Toys and VHS tapes: Watch a fan-made ‘Jurassic Park’ remake from 1993
Throughout his remarkable career, Steven Spielberg has proven time and time again that he possesses an unrivalled ability to transport audiences into worlds brimming with believability, and when Jurassic Park arrived in 1993, the world was treated to one of the most mesmerising and intense cinematic visions ever known.
Boasting a cast including Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Richard Attenborough, and based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel of the same name, Jurassic Park still serves as one of Spielberg’s masterpieces and has been forever immortalised into the pantheon of the all-time great science fiction action movies.
Telling of a wealthy businessman’s creation of a wildlife park filled with de-extinct dinosaurs with the help of genetic scientists and the chaos that ensues when sabotage sees the power to the park cut, releasing the dinosaurs upon a small group of visitors, the film spawned a series of sequels, including 2015’s Jurassic World.
While Spielberg’s movie has indeed been good money for several revisits and retellings, there is one very special remake of Jurassic Park that was ingeniously made by two American kids the very same year the original movie was released. David Chakris and Michael Raisch set about remaking the classic film armed with a video camera and toy models of dinosaurs, cars and action figures.
The pair’s website reads, “In the summer of 1993, inspired by the release of Jurassic Park, Michael and David set out to recreate the excitement and visuals of the hit film. Over a period of six months in New Jersey, they filmed multiple versions of the film until they were pleased with their final version.”
“Equipped with the best VHS era technology, [Michael and David] re-created the movie magic of Jurassic Park with hand-drawn sets, action figures, and fishing lines,” the statement added. “Throughout the development of their film, Michael and David utilized the most cutting-edge technology offered in the early 1990s.”
The remake of Chakris and Raisch serves as a touching tribute to the young boy’s favourite movie, predating the kind of films on offer in the 2008 Michael Gondry movie Be Kind Rewind, in which Jack Black and Mos Def must recreate several movies after their store’s VHS collection is wiped. But the Jurassic Park remake goes one better in that it’s a project of genuine passion that could have only ever come from the hearts of two cinema-loving kids.
“Before the rise of the internet, they faxed their scripts back and forth of their vision for the recreation of Jurassic Park,” the website noted. “In the summer of 1993, the first version of ‘Jurassic Park’ was shot. After reviewing their work, they set out to film additional improvements, titled ‘Jurassic Park II”. By March of 1994, their vision was realized with the final ‘Retelling of Jurassic Park’.”
Check out the fan-made version of Jurassic Park below.
