One game-changer and a decade of duds: cinema’s short-lived Michael Crichton obsession
One thing Hollywood can always be relied upon to do is hop onto a bandwagon in the hopes that what worked once is going to work again, no matter how tenuous the connection may be. As the author behind a game-changer that shattered records, the early 1990s saw Michael Crichton become the hottest ticket in town.
The author was hardly a stranger to having his bibliography repurposed for the big screen, but the industry’s motivations behind his return to flavour of the week status were hardly subtle. The last page-to-screen Crichton movie before Jurassic Park came 14 years previously when he self-directed 1979’s The Great Train Robbery, but once dinosaurs reclaimed their place at the top of the food chain, all bets were off.
There had only ever been five movies based on Crichton books before Spielberg’s seminal blockbuster, but there would be another seven in the ten years following Jurassic Park. That’s not even including the third instalment in the trilogy, which wasn’t even based on one of his books. Studios looked at the one global sensation and decided amongst themselves it was open season, which was missing the point completely.
The reason Jurassic Park succeeded when it did was because of the sum of its parts, not the guy who penned the source material. Screenwriter David Koepp made sweeping changes to the book, and with Spielberg at the helm, it became a touchstone. Groundbreaking visual effects, awe-inspiring wonder, a sweeping sense of spectacle, and memorable characters all combined to deliver what was the highest-grossing release in history at the time.
As often tends to be the case, though, nobody seemed to get the memo – or even understand – that there was a highly specific set of reasons and circumstances behind Jurassic Park becoming the phenomenon it was. The people in charge of creating the next great moneymaking hope simply looked at the inspiration, perused the bookshelves, and hoped the same thing would happen in perpetuity.
Of course, when not even Spielberg’s own sequel The Lost World could recapture the magic, what hope did anyone else have? The answer was not a lot, because the decade-long Crichton obsession petered out on the back of a succession of critical disasters, commercial catastrophes, and bad decisions, with so much misery falling upon them there hasn’t been a single adaptation of his writing to hit cinemas ever since.
Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes headlined Rising Sun just two months after Jurassic Park stomped onto the scene, so technically it was ahead of the curve. It was a modest hit, too, but nobody remembers it as being a particularly good film. It’s a meat-and-potatoes action thriller carried on the back of its star-powered central pairing, which was the absolute bare minimum required.
Barry Levinsion’s erotic thriller Disclosure was a smash hit that recouped its budget four times over, but the titillation taking precedence over plot and character didn’t sit well with those who decried the film for being all style and no substance. At this point, the Crichton gravy train was well and truly rolling, but then the wheels came off spectacularly.
Ludicrous sci-fi thriller Congo nabbed seven nominations at the Golden Raspberry Awards, including ‘Worst Picture’ and ‘Worst Director’. Levinson’s Sphere tanked horrendously and took a battering from critics, The 13th Warrior endured a nightmarish production that went massively over budget to the extent that it became the single biggest box office bomb in history when it finally limped into multiplexes, and Timeline was another unsalvageable disaster that’s far and away the worst thing Richard Donner ever directed.
Needless to say, the bad outweighed the good to a noticeable extent, and after haemorrhaging an insane amount of money spread out across a number of films, the plug was pulled on the Crichton experiment. Seven adaptations in ten years is prolific, but once the shine wore off, his work swiftly went the way of John Grisham and effectively became persona non grata in the corridors of power.
