With both 'Jaws' and 'Jurassic Park,' Steven Spielberg showed how to build tension before unleashing monsters and mayhem.
In a recent interview with The Sunday Times, Sam Neill, the star of the original Jurassic Park and this year’s Jurassic World: Dominion, compared the latest entry to the first film’s slow burn approach. “An audience 30 years later wouldn’t find that pace acceptable. As a result this has action from the moment the lights go down. Though of course it has quiet moments.”
After that opening scene, Spielberg was content to let audiences sit with the residents of Amity Island. We get to meet police chief Martin Brody and his family, seeing their complexities and dynamic together. We get to learn that they are new to the island and that Brody is uncomfortable and feels like an outsider. We also learn that Brody is afraid of water, which is a brilliant stroke of character development, to have the hero be afraid of that which he must confront in the end.
This scene works by increasing the tension yet again, but also by turning these three people who are so different into a close team. We are already on the edge of our seats before the shark even bursts through the boat, and later, the group’s developing friendship here serves to make Quint’s death that much more gut-wrenching. None of this is possible if Spielberg simply had a shark jumping out of the water willy nilly and chomping everyone to bits.
Audiences had never seen what they would witness in Jurassic Park, but Spielberg held off on the reveal, letting the characters and underlying suspense reign first. Still, it’s no coincidence that the film opens in much the same way as Jaws, where an unseen velociraptor drags a worker to his death. It’s the Jaws opening beach scene all over again.After this we’re introduced to the cast. Sam Neill’s Alan Grant is very similar to Roy Scheider’s Martin Brody, as both are in positions of power.
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