Before Steven Spielberg took the incredible world of Jurassic Park to the big screen and turned it into a blockbuster franchise full of films and theme park rides and comics, the dinosaur-infested world was nothing more than words on the pages of a book.
Obviously, in order to transform such a visually impressive world from something imagined to something on the screen, a lot of changes had to take place. We’ve collected ten of the biggest changes between Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film.
The Opening
In Crichton’s novel, the story is separated into ‘iterations’. For the film, the very first iteration was cut entirely. This meant we missed out on a fair bit of backstory and a few interesting characters. The fact that it was cut suggests it wasn’t totally necessary for the film and might have created a bit of a pacing issue and a bit of a delay in actually getting into the story itself.
The opening (which shows an American girl being attacked while her parents' backs are turned) makes an edited appearance during the second Jurassic Park film instead.
Family-Friendly
One of the most general, overarching differences between the novel Jurassic Park and the film is its presentation of violence and content. The film is remembered as a rather family-friendly adventure, with CGI making most of the dinosaurs seem pretty friendly and reducing the violence (though there are, undoubtedly, still a lot of deaths).
The book takes a much more violent approach, filling the story with much more tension and darkness than the film, as well as far more graphic depictions of the blood, violence, and gore that accompanies a dinosaur-based death.
Dr. Wu And Dr. Harding
In the book, we are introduced to the park’s veterinarian, Dr. Harding, and the biotechnologist, Dr. Wu. With a lot of pages to fill and a lot of story to tell, the two end up becoming rather important as they manage to restore the computer systems and temporarily fix the park.
In the film, their role is massively reduced. They’re still present (and played by BD Wong and Jerry Molen) but their actual screen time and importance is far smaller than in the book.
The T-Rex And The River
This is quite an interesting one. One of the more exciting scenes from the book shows Dr. Grant being chased down a river alongside the children, and for some reason, this ended up being cut from the film entirely.
Interestingly, it ended up becoming the inspiration behind the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios. Perhaps this was left out of the film for the very reason of being able to use it as a theme park ride?
The Ending
The very end of the original Jurassic Park was very different from that depicted in the book. The film eventually shows Malcolm, Hammond and Grant escaping the island on a helicopter, unharmed. This leaves room for the many sequels that came after.
Obviously, Crichton didn’t have the same intent, making sure to kill pretty much everyone by the end of the novel. The survivors may well escape, but the island itself is layered in napalm, which should presumably kill all of the dinosaurs.
Muldoon’s Bazooka
As mentioned above, the films take the violence and destruction down a notch to make the still very brutal film more family-friendly. In the book, Muldoon is even more of a dramatic hero, sporting a massive bazooka during one particular face-off.
He uses it to blow up a raptor, which Crichton describes in rather graphic detail. He doesn’t hold back, explaining how the dinosaur quite literally exploded, with its upper half flying into the air.
Hammond’s Death
In the film, Richard Attenborough’s character of John Hammond probably ended up the most famous and popular of the entire franchise. He seemed warm and kind, which is probably helped by that halfway-to-Santa Claus beard.
The books, however, depict most of that as pretty much fake personality traits. He survives the film (phew) but isn’t so lucky in the book. He ends up falling down a hill and breaks his ankle before being poisoned, falling asleep, and being eaten.
The Safari Lodge
There is a significant portion of the novel built around the survivors hauling up in the Safari Lodge. This particular area was supposed to take on the role of a hotel, but with the impending doom of dinosaur destruction, it didn’t get a whole lot of use.
The group trying to reactivate the security system inside the hotel ended up being replaced by the rather short sequence in which they turn the electronic doors back on in the visitor center.
Lex And Tim
We all remember Tim from the film; he absolutely loves dinosaurs. Lex is older than him and has impressive control over computer systems. For some reason, the books first introduced the two characters the exact opposite way around. Lex was the more childlike one, whose interests lied in sports, while Tim was the computer genius. Although he did still love dinosaurs.
It’s unclear why the two characters were swapped. Typically situations like this tend to just combine characters into one rather than swap them.
The Procompsognathus
It’s a bit of a mouthful trying to say Procompsognathus. In fact, we’re still not sure how you’d say that out loud... Maybe that’s why the film decided to keep this type of dinosaur on the backburner. Imagine the survivors trying to say that while running away screaming?
The books feature them pretty heavily, so their lack of inclusion in the films ends up creating quite a big difference in some parts of the storyline.