Jurassic Park, one of the best movies ever made, may be fantastic but is not as good as the book. In this brilliant novel, author Michael Crichton manages to create a highly suspenseful and entertaining atmosphere that makes the entire book simply extraordinary. The story Crichton creates is a fantastic adventure that is about scientists that bring dinosaurs back to life and place them in a theme park open to the public. The movie nicely summarizes this story and captures many key ideas of it, such as trying to control nature and nature breaking free, but also changes many details and lacks some very interesting scenes that the book includes. It has also changed the characteristics of some of the main characters. Due to the fact that the movie has changed these exciting characters and scenes, it makes it slightly less entertaining than Crichton’s thrilling novel.

The main character of Jurassic Park is named Alan Grant. In the book, he is a bearded paleontologist who is very interested in dinosaurs and does not mind kids at all. In fact, he loves meeting kids as interested in dinosaurs as he is. The movie manages to capture the way he feels towards dinosaurs and portrays these feelings the way they are portrayed in the book. However, the way he feels about kids is completely the opposite from novel. In the film, Grant does not like children very much. In fact when a child named Tim tries to talk to him in the movie, Grant tries to get rid of him, as opposed to the book, in which he happily talks with him.

Another thing the movie changes are the ages of Tim and his sister, Lex. In the book, Tim is eleven years old and older than Lex by four years. Due to the fact that Lex is so young, she acts the way a normal seven-year-old girl acts. In the film, however, Lex is much older than Tim. Therefore she acts more mature than she does in the book. Also, in the book it is Tim that learns how to fix the computers, but in the movie it is the much more mature Lex that manages to fix them and get the security systems back online.

The film even changes the characteristics of the theme park employees that bring the dinosaurs back to life and try to control them. One employee that it changes is Robert Muldoon, the head of security. The only difference between his character in the book and his character in the movie is that he dies in the movie and lives in the book. Another character is Donald Genaro, the lawyer and head of the genetic company that recreated the prehistoric creatures. In the novel, he is panicked and worried about the park, trying to see if the park is safe or not; in the film, though, he is just trying to think of ways to make money off of the park and ends up getting eaten by a tyrannosaurus rex. Also, two important characters named Henry Wu and Harding were hardly even mentioned in the movie. It even left Ed Regis, the tour guide, out completely; the only employee they kept exactly the same was John Arnold, one of the computer workers.

Some other characters in Jurassic Park are Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm, and Dennis Nedry. Sattler is Grant’s friend and business partner in the novel. However, in the movie she is his girlfriend. Malcolm is a mathematician who tells everyone constantly that the park is bound to fail and is portrayed exactly the same in the book as he is movie. Nedry is the designer of the park’s computer system. In the book, he is a little smarter than he is in the movie. In the novel, as soon as he hears a dinosaur near him in the park, he starts running, whereas in the film he stays to see what it is and confronts it.

Finally, the last important character is John Hammond. He is the creator of the park. It was his idea that got the company and the theme park started. In the movie, all he cares about in the beginning is getting the park started, but as the film goes on, he learns that the park was a mistake. In the novel, however, all he cares about from beginning to end is the park; he even wants to rebuild it even after things go wrong and ends up breaking his ankle and getting eaten by many small dinosaurs.

One scene that is missing from the movie is the river scene. In the book, Grant, Tim, and Lex enter a raft to get back to the visitor center and run into a tyrannosaurus rex that swims after them. After they escape him, they enter a giant bird cage and get attacked by pterodactyls. When they get back, Grant turns on the main generator to get the power back on. In the movie, however, Grant and the kids only have to climb an electric fence before Ellie turns on the generator and gets the power back on.

Another scene that is different is the velociraptor scene. In the movie, Grant and Sattler push against a door to stop the velociraptors from coming into the control room while Lex tries to activate the security system. In the book, Grant lures the creatures into the hatchery so Tim, Lex, and Genaro could get to the control room. Once the velociraptors were in the hatchery, Grant poisons dinosaur eggs and roles them towards the vicious animals. When the eggs reach the dinosaurs, they eat them and die.

One last scene that is different is the final scene. In the film, Grant, Sattler, Tim, and Lex escape velociraptors in the visitor center and meet up with Malcolm and Hammond, whom they escape with in a helicopter. In the novel, though, after leaving the visitor center, Grant, Sattler, and Genaro go to the volcanic part of the island to find the velociraptor nest and count how many of the creatures were born. After they count, they follow them back up to the beach and discover that they are trying to migrate and are closely eyeing passing ships. After that, they climb into a helicopter that just landed on the beach with Muldoon and the kids already inside. Once in the helicopter, Muldoon gives them the news that Hammond is dead.

Due to the fact that the movie has changed these exciting characters and scenes, it makes it slightly less entertaining than Crichton’s thrilling novel. The book is longer and is filled with many more exciting adventures than the movie is. It is also slightly more suspenseful. The book even features the death of the man who created the deadly park to begin with. For these reasons, the book version is better than the movie version of Jurassic Park.