Release Year: 1993

Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writers: Michael Crichton and David Koepp

Stars: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum

Once upon a time, dinosaurs weren't tiny little feathered creatures. Back in 1993, little feathered things were called chickens and you'd have to be chicken to be scared of them. Dinosaurs in the 90s were giant lizards that would tear you limb from limb. Even the so-called gentle ones, like the Brontosaurus (which means thunder lizard, not cuddly chicken) could stomp you flat.

Steven Spielberg, who directed E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) understood the awe-inspiring power of the giant lizard-dinosaur, so when he read Michael Crichton's 1990 sci-fi novel Jurassic Park, he just had to make it into a movie and bring those dinosaurs to life…or at least bust out a killer combo of animatronics and state-of-the-art, computer-enhanced visual effects to make it look like dinosaurs had been brought to life.

Produced by director Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and distributed by movie monster masters Universal Pictures, Jurassic Park stomped into theaters in the summer of 1993. And what a summer it was: Dinosaurs had invaded the silver screen before, like when a Pterodactyl carried away Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966), but Spielberg made the dinosaurs look so real you could touch them.

Thing is, you wouldn't want these dinosaurs to touch you. Illustrating the dangers of what happens when you play god and toy with science, the dinosaurs escape and hunt for fresh meat. Unfortunately for the visitors to Jurassic Park, that meat is them. The them in question includes Sam Neill (Event Horizon), Laura Dern (Citizen Ruth), Sir Richard Attenborough—who came out of retirement for Jurassic Park—and the one and only Jeff Goldblum.

Jurassic Park was the number one movie of 1993, raking in over a billion (yes, with a B) dollars worldwide. With that kind of money, we're surprised Spielberg didn't bring dinosaurs back for real. Pretty much everyone took a trip to Jurassic Park in 1993 and collected enough Jurassic Park loot to outweigh a T. rex, from action figures to video games to "dino-sized" meals at McDonald's with drinks in dinosaur-emblazoned cups.

Being a worldwide blockbuster made Jurassic Park into a bona fide franchise. Spielberg went on to direct The Lost World: Jurassic Park in 1997, and two non-Spielberg-directed sequels followed—Jurassic Park III (2001) and Jurassic World (2015). At the end of Jurassic Park, the original (and arguably the best) of the series, a banner falls that says "When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth." That time wasn't just billions of years ago—that time is now.

Who doesn't love a good out-of-control-scientific-creation-tries-to-destroy-the-world story? Jurassic Park is like the dinosaur version of Frankenstein. But this seems like too obvious a reason to care about the movie, so we're gonna take it in a different direction.

The man, the myth, the legend: Steven Spielberg.

You could do a lot worse than studying a Spielberg film, especially when it comes to blockbuster cinema. Not only has he done serious film work, like The Color Purple (1985) and Schindler's List (1993), he also makes movies tailored to put butts in theater seats. Spielberg creates worlds that blend fantasy and reality in a way that sticks with audiences for years. As characters, E.T., Jaws, and Indiana Jones are all imaginative Spielberg creations that have pervaded pop culture for decades.

Jurassic Park is in a class of its own, however. Spielberg took something everyone is fond of—dinosaurs—and combined the scaly beasts with jaw-dropping special effects and breakneck adventure scenes. When Jurassic Park was made, it took up to six hours per frame of special effects. Six hours. As a result of time and expense, Spielberg used computer effects to enhance his visuals, not to create them entirely.

After Jurassic Park came loads of computer-generated failures of film, like Godzilla with Matthew Broderick (1998) and Deep Blue Sea (1999), another movie in which Samuel L. Jackson gets eaten by a sharp-toothed creature. The problem with those films is their reliance on special effects. Because Spielberg understood that less is more with Jurassic Park, his movie created a legacy that still lasts today while those other films are pretty much extinct.