The Jurassic Park movies, specifically the first one, are endlessly re-watchable. And it looks like you'll be able to do so on Peacock sooner rather than later. While the second Jurassic Park film has it's fanbase, almost everyone agrees that the first is the best. This includes the two Jurassic World films which haven't faired as well with fans or critics as the original 1993 film did. Perhaps with some of the original cast members returning for Jurassic World: Dominion, the second trilogy will improve. Or, perhaps not.
But who cares as long as we have the groundbreaking first film to consume over and over again like a hungry velociraptor. To say that Jurassic Park took the world by storm would be an understatement. Aside from being the go-to movie for an entire generation the technology of Jurassic Park changed cinema forever. But all the technology in the world is no match for Mother Nature... Something the cast and crew found out the hard way while filming the first movie.
There are many things that even the biggest Jurassic Park fan doesn't know about the making of the Jurassic Park movies. Among them is the fact that the cast and crew were actually trapped on the island...
Given that the production of Jurassic Park was plagued with all sorts of issues, most of which to do with the mechanical dinosaurs, the production avoided many weather-related problems. Since the movie was filmed on the rainy Hawaiian island of Kauai, this was a huge win.
But that all changed come the final day of location filming...
Hurricane Iniki Swept Into Hawaii And Stranded The Cast On The Island
During an oral history of the making of Jurassic Park by Entertainment Weekly, Steven Spielberg and the cast of the original Jurassic Park explained how they were literally stuck on the island (much like their characters) when a powerful storm hit the Hawaiian island.
Steven Spielberg even awoke at 4 in the morning when he heard the hotel staff bringing in all of the pool chairs in preparation for Hurricane Iniki, which ended up being the most powerful storm on record to hit Hawaii...
Yeah, this definitely sounds like the storm that was the catalyst for the failure of Jurassic Park in the movie.
"I turned on the TV," Steven Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly. "There was an animation of the Hawaiian island chain. The island we were on, Kauai, was outlined in red and there was a big arrow pointing to it, and then there was the icon of a cyclonic hurricane moving directly towards us. It was like a movie."
The storm swept in fast and completely disturbed the final day of filming. In fact, it forced all of the cast and crew to take refuge.
"We were all huddled into the ballroom of this hotel, which was completely trashed in the course of the hurricane," Sam Neill, AKA Dr. Alan Grant said. "What kept morale up was that the only thing to read in the whole ballroom, the only thing anyone thought to bring in with them, was a Victoria’s Secret catalog. So that, in our darkest moments, cheered us up."
However, Jeff Goldblum says that Steven Spielberg did his best to entertain the cast and crew when the Victoria's Secret catalog couldn't.
"The lights went out, and I remember Steven Spielberg took a flashlight and held it above his head and shined it down on himself and said, “Love story,” and then put it under his chin and said, “Horror story.” “Love story. Horror story.”
Steven also did his best to make sure the kids in the film, Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello weren't too bored either.
"Steven helped to combat boredom with both Joey and me. He took it upon himself to tell us ghost stories, and I think the ghost stories scared me more than the hurricane," Ariana Richards told Entertainment Weekly.
While Steven was doing this, many of the crew were doing their best to give Steven the most accurate information about what was happening with the storm.
Although they managed to get some shots of the storm that were actually used in the movie... the storm became so violent that they needed to retreat to higher and safer ground.
The storm was THAT bad...
Someone From Indiana Jones Literally Saved The Day
Actually, it was producer Katheleen Kennedy would set the ball in motion for the cast to get rescued and transported off the island as it endured the terrible storm.
"Kathy Kennedy jogged to the airport," Steven Spielberg explained. "She found some guy about to leave on a small private single-engine aircraft. She hitchhiked her way to Honolulu and she was trying to find a plane that could get our crew and cast back to Los Angeles."
Little did Kathy Kennedy know that she was going to bump into an old friend... someone from her days working on Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones film.
"She bumped into this guy she kind of recognized," Steven continued. "She walked over to the guy and said, “Don’t I know you?” and he said, “Hi Kathy.” It was the young man that flew the biplane in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was the pilot that was in our movie and he just happened to be a pilot of a four-engine 707, a cargo plane and he was between flights. So Kathy arranged with him to send a large plane to the island the next day to take the cast and crew out. It’s once again something else that seems to only happen in the movies. And when things like that happen in the movies, the audience rejects that!"
After the storm subsided, the cast and crew were transported out of Hawaii back to Los Angeles, California. This is where all of the studio work was done, including the iconic scene with the tyrannosaur and the Ford Explorer.
While some of the in-studio work proved quite difficult, including when they turned the rain machines on the animatronic T-Rex, nothing the cast and crew faced was quite as daunting at the worst storm in Hawaiian history.
