Jurassic Park Summary

Lights, camera, action!

In a tropical jungle, armed men attempt to transfer a vicious animal into a pen. It doesn't go well, and one of the men becomes a snack to the creature inside. Elsewhere, a lawyer travels to an amber mine in the Dominican Republic looking for John Hammond, the owner of the wildlife park where that man just got eaten. Nervous about the safety of the park, Hammond's investors want expert approval before they continue to fund the project.

But where is John Hammond? He travels to an archaeological dig in Montana to recruit archaeologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler to put their stamp of approval on his wildlife preserve. He agrees to fund their dig, and off they go.

Along with mathematician—er, chaotician—Dr. Ian Malcolm and attorney Donald Gennaro, the group helicopters to Isla Nublar, near Costa Rica, where they're greeted by sunny weather, lush tropical foliage, and a Brachiosaurus.

Yep, a real-life Brachiosaurus towering above the trees. Welcome to the JP.

After an orientation tour in which the process for reviving dinosaurs is explained—fossilized mosquitoes, amber, frog DNA, yada yada yada—the honored guests hop aboard electric transport vehicles and forge ahead into Jurassic Park to peep some dinos firsthand. They're joined by John Hammond's grandchildren, Tim and Lex. You know, because kids love dinosaurs.

All the dinosaurs are no-shows—aw, the T. rex is shy—and it's a bummer. Alan leaves the transport vehicle to check on a sick Triceratops. To diagnose its illness, Ellie goes elbow deep in dino doo-doo and decides to stay behind with the sick dino. The rest of the group returns through the park, but as they round the corner to the T. rex paddock, a tropical storm hits.

Taking advantage of the tropical deluge, disgruntled programmer Dennis Nedry steals an assortment of dinosaur embryos to sell to a rival company for $1.5 million dollars, the kind of wealth that would make a guy gruntled in an instant. Nedry shuts down the electric fences to make a beeline for the boat that is scheduled to leave with evacuating park workers.

Barreling through the jungle, Nedry goes off-road and into a Dilophosaurus pen. Oh look at them, so pretty, with their colorful neck frills…and their razor sharp teeth…and their toxic venom. Yeah, Nedry's no match for that dinosaur, and doesn't make it out of the park alive.

With the electric fences down, the T. rex escapes. The lawyer runs and hides in the bathroom, leaving the kids behind. Grant and Malcolm attempt to distract the giant dinosaur with flares, but the T. rex chases Malcolm, taking a swipe at him, injuring the chaotician and destroying the bathroom in the process, thus leaving the attorney a helpless snack on an exposed toilet.

Munch. He becomes dino food.

  

The T. rex pushes the kids' car into a ravine, so Grant goes after the vehicle and leads the kids to safety across the island. Meanwhile, Ellie Sattler and game warden Robert Muldoon arrive in a gas-powered Jeep and find Dr. Malcolm alive. The T. rex chases them back to the safety of the visitor's center.

But no place in Jurassic Park is safe without power, so Ellie and Muldoon travel to the power shed to restore power. Ellie flips the power switches just as Alan, Tim, and Lex are climbing the electric fence. Tim is blown off the fence when it powers up, but aside from his new hairstyle, he's okay. In the power shed, Ellie is attacked by a raptor and has to run; outside, Muldoon is surrounded by two raptors and becomes a raptor snack.

He's not enough of a meal for those raptors, though, so they enter the visitor's center as Alan returns with the kids, leaving them alone in the main hall even though there's a giant hole in the wall. The kids run from the raptors into the kitchen and eventually reunite with Ellie and Alan. Lex, a computer hacker who knows UNIX, rearms the locks on the doors, but the raptor still makes it inside.

They flee through air vents and end up dangling from the giant dinosaur skeleton in the atrium. The skeleton crashes to the ground, and our four human heroes are surrounded by raptors. Conveniently, the T. rex shows up to distract the raptors, and the humans run away. They meet Hammond and Malcolm at the helipad and helicopter to safety, literally flying away into the sunset. Goodbye, Jurassic Park. It's a nice place to visit…okay, it's not a nice place to visit unless you want to see the inside of a T. rex's stomach. Good riddance.