Whenever a new feature in the Jurassic Park saga drops its first trailer, you can expect plenty of nods to the previous movies. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s first teaser, for example, culminated in Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm solemnly intoning “life finds a way.” Jurassic World Rebirth, meanwhile, kicked off its first trailer with a shot evoking that Jurassic Park image of the T-Rex roaring while the “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” fell in the foreground. Fittingly for a franchise about beasts from eons ago, the Jurassic Park marketing machine always begins with reminders of yesteryear.
But what about the very first Jurassic Park movie? This 1993 adaptation of the original Michael Crichton novel had no other installments to build off of. There was no pre-existing John Williams theme or famous John Hammond lines it could co-opt. The film version of Jurassic Park instead introduced audiences to this universe with a marketing method common to pre-21st century blockbusters. This involved eschewing showing any footage from the final film, but it still produced one of the all-time great teaser trailers, nonetheless.
What Is The Jurassic Park Teaser Trailer?
This Jurassic Park teaser, running 100 seconds, is initially set in an environment only briefly glimpsed at in the final film. The trailer immediately plunges viewers into the mines where folks frantically look for any organisms that could have dinosaur DNA. The teaser’s imagery shows one miner finding something in stone, which turns out to be a meticulously preserved mosquito with dinosaur blood in its veins. A momentous score accompanying these images emphasizes the staggering importance of what’s happening onscreen.
The teaser concludes with the camera slowly pulling in on a microscope as a polished-sounding narrator intones how the first evidence of dinosaur DNA was found “in the spring of 1990, from a mine in South America came a piece of amber containing the fossilized remains of a prehistoric mosquito.” As the camera zooms in on the preserved mosquito (with viewers getting an intimate look at the insect’s pupils), the score doubles down on ominous noises as the narrator notes that this bug allowed scientists to recreate dinosaurs. “Man and dinosaur shared the Earth. It happened at a place called … Jurassic Park.” Cue the now-famous Jurassic Park logo, with the trailer announcer promising that “next summer, director Steven Spielberg will take you there.”
There’s no Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, or even dinosaurs in sight in this teaser, yet this initial piece of Jurassic Park marketing engrossed the imagination. Showing the practical process of unearthing these mosquitoes just makes it feel extra tangible that everything onscreen could really happen. The specific dates and locations invoked for the history of dinosaur DNA reconstruction only heighten this authenticity. Concluding on a note reinforcing Spielberg’s reputation as a master of cinematic spectacle is a perfect way to close out this teaser. Who needs to see spoilery Jurassic Park images when the combination of this compelling premise and filmmaker is enough to communicate that something special is brewing?
[RELATED – The Original Jurassic Park 4 Script Sounds Nuts (Would It Have Been Better Than Jurassic World?)]
These Kinds of Teasers Used To Be More Common
It’s hard to imagine the Jurassic Park teaser trailer even getting proposed, let alone released, today. The modern movie marketing ecosystem is all about launching trailers full of footage from the actual film so that online speculation can run rampant about potential Easter eggs, surprise cameos, or sequel teases hiding in plain sight. The showmanship and restraint in the Jurassic Park teaser are absent from the 2020s movie marketing machine, but it wasn’t always this way.
On the contrary, the Jurassic Park teaser reflected the standard way most massive blockbuster kicked off their movie marketing campaigns. The 1990s especially saw a wave of expensive features introduce themselves to the public with footage shot exclusively for a teaser. T2: Judgement Day, Total Recall, and 1998’s Godzilla are perfect examples of this phenomenon. Movies had longer promotional campaigns back in the day, while the internet speculation machine didn’t exist yet. In this landscape, teasers that functioned as mini-standalone movies were a go-to way of drumming up excitement.
Though this trend lasted until 2001 with Spider-Man, this just isn’t how movies are promoted anymore. Taking the time to create fresh teasers reflecting an individual motion picture’s aesthetic is not something studios have any patience for anymore. That just makes the Jurassic Park teaser all the more incredible to absorb. It’s a time capsule of craftsmanship and showmanship, not to mention a fittingly excellent trailer for a movie as outstanding as Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park is now streaming on Starz and Hulu.
The post The First Jurassic Park Trailer Has No Footage From The Movie and It’s Still Amazing appeared first on ComicBook.com.
