It is Christmas, 1991. Steven Spielberg’s Hook, Amblin's big holiday release, has been out for two weeks. It is a modern retelling of Peter Pan starring Robin Williams at the peak of his powers, fresh off of two Best Actor Oscar nominations in four years. Spielberg had masterminded Jaws and E.T., which both became the highest-grossing film ever made upon release. Each Indiana Jones film became the top-grossing film worldwide in their year, and four of his movies got nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

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Unfortunately, no amount of star power could rescue Hook, which opened to middling critical response and disappointing returns. It netted $50 million but got trounced by its primary competitor, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which beat its global gross by over $100 million. Spielberg never cared for the film; over three decades later, he still detests it. In a 2018 interview with Empire, he said he “felt like a fish out of water making Hook… I tried to paint over my insecurity with production value.”

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Fortunately, the mark of any great filmmaker is not how far they fall but how they climb back to supremacy. Spielberg’s career was not in jeopardy after Hook, but he would never make a film like it again.

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A few years earlier, in October 1989, Spielberg discussed a screenplay with author Michael Crichton that would become television juggernaut ER. Crichton shared his idea for a new novel about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur. The title? Jurassic Park.

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Spielberg became enamored with the idea of dinosaurs existing in modern times, something more than a simple monster movie. It was the backbone of his still-growing legacy; Hook wanted to be profound but lacked the self-awareness to elevate. Jurassic Park was that simple idea that stood on its own but could become movie magic with a skilled visionary behind it.

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After all, that’s what made him king of the box office. What if there was something in the water? What if your imaginary friend was real? Even Indiana Jones, which did more for archaeology (for better or worse) than the other way around, perfected simplicity: we have a man, a whip, and something in the big, wide world waiting to get discovered. Hook offered a simple concept to which many could relate: losing yourself as life goes on and forgetting to stop and smell the roses. Unfortunately, there is no relatable “What if?” behind it. Neverland isn't real; there is no Captain Hook or man-eating crocodile. We can wonder, but our imagination can only take us so far when our pilot cannot navigate the craft.

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Of course, there is no amusement park overflowing with dinosaurs, but Jurassic Park's heart was in Spielberg’s wheelhouse: What if we could bring the dinosaurs back? Spielberg thrives when he shows us something, not so much when he tells us something. Few films have as much to display as Jurassic Park.

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It is easy to credit the groundbreaking effects for the film's success. E.T. grossed $619 million worldwide by the end of its initial theatrical run. Jurassic Park pulled in $913 million, a 33% increase. It nearly doubled E.T.’s record of $280 million overseas and took only three weeks to become the UK’s highest-grossing film. It holds. Few things make as much money as revolutionary visual effects, which Jurassic Park contains in droves. 

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But the brilliance runs much deeper than the terrifying T-Rex or the voracious Velociraptor. It's in defying convention to honor its source material, trusting that the magic on the page can translate to the screen. In the early 90s, fresh out of Reagan conservatism, where the young feasted on archaic notions of American supremacy and Baby Boomers exalted a nationalistic President, Jurassic Park embraced something new. The heroes survive but do not thrive. The best they can do is escape, leaving the dinosaurs to fight amongst each other. It was never a question of whether humans and dinosaurs could co-exist; the creatures were dead 65 million years before we ever came along. Jurassic Park asks and answers it by making a horror movie instead of an action flick.

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It’s curious, considering the impact on children and the direct correlation between their adoration and the box office returns. Despite the misgivings of contemporary child psychologists, Jurassic Park proved enrapturing for adults and “spellbinding” for children. Every generation brings us a development in technology that defies what we deem possible and urges us back for more. Forty-five years ago, Star Wars destroyed Alderaan, blew up the Death Star, and became the highest-grossing film ever. In 1997, James Cameron recreated the world’s most famous maritime tragedy with unprecedented visual splendor: it too became the highest-grossing film ever made. Twelve years later, he repeated the feat with Avatar, the most advanced display of motion capture technology in history; it also became the highest-grossing film ever released.

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Yet, not all of those films have retained the same relevance. Avatar still reigns atop the global standings with $2.8 billion globally, with a sequel coming this year. Regardless, no matter how many Disney park rides say otherwise, its societal impact is minimal. Its characters do not have devoted followings like Luke Skywalker or Han Solo; its sequences do not comprise our cultural fabric, like Jack Dawson’s kingly declarations or ET’s nighttime flight past the full moon. You’d be hard-pressed to find a child of its generation whose fascination with the long-extinct creatures didn’t dominate their youth. We took to the theaters in droves to see the Na’vi but did not admire them in the visceral way we did the towering Brachiosaurus or the ailing Triceratops. Even the menacing beasts, like the Velociraptor or the T-Rex, felt equally part of our cinematic upbringing as the young girl hacking the iconic UNIX system. How can it be that our blue heroes, hitting at cherished concepts like home, love, and family, seem less heroic than dinosaurs hunting children?

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It is the mastery of Spielberg: no matter how in love with his creations he is, he never forgets they must mean something to his audience. Jurassic Park always feels like a kids' movie in a fashion unique to Spielberg. It’s never afraid to kill, whether it removes the innocent computer wizard or the embittered villain trying to sabotage the park. Few filmmakers would have taken such care in crafting the ride's animated opening or let child actors make such an impact on the story.

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Spielberg spares no expense to fill every moment with as much respect for his audience as the source material. Everyone can see themselves on screens depicting what never seemed feasible; we conjoin ourselves with an empathetic that creates the same magic time and again. The fear is real, but within that embrace of his world is the realization that we are always his passengers. We crave escapism, but the enduring movies let us take a slice of it home. We can speak in awe of the impossible instead of simply admiring it enough to see it again. We can acknowledge the horror without compromising our wonderment. The relationship is symbiotic: the effects’ realism pulls us into the world; in return, we understand we would not have felt it without them. 

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It is down to Spielberg, who funded the creation of DTS, enabling surround sound technology to bring the creatures to life. The horror got created without music, evoking terror through the environment and the dinosaurs. Spielberg saw the creatures as animals, never monsters. Everything they did was them behaving per nature; they deserved that acknowledgment instead of getting warped into textbook movie villains. He hired renowned paleontologist Jack Horner for design supervision. Stan Winston, a legendary makeup and visual effects artist, was hired for animatronics. Spielberg believed that Winston's work on the Alien Queen in Aliens would easily translate to Jurassic Park. However, Winston knew it was an entirely different undertaking: dinosaurs were real, not an invention of his mind.

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It was a daring proposition. Jaws thrived despite the malfunctioning mechanical shark; John Williams compensated for its absence with music that stirred more terror than the Great White ever could. The same could not happen for Jurassic Park. If the effects failed, so would the movie. It was not just a matter of functionality but also artistic vision. Winston went through 13 versions of the T-Rex head, a process that would get repeated for all of the dinosaurs. Rendering them took two to fours per frame. If the team worked 24 hours a day, the most conservative estimate would be 8 1/2 months of effects work. 

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Jurassic Park offered audiences a chance to attach to history, bringing to life something no one thought they would ever see. It was a rare occasion where we could behold a work of art and marvel at the unknown becoming familiar: not just the dinosaurs, but the fact that what got accomplished was possible. It is the foundation of those transcendent film experiences: sitting in reverential shock and saying, “I didn’t know they could do this in a movie.”

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At the Academy Awards, the major categories get decided by the entire voting body, the technical awards only by professionals in that discipline. The cinematographers award each other, as do the costume designers, the art directors, and the sound engineers. Recent films elicit a degree of visual respect but rarely enchant. Anyone familiar with the science behind creating visual art may marvel at the MCU, but audiences will feel they suffer from diminishing returns.

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Devoted fan bases and the appeal of popcorn flicks can carry them to enormous box office success (Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, the latest installment, has raked in over $900 million globally), but what cultural impact has it made? Do we discuss the experience of seeing it on the big screen long after exiting the theater? Do we encourage our friends to see it as we do Top Gun: Maverick, a film that feels like something we haven’t seen before? Jurassic Park was the next step in the evolution of CGI, breaking down the door of what filmmakers (who have deeper knowledge than any filmmaker) thought possible. Peter Jackson started conceptualizing The Lord of the Rings, Stanley Kubrick began developing A.I. Artificial Intelligence (which Spielberg would later direct), and George Lucas did the same with the long-awaited Star Wars prequels. If the artists felt they’d seen the beginning of so many magical cinematic undertakings, it is little wonder were even more amazed.

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Only one director could make us feel this way entirely through his passion. Regardless of the weight of his subject matter of the darkness of genre, Spielberg loves to make movies, and with a childlike wonder few directors can muster so far into a career. Spielberg had directed 13 feature films over 21 years when Jurassic Park got released. It is far from a lifetime but let us contextualize: Robert Zemeckis’ 14th film, The Polar Express, came 26 years into his career. It has gotten forced into the cultural consciousness thanks to annual Christmas airings but received lukewarm reviews, disappointing box office returns, and failed to capture the holiday magic of other Christmas classics. Guillermo del Toro has only made 12. Yet, his last two offerings (The Shape of Water and Nightmare Alley) feel like he is running on empty. Peter Jackson, who hit 14 with the final Hobbit film, gave audiences the worst movie in the Middle Earth franchise. It is hard to stay fresh with so many films under your belt and easy to become so accustomed to your craft you forget that it’s not enough to have power: you must wield it well. 

Unfortunately, the franchise's new life has not resulted in a worthy product. The recent films display the ability of movies but not their power. They feel like a basketball player with incredible counting stats but little substance. All of the league's premier offensive talents can score 25 points per game; very few can electrify a crowd the way Stephen Curry can with a signature third-quarter flurry or Kyrie Irving when he unleashes his acrobatic wizardry. The "how" matters on a basketball court and a movie theater. Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom are special effects extravaganzas, but they lack what made Jurassic Park one of the most revered action thrillers ever made. The franchise lacks edge, the balance between the limitations of our world and the symbolism of seeing it manipulated on-screen. Spielberg has aged into formula and away from the franchise: we are unlikely to see that edge return. Regardless, we will always have the original to revisit when the new films disappoint us: we will always be welcome at Jurassic Park.