Steven Spielberg was apparently unsatisfied with having broken the record for the highest-grossing movie of all time twice, first with 1975’s Jaws and later with 1982’s E.T., and broke it a third time with Jurassic Park in 1993. Its influence on the modern blockbuster can’t be overstated and to this day, it remains a rare, perfect example of the Hollywood studio system working at full capacity.

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Adjusted for ticket-price inflation, 27 years after its original release, Jurassic Park is still the 18th highest-grossing movie in North America. Considering how many wannabe blockbusters Hollywood churns out every year, that’s pretty impressive.

It Demands To Be Seen On The Big Screen

The T rex attack in Jurassic Park

The nature of blockbusters is changing, because a movie can get in front of more audience members on a streaming service than it can in theaters. Audiences don’t have to go to the cinema to see new movies anymore, so if a movie is in theaters, to be successful, it really has to demand the audience to see it on the big screen.

Jurassic Park is consistently re-released and audiences who own it on DVD or Blu-ray will turn up in droves to see it, because it’s a bold, thrilling spectacle that is best seen with a crowd.

The High-Concept Premise Is Fascinating Across The Board

The foot of the T. rex in Jurassic Park

For a blockbuster to work, it has to appeal to as many demographics as possible. A movie about dinosaurs being brought back to life in the present day appeals to every category of moviegoer.

The one-line elevator pitch is enough to get audiences interested. This is also why Michael Crichton’s source material was one of the bestselling novels of the ‘90s.

It Tells An Age-Old Story In A Fresh Way

The T. rex roaring in the climax scene of Jurassic Park

Audiences love familiar narratives like fairy tales, but hate having them told in a way they’ve seen hundreds of times. It’s a tricky line to walk, but it can be done by focusing on what’s really endearing about classic stories, like their universal themes, and recontextualizing them in a new way.

What made Crichton’s Jurassic Park the perfect source material for a Hollywood blockbuster is that it tells an age-old story (the Frankenstein dangers-of-playing-God myth) in a fresh way (with a dinosaur amusement park, adding a layer of commercialist satire).

Each Role Is Perfectly Cast — Particularly The Central Trio

The cast of Jurassic Park

Every major role in Jurassic Park is cast perfectly, with screen legends like Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Knight playing early-career minor parts and Richard Attenborough truly embodying the grandiose madness of “dark Walt Disney” John Hammond.

RELATED: Steven Spielberg: 5 Reasons Why Jaws Is His Best Monster Movie (& 5 Why Jurassic Park Is A Close Second)

In particular, the central trio of stars each give career-defining performances in their roles. Sam Neill hides a huge heart under a gruff exterior as Alan Grant; Laura Dern brings a fierce energy to kick-ass feminist Ellie Sattler; and Jeff Goldblum originated his entire screen persona in the role of smooth-talking, occasionally shirtless Ian Malcolm. Pitch-perfect casting, like Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark or Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, is one of the keys to any successful blockbuster.

The Audience Actually Gets A Sense Of Who The Characters Are

Alan, Ellie, and Ian in Jurassic Park

In Jurassic Park, there’s some humanity to hold onto, which is essential for monster movies. The audience gets a clear sense of who Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm, or John Hammond are: their motivations, their backstories, their personalities, their flaws, their personal obstacles, etc..

Most blockbusters today have one-note stock characters whose personalities barely register. Characters like Jurassic World’s Owen Grady, Transformers’ Mikaela Banes, and Solo’s Dryden Vos hardly even qualify as characters at all.

The Set Pieces Are Perfectly Constructed

The raptors in the kitchen in Jurassic Park

A lot of blockbusters will have a handful of major set pieces for the audience to leave the theater thinking about, like the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars, the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War, or the subway fight in Spider-Man 2.

The set pieces in Jurassic Park, from the T. rex escape to the raptors stalking Lex and Tim in the kitchen, are perfectly constructed, with real stakes in the setup and Hitchcockian suspense in the editing.

It Manages To Be Family-Friendly AND Terrifying

Nedry's death in Jurassic Park

Blockbusters are released in the summer and mostly rated PG-13 because they’re designed to be a family day out. Moviegoers can bring their kids to a fun, escapist movie to entertain them for a couple of hours. Usually, family-friendly movies are the cinematic equivalent of the animatronic band in Chuck E. Cheese.

Spielberg managed to make Jurassic Park as terrifying as any R-rated horror movie, because a great filmmaker doesn’t need excessive gore to scare their audience if they have the tricks from the suspense-building playbook up their sleeve.

John Williams’ Sweeping Score Makes A Home Viewing Feel Cinematic

Welcome to Jurassic Park

John Williams’ sweeping, epic musical score for Jurassic Park is one of his best. His style of film score, at least for big blockbusters, is creating a Hans Zimmer-esque wall of sound and adding tangible, hummable tunes to it. Some examples of the all-time greats include Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. And Jurassic Park is firmly nestled in that category.

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The great thing about these scores is that they breathe so much life and power into the movies that watching one of them on a TV at home feels like it’s on the big screen.

The CGI Still Holds Up

The first dinosaur sighting in Jurassic Park

Considering it was among the first CGI ever created, the CGI in Jurassic Park holds up to this day. So many blockbusters of its era aged horribly within just a couple of years, but ILM’s work on Jurassic Park is still better than a lot of blockbusters getting released today.

Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler’s first sighting of a live dinosaur is still just as breathtaking today as it was in 1993. On top of that, Spielberg used ILM’s cutting-edge VFX technology sparingly. If it could be done practically, he did it practically.

It Delivers The Goods

Ian Malcolm and the T rex in Jurassic Park

The themes and subtext of Jurassic Park can be discussed for hours, but ultimately, audiences weren’t drawn to it for its philosophical musings; they wanted to go to a movie theater, eat some popcorn, and watch cloned dinosaurs terrorize people. And that’s exactly what they got. Spielberg delivered the goods.

Many blockbusters today fail to deliver on what they promise, either because the filmmakers aren’t creative enough or because the studio, for some reason, wants to save the really interesting stuff for the sequels that’ll probably never even get made. This is a bad strategy.

NEXT: Jurassic World: 5 Reasons Dominion Is Doomed To Fail (& 5 Reasons To Be Hopeful)