The director seemed to be losing his magic touch before he was offered a big-budget dinosaur adventure ‘65 million years in the making’ – and with the help of a stellar cast, the rest is history

It's easy to forget how big a deal Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur film was. Before Jurassic Park started to take shape, it looked like Hollywood’s most accomplished storyteller was running out of inspiration. Released in 1991, Hook — his loopy, lopsided take on JM Barrie’s Peter Pan tale — was a critical misfire.

The Cincinnati native was disappointed with the film and, despite a bumper $300m box-office haul, so too was the studio behind it. Likewise, 1989’s Always — a sugary sweet remake of the 1943 romantic drama A Guy Named Joe — was a bit of a damp squib. In between, Spielberg also gave us another Indy chapter, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Hardly a bad thing, but the well was running dry.

Eager to reclaim his magic, he set out to find a new challenge, and accidentally stumbled upon two. One was a major historical epic, the sort of film that might win Oscars. The other — a big-budget sci-fi adventure, “65 million years in the making” — was almost too huge a venture to turn down. He decided to do both.

The truth is that to get Schindler’s List made, Spielberg had to agree to direct Jurassic Park for Universal Pictures. It’s a common type of deal in Hollywood circles: the crowd-pleaser always comes first. But was Jurassic Park a sure-fire hit? Maybe.

Published in November 1990, Michael Crichton’s celebrated novel was barely on shelves when major studios began scrambling over film rights. Everyone wanted to turn Jurassic Park into a movie. Tim Burton joined the bidding war — so too did Joe Dante, James Cameron and Richard Donner. A fabulous line-up there, but Spielberg beat them to it, and Universal coughed up the agreed $1.5m fee for Crichton. The acclaimed author and film-maker also received an additional $500,000 for a first-draft screenplay.

For the uninitiated — of which there are few, I’m sure — allow us to revisit the plot. A billionaire industrialist named John Hammond signs off on a revolutionary scientific project to bring dinosaurs back from the dead. Tricky stuff, but with a drop of fossilised mosquito blood and a lab full of clever white coats, anything is possible. Hammond’s dream becomes a reality and so he opens the world’s first dinosaur-themed tourist attraction.

A dangerous idea, obviously, and on the eve of Jurassic Park’s grand opening, he invites a team of choice experts to conduct an obligatory safety test. Enter a cynical palaeontologist, a hopeful palaeobotanist, a sarky mathematician and a slippery lawyer. If these people like what they see, they’ll publicly endorse Hammond’s monumentally expensive theme park. If they don’t, he’ll be ruined. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and our unfortunate human pals figure out the hard way that it’s never a good idea to mess with mother nature.

A fun-filled tale there — Frankenstein with dinosaurs, basically, and Spielberg had a hell of a time trying to bring Crichton’s terrible lizards to the big screen. At first, he hired Stan Winston and Phil Tippett to develop a slick combination of trusted animatronic and classic stop-motion effects. The initial demos were fun if a little cartoonish, not entirely unlike what Ray Harryhausen had achieved on One Million Years BC. But Spielberg needed more.

Luckily, a chap named Dennis Muren of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the visual effects studio founded by George Lucas, suggested they create computer-generated dinosaurs from scratch. Spielberg thought it impossible, but Muren showed him a test reel and the director couldn’t believe his eyes. The story goes that Spielberg jokingly informed Tippett that he was “out of a job”. “Don't you mean extinct?" answered Tippett. A clever response, and it ended up as a line in the film. Meanwhile, Spielberg’s team found a way of combining tested animatronics and animation techniques with these groundbreaking CGI methods.

As a result, Spielberg hit that elusive blockbuster sweet spot. Practical effects are always better, but they’re difficult to accomplish, trickier to shoot. Digital wizardry is effective, but it’s a tad soulless. Isn’t it better to use a little bit of both? The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park look and sound real – not so real that they would pass an authenticity test (velociraptors were smaller creatures than the ones depicted here) but real enough to instil both wonder and terror in audiences.

Nice job on the creatures then, but what about the humans? Spielberg initially wanted Sean Connery to play Hammond. Eventually, the part went to Richard Attenborough, who hadn’t acted in a film since 1979’s The Human Factor. In the book, Hammond is a chilly, complex capitalist, a man who prioritises business over family. Spielberg, with screenwriter David Koepp, softened the edges and turned this detached, money-driven industrialist into a warmer, cuddlier figure. Their Hammond is powerful yet considerate, authoritative yet vulnerable. We needed to like this chap, maybe even feel sorry for him. It worked.

Harrison Ford was initially offered the part of Alan Grant, the sceptical palaeontologist. Ford, however, had grown tired of playing edgy, charismatic adventurers, and the role went to Sam Neill, who had just weeks to prepare before shooting commenced in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, Robin Wright and Gwyneth Paltrow were considered for the part of palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler – but Spielberg decided to go with his first choice, the awesome Laura Dern, who had just been nominated for an Oscar for her work in Martha Coolidge’s Rambling Rose. And then there’s Jeff Goldblum.

Stellar cast: Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern in Jurassic Park (1993)

Jim Carrey and Michael Keaton screen-tested for the part of yappy chaotician Ian Malcolm, but the role seemed custom-built for the inimitable Goldblum. Think about it. Malcolm is a smooth operator, an esteemed intellectual, no doubt, but a serial charmer too. Where, you may ask, does Goldblum end and Malcolm begin? Hard to tell, but Jurassic Park works not just because of the spectacular effects on screen, but the chemistry, capabilities and charisma of its impeccable cast.

Spielberg’s film is among the finest blockbusters of the ’90s, but it owes a significant debt to the star-studded disaster movies of the ’70s. Think Airport, The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Indeed, Jurassic Park isn’t just about the resurrected lizards — it’s about a band of ordinary strangers trying to survive an extraordinary situation. It’s thoughtful, heartfelt and, occasionally, hilarious. If that doesn’t work, it also features an icky lawyer being eaten by a T-Rex. What more do you want?

John Williams’ mesmerising score is the final piece in the puzzle (try to imagine the film without it), and Spielberg worked on edits while shooting Schindler’s List in the spring of 1993. That’s dedication, and it paid off. Released in US cinemas on June 11, 1993 (with a UK and Ireland release the following month), Jurassic Park grossed an eye-watering $914m — an astonishing figure and the film sat atop the all-time global box-office charts until James Cameron’s Titanic came along in 1997.

Officially licenced toys, collectibles, clothes and lunchboxes flew off the shelves. We might place Jurassic Park somewhere between Star Wars and contemporary comic book film sagas as one of the sneakiest merchandise movies in history. Everything on that screen is for sale — the cars, the buildings, the dinosaurs, even the humans. You might recall a scene in the film where Spielberg’s camera slowly pans over a collection of untouched and unopened Jurassic Park memorabilia. Our clever director knew exactly what he was doing there. True, audiences will never get to visit the real Jurassic Park, but hey, for an extra wad of cash they can take home anything they want from the gift shop.

A sequel was inevitable, and you can’t blame Spielberg for signing on for 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The first one was a smash. He later won two Oscars for Schindler’s List. He was unstoppable, but The Lost World is inferior to its predecessor – noisier, clumsier, a tad too cocky. Spielberg knew it, and he hasn’t directed a Jurassic Park film since.

There are a lot of reasons why the original is the best. Everything was new. The ideas, the creatures — the awe and amazement that comes with sharing your first proper dinosaur experience with the characters on screen. Its director was excited, too, almost as much as we were, and you can feel it in the storytelling. Timing is everything, suspense is crucial — and Spielberg makes us wait for the thrills, the jolts, that first terrifying glimpse of the T-Rex. He went into Jurassic Park hoping to create a land-based Jaws. Did he succeed? I reckon so, and I still remember my first visit.

I was just five years old when the film was released in cinemas. A little young, perhaps, but our dad was optimistic. To determine its suitability, he decided a test-run was necessary and so he purchased two tickets for the opening weekend: one for him and another for my eldest sister.

Meanwhile, my twin brother and I waited at home to see what they thought. Afterwards, dad said we’d be fine, and we went along the following week. In the end, Jurassic Park scared the bejaysus out of me — but it was also one of the first movies I fell in love with, and I doubt we’ll ever see anything like it again.

Jurassic Park will be re-released in selected Irish cinemas from Friday, September 1