By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

We’ve learned a lot about dinosaurs since the 1990s. For one thing, they probably had feathers and ran around squawking and pecking at each other like big birds. That’s something Michael Crichton hinted at in his 1990 best-selling thriller novel Jurassic Park, and a concept that made it to the big-screen blockbuster adaptation of the same name in 1993.

However, the film’s scaly reptilians form the bulk of what movie-goers of a certain age imagine when they envision the creatures that roamed the Earth until they didn’t anymore about 65 million years ago. (For instance, there’s no evidence that Tyrannosaurus-rex had bad eyesight — probably the opposite — and Velociraptor was probably closer in size and attitude to a chicken or turkey). 

Whatever. Jurassic Park grossed more than $1 billion at the box office, which is the equivalent of more than $2 billion in today’s dollars, because of our fossilized commitment to an economic model that doesn’t really work for anyone but the kinds of weirdos who have the cash on hand to genetically engineer dinos back to life in order to eat tourists.

That’s right: “Hold onto your butts,” but Jurassic Park was as much a morality tale about the 1% and its bizarre techno-socio-biological-entertainment hubris and its tragic results as it was a cool vehicle for showing Brontosaurus lumbering around munching leaves and blowing Sam Neil’s and Laura Dern’s minds. Remember Jeff Goldblum’s film-stealing performance as “chaos theorist” Ian Malcom: “God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers.”

The past 31 years have proven Dr. Malcolm to be a sage for the ages.  

Revisit the epic blockbuster on the big screen at the Panida Theater (300 N. First Ave.) when it screens on Friday, Sept. 6 at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. on this PG-rated classic from director Steven Spielberg, which also stars Neill and Dern as distressed paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, respectively; Goldblum as Malcolm; and the late-, great-Baron Richard Attenborough, CBE, FRSA, as billionaire wacko-with-a-heart-of-gold John Hammond. 

Get tickets at the door or panida.org.