Jurassic Park's 'Impossible Cliff' Isn't a Plot Hole, and Other Spielberg Secrets Hidden in the 1993 Classic

The T. rex paddock in Jurassic Park that seems to turn into a cliff is not a plot hole. There are three explanations for it, and I will lay them out below. The scene still looks remarkable: the rain, the scale, the little splashes on the steps. But what really silences us is the roar, a mix of a tiger, an alligator snarl and the elongated, downward pitched trumpeting of a baby elephant. The rippling water in the cup was created by plucking guitar strings hidden beneath the dashboard.

When I wrote this in the summer of 2023, Jurassic Park had just turned 30. 1993 was the peak of Steven Spielberg's career, the year of his biggest commercial success and his highest artistic achievement, Schindler's List, two movies he somehow worked on at the same time. The question I wanted to ask was whether Jurassic Park went on to haunt him with technological marvels he was too preoccupied with making to stop and think about whether he should.

Jurassic Park's opening pits cold steel against nature

The film opens on Isla Nublar, a fictional island 120 miles west of Costa Rica, a country my wife and I visited on our honeymoon because we are obsessed with this movie, even though most of it was shot in Hawaii. The trees shake and we assume a creature, but Spielberg reveals a forklift, cold gray steel mowing down green flora. That is a recurring contrast in this movie of nature versus technology. In his Indiana Jones films the light is natural and represents the power of God; here it is blinding and brutal, floodlights and flashlights, the oppression of man over the natural world.

The park's game warden, Muldoon, oversees the raptor transfer, dressed in classic adventurer attire evoking Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World from 1912. The raptor squeal mixes the high pitched chirps of a dolphin, the low grunts of a walrus and some goose sounds, because these creatures evolved into birds and Spielberg knows from Hitchcock that birds are archetypically frightening. He keeps the creature off screen, having learned from Jaws that less is more, though the way the gatekeeper is dragged unnaturally upward evokes the swimmer in Jaws' opening. Spielberg intercuts the raptor's eye with Muldoon's, and I like to think the big one is marking him for the kill.

At an amber mine in the Dominican Republic, the lawyer Donald Gennaro hears a man at the mine tell him, in translation, that the mosquito in amber will make a lot of people happy. John Williams uses a vocal choir to give the amber a golden divinity. The teaser trailer used no shots from the movie at all, just promo shots of a South American mine and a lab drawing blood from a mosquito, and it is cool to remember when that was enough to sell a film.

Alan Grant starts as another Spielberg bad dad

Sam Neill was cast as Dr. Alan Grant after Harrison Ford turned the role down, and after Ford saw the film he was glad he did, because Neill is perfect. You can still see some Indiana Jones in the mix: Grant hates computers the way Indy hates snakes, and computers and technology are ultimately what fail everyone on the island. Most of the dinosaurs actually come from the Cretaceous period, not the Jurassic, but InGen is defying nature by mixing plants and animals across periods, and Michael Crichton includes a line from Grant showing the characters are aware of it.

Grant terrifies a skeptical kid with a speech about raptors attacking from the side, which is how they get Muldoon later. The real point is to establish Grant as hating kids so that life will find a way later, yet another bad dad story from Spielberg. John Hammond's helicopter blows dirt on the fossils, showing how little he cares about real paleontology. There is a cut where Hammond's white rag becomes pink, a forgivable gaffe since he was using the pink one in the previous shot.

Sean Connery was considered for Hammond, but Richard Attenborough was cast, the director who won best director for Gandhi, beating Spielberg's E.T. In Crichton's book Hammond is far more villainous; Spielberg frames him as a naive, impish dreamer in the vein of Walt Disney, P.T. Barnum or really Spielberg himself. Grant and Ellie Sattler only accept the trip to fund their dig for three more years, and they are always dirty and sweaty, more part of the natural world than the technological one.

Nedry, Malcolm and a feminist reading

Dodgson of rival company BioSyn meets Dennis Nedry in San Jose, though San Jose is not on the coast of Costa Rica, and I only just noticed Dodgson stiffs the cab driver. In Crichton's book, Hammond cheated Nedry on his pay for building the security system; the film leaves it a vague disagreement, making Hammond less of a villain. Malcolm wears all black and Hammond all white: the blind optimist against the chaos theory expert who expects the worst.

When Grant ties two female seat belt ends into a knot, it shows his ingenuity and how dinosaurs bred to be female find a way. There is a valid feminist reading here, a matriarchal utopia only upended when males enter the picture, capped by Sattler's later line that woman inherits the Earth.

The brachiosaurus reveal captures the birth of CGI

The all time best example of the Spielberg face is the awe from Neill and Laura Dern. Spielberg lingers on faces to prime us to latch onto whatever follows, here a brachiosaurus. That awe is grounded in a real paradigm shift. The original plan was practical dinosaurs, animatronics from Stan Winston and stop motion from Phil Tippett, until ILM's Dennis Muren produced animation of running Gallimimus. Kathleen Kennedy recalled in the 2017 HBO Spielberg documentary that "there's no models No cameras or anything" and that it was "like nothing you'd ever seen before."

This was a watershed. It was the moment George Lucas realized the technology was there for the Star Wars prequels, it inspired Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and his company Weta Digital, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe would not exist without it. Tippett famously leaned over to Spielberg and said "I think we're extinct," a line Spielberg worked into the film.

Really it became a marriage of practical and digital. Winston's animatronics are the shots that look best in 2023, and Tippett's stop motion rigs were fitted with sensors that fed movement into the computer models, which is why even the CGI dinosaurs move naturally. The 1.85:1 aspect ratio shows the brachiosaurus's full body, neck and head, and she chews like a cow to feel docile. The group passes the T. rex fossil display, setting up the mousetrap for the climax.

Mr. DNA, a Westworld nod and the hatchery

Hammond's ride was inspired by Disney's Carousel of Progress. The Mr. DNA short came from David Koepp's rewrite to condense Crichton's exposition, and Bob Kurtz created the character at Spielberg's request for a corny school instructional cartoon, which goes down well because we grew up on Schoolhouse Rock. Gennaro wondering whether the people are animatronic is a nod to Crichton's 1973 film Westworld, another theme park gone wrong.

The scientists stop the ride just by pushing up the guardrails, showing how prone the park is to breaking. BD Wong's Henry Wu returns across the Jurassic World trilogy. For the hatching, the foley artist crushed ice cream cones and squished cantaloupe halves, so vividly that we don't notice the robotic claw vanishing between shots. I love Jeff Goldblum's pause in "life uh finds a way."

Overlapping talk, blinding light and Chekhov's glass of water

Spielberg loves characters talking over each other, as people do in groups: Hammond talks over Muldoon's warning to reassure Sattler, then both jump at a raptor snap below. At lunch, projector slides flash past everyone; Hammond designed a room where they are blinded looking at each other, more oppressive man made light. Goldblum whispers "should" to make everyone stop and listen.

Tim dresses like Grant, and Spielberg holds the shot for 50 seconds as Grant sidesteps the kids as if they were swarming raptors. The paddock gates were inspired by 1933's King Kong. Nedry's monitor shows the Jaws shark lunging at Brody, his desk holds Reese's Pieces from E.T., and the empty dilophosaurus and T. rex paddocks work like the unseen shark. Malcolm's glass of water sets up its expected stillness for the film's most important moment.

The sick Triceratops took eight puppeteers in a hole beneath it, and its breathing used a toy called a Zube Tube. The film never explains the illness, but Crichton's book does: the Triceratops swallow gizzard stones, throw them up when they become too smooth, then swallow poisonous West Indian lilac berries while hunting for new rocks and throw those up too, which is why Sattler finds none in the droppings. When Ray Arnold, Samuel L. Jackson always with a cigarette, tries to log into Nedry's computer, there is a photo of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a man who understood the dangers of technological breakthroughs.

How the T. rex reveal sells the illusion

Rain on a parked car's roof is calming, but the interruption of the ripple makes that white noise a source of terror, because you can't hear what is coming. Spielberg got the vibrating mirror idea from Earth, Wind and Fire shaking his car mirror. The first shot of the T. rex is Winston's animatronic eating a goat, interacting with something we just saw as real.

Stage 16 on the Warner Bros. backlot had to be reinforced for the 12,000 pound hydraulic T. rex, which began to break down when soaked, but the water lets its skin catch the lightning. When the rex jerks her head and stops, it stops dead with no bounce that would look fake, and Winston made her pupils constrict under Lex's flashlight. The bite through the roof is storyboarded to show how small and close the kids are.

Three explanations for the impossible cliff

First, various maps of the scene drawn since release illustrate how the paddock would be laid out, with a pit separating the T. rex paddock from the others, where she could have hunted prey. Second, Koepp's final shooting draft describes a gentle terraced area where the rex emerges, but the car sits next to a sharp precipice, a 50 or 60 foot drop. Third, Tippett mocked up preview animation of the rex dragging the truck backward toward that drop. I never want to hear about this plot hole ever again.

Spielberg sets more mousetraps: the snapped fence cables let Grant climb down, and the truck becomes an obstacle again in the tree. Like Poltergeist, every object around you can be weaponized against you.

Nedry's end and a how did they do that shot

As Nedry struggles, Spielberg slips in a cartoon banana peel sound. The dilophosaurus's acid spit was invented by Crichton and its frill by concept artists. I like to think Isla Nublar claimed the Barbasol can so its secrets would not get out. In the chase, the rex grows in a mirror reading objects are closer than they appear. In great films I love a how did they do that shot, and here the rex swipes the truck in motion, so she must be digital, yet the door really bows and the handle breaks. They must have used a mechanism timed to the actors diving away, and that real damage sells the danger.

Melting ice cream sets up the kitchen

Grant finds the raptor claw he scared kids with poking his back and tosses it, evolving into a papa. Hammond eats ice cream because the freezers are thawing; later the open freezer doors let ice melt into puddles that refreeze when power returns, so the raptor slips and Tim can trap her. Spielberg is an illusionist too, and Attenborough, a fellow director, brings real feeling to the flea circus story. Sattler's argument works where Malcolm's failed because Hammond is a softie and she likely reminds him of his daughter.

The Gallimimus stampede looked great in 1993, but it is probably the shot that aged worst, I think because it lacked a practical sample to latch onto. Spielberg hits us with Tim's electrocution so we think we have hit bottom, then delivers an excellent structural jump scare with the raptor and Arnold's severed arm.

The kitchen, The Shining and a borrowed face

The kitchen begins with a shadow and a raptor's breath fogging glass, real puppets marking the environment so we accept the digital raptors after. Knocked baskets sell the table leap, and every reflection on the steel had to be painted in. Lex hiding in an appliance pays homage to Danny hiding in the oven in Kubrick's The Shining. Her Unix navigator was an accurate early 90s 3D file system.

I'm pretty sure we never see gunshots fired on screen; maybe Spielberg had enough gunfire filming Schindler's List. When Lex falls through the vent, it's a stuntwoman, but Ariana Richards' face was mapped on for a few frames, making it better. Originally a raptor alone would be beaten with a marionette contraption, but Spielberg realized the T. rex was the star and made her the hero.

Hammond is Spielberg, and the film split his career

Hammond's mosquito in amber is a species that never carries blood, purely decorative. Spielberg could not make him too evil because he saw too much of himself in him. Jurassic Park was the highest grossing film until Titanic, launched two trilogies and changed Hollywood toward franchises, licensing and overworking VFX artists. In the HBO documentary Spielberg seemed to recognize it as a cautionary tale, and Rick Carter called it "the digital Revolution coming out right from behind the fans."

After it, Spielberg diverged: Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan and Munich on one path, effects films like Minority Report and War of the Worlds, then The BFG and Ready Player One, on the other. That mitosis began with Jurassic Park. Still, he is the greatest filmmaker alive and I will spare no expense to see everything he makes.

Do the three explanations settle the cliff debate for you, or is it still a plot hole?