Jurassic Park

When I first bought my PS3 in 2007, it was solely for the purpose of watching blu-rays. Shortly thereafter, I discovered that surround sound systems existed with 7.1 channels rather than 5.1 to deliver "lossless audio." From that moment on, I had a dream to get one of those systems and watch Jurassic Park. I can't think of a better movie to test the system out with. Anyway, my dream finally came to be reality this morning. And it did not disappoint. Every room-shaking T-REX stomp transported me back to the summer of 1993 when I got to see this movie for the first (and second) time.

Sometimes I have a hard time really communicating why I like this movie so much and why it is my favorite movie of all time. More than any other movie, this movie reminds me of childhood. I am just so damn happy when I watch it. The characters are amazing (though not necessarily subtle) and the setting is incredible. I think my favorite character is John Hammond, the billionaire dinosaur lover who had to see his dream of a dinosaur park come to be.

But more than that, this movie changed the way I look at things. It has defined the way I envision dinosaurs in my head, and I would imagine it has defined the way you see dinosaurs in yours. I often find myself staring at birds and thinking "wow, they really do move like dinosaurs." Then, I have the realization that I have no idea how dinosaurs actually move and that the people behind the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park based them on the birds and not the other way around. Anyway, this was really the first time anyone has presented a realistic depiction of them in action on screen (not just still image depictions). It's just so incredible to think that this movie was made 21 years ago and the special effects still stand up (granted, the CGI dinosaurs in the daytime are a bit lame at this point). Anyway, this movie was a revelation in it's depiction of dinosaurs, it's use of CGI and my young life. This is the single movie that caused my love of movies and I don't think it will ever be topped in my mind.

Man, I fucking love this movie.