Yeah, if you didn’t know, the whole movie franchise is ultimately based on the book, Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton, who I honestly feel does not get enough credit as a genuinely compelling sci-fi thriller style of author… all the way back in 1969 he wrote Andromeda Strain, he’s written a lot of … yeah, sort of gritty, dense, thriller sci-fi novels.
The original series of movies… well, the first one is a pretty good, pretty faithful adaptation if you’re going for a wider, more family friendly audience… some characters are kind of merged together to keep the plot simpler to follow… its a reasonably faithful adaptation in terms of sticking to the exact contents of the novel, and of course, just a wildly succesful and beloved movie.
Crichton wrote Lost World, a sequel to his book… but the movie sequel Lost World… is basically an entire alternate timeline, a totally different story, only vaguely sharing some similarities with the book Lost World.
Then, every movie after that is just fan fiction, utterly diverged from the actual way the characters are portrayed in the books, plot is completely different, only really just keeping a few characters from the older movies around, but they’re no longer anything like they are in the books, and of course you’ve got all the new characters just shoved into this completely divergent timeline… bleck.
I would strongly encourage you to read at least the first book.
Either every, or nearly every chapter begins with a sort of… disembodied, tangentially relevant thought from Malcolm, who is often relating whatever is roughly going to go on in that chapter to the actual mathematical principles and formulae of chaos theory.
The book functionally gives you an actual ‘Intro to Chaos Theory 101’ lesson as you read through it, with many of the chapters serving as an example, in at least some analagous way, of the concepts in these sort of disembodied, psuedo narration blurbs from Malcolm.
Its some of the best ludonarrative, or maybe… meta, self referential at another scale, consistency, and depth that I can remeber reading in something that is also paced so well that I again call it a ‘thriller’.
There’s an unexpected amount of philosophical rants and theory dropping throughout the book. Welcome, but unexpected for people who go in to read an action novel.
Thought you were getting a mostly dumb, dude bro story about guys in an underground fighting ring?
Surprise!
Our trailers were intentionally deceptive, we had to trick you into consuming something more cerebral, that may actually cause you to have a complex thought.
I’d say they do them justice to some degree no? I quite enjoyed the first movie, it changed some stuff from the book for sure but I feel like it captured the same feel for the most part and does the story justice. Admittedly, the lost world was a bit of a mess as they combined some stuff from different books and changed the ending for the worse I’d say but Ive seen much worse adaptations in the theatre.
Well shit, I didn’t think the Jurassic park books would ever end up on my reading list but here we are
Yeah, if you didn’t know, the whole movie franchise is ultimately based on the book, Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton, who I honestly feel does not get enough credit as a genuinely compelling sci-fi thriller style of author… all the way back in 1969 he wrote Andromeda Strain, he’s written a lot of … yeah, sort of gritty, dense, thriller sci-fi novels.
The original series of movies… well, the first one is a pretty good, pretty faithful adaptation if you’re going for a wider, more family friendly audience… some characters are kind of merged together to keep the plot simpler to follow… its a reasonably faithful adaptation in terms of sticking to the exact contents of the novel, and of course, just a wildly succesful and beloved movie.
Crichton wrote Lost World, a sequel to his book… but the movie sequel Lost World… is basically an entire alternate timeline, a totally different story, only vaguely sharing some similarities with the book Lost World.
Then, every movie after that is just fan fiction, utterly diverged from the actual way the characters are portrayed in the books, plot is completely different, only really just keeping a few characters from the older movies around, but they’re no longer anything like they are in the books, and of course you’ve got all the new characters just shoved into this completely divergent timeline… bleck.
I would strongly encourage you to read at least the first book.
Either every, or nearly every chapter begins with a sort of… disembodied, tangentially relevant thought from Malcolm, who is often relating whatever is roughly going to go on in that chapter to the actual mathematical principles and formulae of chaos theory.
The book functionally gives you an actual ‘Intro to Chaos Theory 101’ lesson as you read through it, with many of the chapters serving as an example, in at least some analagous way, of the concepts in these sort of disembodied, psuedo narration blurbs from Malcolm.
Its some of the best ludonarrative, or maybe… meta, self referential at another scale, consistency, and depth that I can remeber reading in something that is also paced so well that I again call it a ‘thriller’.
They’re very, very good. I reread them for probably the fourth time just last week.
There’s an unexpected amount of philosophical rants and theory dropping throughout the book. Welcome, but unexpected for people who go in to read an action novel.
Welcome to Fight Club.
Thought you were getting a mostly dumb, dude bro story about guys in an underground fighting ring?
Surprise!
Our trailers were intentionally deceptive, we had to trick you into consuming something more cerebral, that may actually cause you to have a complex thought.
Just hopping in to recommend the books. They’re seriously good and the movies don’t do them justice at all
I’d say they do them justice to some degree no? I quite enjoyed the first movie, it changed some stuff from the book for sure but I feel like it captured the same feel for the most part and does the story justice. Admittedly, the lost world was a bit of a mess as they combined some stuff from different books and changed the ending for the worse I’d say but Ive seen much worse adaptations in the theatre.