that since one of my earliest memories was Toht's face melting in Indiana Jones a few dinosaurs wouldn't have any effect...

Oh Toht, we told you not to look at it, despite it being "beautiful"...

I was wrong...


One June day, as my mum picked me up from my after school program (MCLAASP fo' life, yo) she casually asked if I would be interested in seeing Jurassic Park that evening... After 10min of hopping up and down shouting YESYESYESYES, we got in the car and headed to meet my dad at the York theatre, bought our tickets ($4 and $8...mmmm, taste that artificial inflation...), and sat in the third row.




I was ready.

Dinosaurs...you may begin.

Lights down, curtain up...cue the music...

Dum da! Dum da! Da da dummmm da dum dum daaaaaaa!

The first death was terrifying...but manageable...no dinosaurs to be seen... just a bad ass hunter yelling "SHOOT HAAAAAAR!"...Then a jerk-kid gets put in his place...

...Mr. DNA, kids introduced...

Hello young female audience member...here is the character for YOU to identify with...She knows Unix systems! :D

Big gates...

I haz an excite...

Two no-shows, and one sick triceratops...all still fine...

Poo!

And then everything goes to hell...

...Within minutes of the electric fences losing power I had lept into my mother's lap, and begun a death-hug around her neck...completely terrified. Over the next 127 minutes I had a series of heart attacks...


Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"Okay Claire, I think we should leave..."
"NO!!!"


 Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"...Claire, I think we should leave..."
"NO!!!"


Here:

OHfuckOHfuckOHfuck

Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"Seriously...this is too scary for-"

"NEVER!!! hold me"

Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"AAAAAAA!!!!!"

*sigh*

Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

 Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"Haha, OMFG, AAAAA!"

"...you sure you don't want to-"

"NOOOOO!"

Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"HIS ARM FELL OFF OMG I'M GOING TO DIE!"
"...Claire...I can't breathe...!"

 Here:

Ooo, jello! OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

 Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

"...this is how I die..."
"leave?"
"never."

 Here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

Here:

...and finally, here:

OhfuckOhfuckOhfuck

...It was the most scared I had ever been...and the greatest movie I'd ever seen.

 It had everything you could ever want...kids defeating dinosaurs, mind-numbing terror, giant piles of poop, and even Jeff Goldblum!

Oh hey there ladies...I think my leg fell off around here somewhere...

 I, and pretty much every other kid, became Jurassic Park obsessed. I begged for the dino-damage toys, but never received them...alas... I played "Jurassic Park" in the playground every recess for a year...and when I got the VHS for Christmas, I watched it back-to-back for 8 hours straight...trying to extract every drop of what made it so incredible and stuff it into my memory.

Official merchandise?!

THRASHING ACTION?!!!

DINO DAMAGE?!!!!!!!

Even my favourite musician, Weird Al, got in on the dinosaur action!

*sniff sniff* Pure poetry....




Well, it's been almost 20 years since I first saw Jurassic Park...and it has been re-released in 3D IMAX.

Last night I went to see it again, trying to recapture the excitement, the terror, and the innocence of childhood or some crap like that...

The excitement was there, the thrill, the enjoyment...although, maybe not the unparallelled fear of a child who truly believes they are about to die... As the credits rolled, I sat back and couldn't help but reflect on the differences between the two theatrical viewings of one of my all-time favourite films...

Twenty years ago I watched the film sitting on my mother's lap, went to school the next day and flat-out lied to all my classmates about how I had seen it and not been even a little bit scared... Last night, I watched the movie sitting next to my husband (huh?), and then tweeted about it from a handheld computer (that is also a phone) on the internet (dafuq is dat?)...

With so much separating me from my 7 year old self, and the world of the early 1990s...I am very thankful that dinosaurs are still awesome, and that Spielberg made a film that is just as incredible today as it was to a 7 year old tomboy in June of 1993...