I was reading through comments on the post about Scar Jo being in JW Rebirth, and was interested in a couple comments about the seriousness of the Jurassic franchise as a whole. I thought about making this a comment in that thread, but I think this thing I want to talk about warrants it's own post.

I think that Jurassic Park may have fallen victim to what I like to call "The Godzilla Effect." It goes like this; a movie that takes itself seriously, and is serious, is not taken seriously because it's a creature feature. Or, a franchise starts out seriously, but because of cheesiest entries later in the franchise, the franchise as a whole earns the reputation of being not serious.

Jurassic Park is a movie that treats the dinosaurs reverently, not as movie monsters but as animals. It respects the majesty, power, and terror of these animals all at once. It is a critique of corporate interests doing questionable things to make money, and scientific progress unchecked by ethics leading to bad outcomes. It's about human arrogance, and it exposes just how little control we have over Nature.

But even when the OG was the only entry, I'm pretty sure even some critics at the time didn't take it seriously. To them it was all special effects spectacle and no substance. Bad plot, bad characters, therefore not a proper movie. Good for what it is, but not a good, serious movie. Ebert's original review comes to mind.

Godzilla suffered the same problem. The first Godzilla movie was very serious, dealing not only with the horror of atomic weapons, but also the dilemma of scientific progress unchecked by ethics. The arrogance and weakness of man, humbled by a great force of Nature. It shows Godzilla not as mindless, but as a creature whose home was destroyed and body scarred by nuclear weapons testing, venting his pain and anger on human cities. And in the end this "monster" is a victim too, being killed by a weapon even more horrifying than atomic bombs while he's hanging out peacefully in the sea.

But most western audiences saw the American dub, which removed much of what made the original Japanese dub so dark and serious. But it still wasn't cheesy, and the general themes were still there. Many western critics still viewed the film as "just another monster movie." It's "just a guy in a rubber suit."

Jurassic Park becomes a franchise, with later movies either consciously becoming less serious, or perhaps unconsciously internalizing their reputation for being "just monster movies." It's just "dinos eating people," nothing more. But I think that even the cheesiest JP entries have serious elements to them. That serious undercurrent present in the first film still carries over.

Godzilla becomes a franchise. Later movies become cheesy to incredible degrees. Godzilla movies are seen as "guys in rubber suits destroying miniatures and beating each other up." But even the absolute goofiest Godzilla movie in existence always has a message, something serious it's trying to say. It almost always ties back to the horrors of the atomic age, environmentalist, the arrogance of man. That serious undercurrent from the first film is still there, but unrecognized because they're monster movies.

Hell Godzilla Minus One comes out. Most modern viewers would consider it a very serious film. Realistically it should have cleaned house with Emmy awards. But it only got one, and you know what it was? Special effects. An incredibly serious movie, and it is still only recognized at some level as a special effects spectacle; not a "proper" movie.

Godzilla suffers it, Jurassic Park suffers it, really most creature features suffer it. Some of them earn it more than others. And it's fair to say that, from a certain point of view, movies like Godzilla and Jurassic Park do earn it. It's perfectly valid to value human characters, complicated relationships, and compelling character growth over other factors. A person with these tastes will not find much serious value even in the OG Jurassic Park, and that's okay. But I think it's fair to express the other side of things, too.