Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park and Schindler's List as Dual Milestones in His Career

Spielberg's productive 1993

In 1993, Steven Spielberg, whose filmography already included masterpieces such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Indiana Jones franchise, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, experienced one of his most productive years.

Schindler's List and Jurassic Park

Sid Sheinberg, president of the Music Corporation of America, the parent company of Universal, agreed to let Spielberg direct Schindler's List, a black-and-white film about the Holocaust and the true story of Oskar Schindler, who saved thousands of Jews during World War II. The only condition was that Spielberg must first direct a summer blockbuster, Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park's production

Spielberg accepted and directed Richard Attenborough in the role of industrialist John Hammond, the creator of an animal park populated by dinosaurs recreated through the resurrection of extinct species. After a failure of the electrical systems and safety devices, visitors, including paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), fight to survive and leave the island.

Innovations in special effects

Jurassic Park is considered a pioneer in the history of digital special effects used in modern cinema, combining revolutionary computer-generated imagery with inventive action scenes. The film generated incredible enthusiasm among audiences around the world and became the greatest success of Spielberg's career, being the only one to cross the billion-dollar revenue threshold, earning $1.1 billion with a budget of $63 million.

Spielberg's creative inspiration

In an interview with The New Yorker in March 1994, just a few months after the film's release, Spielberg admitted that his intention was to offer the public an indirect sequel to another one of his films. "I'm not ashamed to say that with Jurassic Park, I was actually just trying to make a good sequel to Jaws, but on land," he revealed.

Jaws and its legacy

In Jaws, a 1975 monster film that constitutes one of his first major successes, Spielberg staged another creature, a great white shark, which attacks swimmers in a seaside resort in New England, in the United States. "That's outrageous, I can tell you today," he added. A revelation all the more important since the director has always refused to direct any new Jaws sequel, leaving others to do it in his place.