Recently, a cinema near my place was screening Jurassic Park - the original one from 1993. Since I was born in 1998, I'd only seen this film on TV. And even though I'd watched it countless times, experiencing it on the big screen was a fantastic experience.

My appreciation for this film had always been conceptual - I knew it was groundbreaking, I knew it had good direction and screenplay, but I had never gotten to experience the result of any of this in a visceral sense.

When the new Jurassic World movie came out, I remember being utterly disappointed by it. It seemed to suffer from what I call the snowglobe effect - that the whole film feels like it is taking place inside a snowglobe. There is no sense of scale - everything looks tiny. People love to criticize the overuse of CGI in Jurassic World in contrast to the use of practical effects in Jurassic Park, but I don't think it's just CGI that is to blame for this. CGI can also bring a very impressive sense of scale. The new Godzilla movies, especially the first one from 2014, instill awe and convey a sense of scale very well.

Rather, direction and cinematography play a far more important role. In Jurassic Park, very rarely do we get to see an entire dinosaur - all we get is an eye or the face or a leg. The feeling of scale is powerful. The Godzilla movie does the same thing; we can see Godzilla in his entirety only at the very end of the film. In Jurassic Park, the velociraptors are only refered to and spoken about (with fear and dread) throughout the film. We get to see just the aftermaths of their attacks. They are constantly built up to be these menacing creatures all the way up until the last act where our characters finally have to face them. All of this adds up to an experience much more terrifying and impressive than just the aesthetic spectacle of having dinosaurs on screen.

Which brings me to another point: Jurassic Park is not a dinosaur movie. It's a movie about humans trying to survive in a dinosaur park. The stories of the protagonists are front and center. This is what makes us emotionally invested, what keeps the stakes so high, and is why, when the spectacle and the thrills do come to the screen, they have such a powerful impact. In a sense, Jurassic Park is made more like a horror movie about humans trying to face a danger they are helpless against than an action movie. And it works very very well.

All in all, I am glad to have been able to experience this film on the big screen.