“Jurassic Park” T-Rex breakout scene analysis

“Jurassic Park", directed by Steven Spielberg, is a classic 1993 adventure, Sci-Fi thriller which explores many and different themes. The plot revolves around the idea that dinosaurs are walking on earth due to the research of DNA gene engineering. The owner of the company arranges a first ever tour through this "Jurassic Park", however during the tour there is a whole island power outage and this means that the safety fences are all down; there is nothing holding the giant, intellectual beasts away from you anymore. 

This scene is one of the best scenes ever where tension is created using all possible mise-en-scene, however I would like to focus on how editing and cinematography contribute towards making the audience feel as much tension as possible.


Up till this point we have been introduced to the idea of Jurassic park / zoo, small section of the park, the owner of the program and a few creatures. The idea seems amazing and even better when Ellie hears about the fact that there is a T-Rex in the park. Her and Grant’s reaction to this announcement and the fact that we have not yet seen the spectacular animal creates questions and desire to meet the animal as soon as possible.


When a storm crosses the island where the park is, the tour has to be stopped however because of loss of power, the tourists are stuck by the T-Rex cage and left in the rain hoping that the power will come back on.


First of all the overall mood of the scene is clearly shown by the dark lighting with sharp shadows suggesting mystery and that the characters are in danger and cold, moreover there is no music or sound effects, just silence and the noise of heavy rain outside the cars. Pathetic fallacy of rain also creates a cold, and scary feel.


Throughout the whole scene we see quite long shots (in general) to stretch out the time and make the 2-3 minutes feel like forever, emphasising every detail in the slightest movement and sound.


Moreover these long shots also emphasise the emotions of each character as we are constantly shown close ups and extreme close ups of each character in the two cars. The audience is given time to see how scared and confused, the innocent kids are.


When the quiet deep bass noise in the distance is introduced it is emphasised by the vibrations in the glass of water and the back view mirror of the car.  Moreover as one of the characters is seen in the mirror whilst it slightly vibrates distorting the image we can see the emotions he is feeling as he feels unsecure and scared.


Few dolly shots and zoom in shots are used to portray that the characters have realised something or have seen something that has shocked them. A great example of this is when the boy takes off his night vision goggles and looks at something and we move from a close up to an extreme close up with a zoom in. This creates tension in the audience’s minds as we want to know what the character is looking at. However because the shots are left long in the editing room this makes the audience feel more anxious and builds desire to see what is it that we are not looking at.


Up till the point where the girl looks out the window to ask where the goat has gone, we are calmed down by slow, long, fluid tracking shots and sliding shots to slow the pace down. This slow movement is emphasised by the slow movement and stillness in the movement of each character we see. However when the goats leg lands on the roof of the car there is a sudden, unexpected ‘jump scare’ which contrasts what we have been previously shown in the scene.


After about one minute of long shots that have built up tension we finally see the T-Rex. However to disappoint us and ultimately to create even more tension as we only see a part of the T-Rex’s foot touching the “10000 volt warning sign”. By the T-Rex just touching it and not reacting in any ways we understand that the safety fence that held the T-Rex back is no longer working and the T-Rex has full control over everyone. His control is portrayed as we see less and less shots of the actors inside the cars and more and more shots outside the car and of the forest with the Dinosaur.


When the bloody goats leg land on the glass roof we are shown a shot where the blood dripping down the window overlays one of the characters face, foreshadowing his death as later the T-Rex only eats the upper part of the guy and leaves his legs.


When the T-Rex crawls out of his cage the camera tilts up to follow the creature however the view is distorted and blocked by the rain, car frame and the window creating the last bits of tension before we fully see the Beast.


To show just how large and powerful the T-Rex is the camera shakes on every single step he takes showing that the whole world shakes when it moves.


Finally when the T-Rex crawls out and passes the safety fence we see a low angle wide shot of the two cars and the T-Rex. Just by the visual difference in size of the cars and the T-Rex we can see how much power the creature has over the week humans and we are left to wonder in fright what is the faith of the characters that we have been attached to.