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Intro
It’s the late summer of 1989, and in Costa Rica, strange events are unfolding. American expat Dr. Roberta Carter treats a construction worker who looks like he was mauled by an animal while building a secretive resort on a remote island. Then, a lizard attacks Tina Bowman, an American tourist, on a beach. Local biologist Dr. Guitierrez assures her parents that she encountered a known species of lizard, but he nevertheless sends samples of the creature—and a drawing made by Tina—to New York City for analysis.
Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Grant discovers the complete fossil of a baby velociraptor at his paleontological dig site in Montana. A visit from Bob Morris, a lawyer investigating John Hammond and the suspicious actions of his company (InGen) on his private island near Costa Rica, interrupts his work. Morris interviews Grant because he consulted on the resort project a few years before. After Morris leaves, Grant receives two phone calls: one from a lab tech in New York who wants his opinion on the remains from the Costa Rican beach attack—which look like a well-executed dinosaur hoax—and one from Hammond, inviting Grant and his colleague Dr. Ellie Sattler to visit the island.
With Hammond, Donald Gennaro, fellow consultant Dr. Ian Malcolm, and computer systems analyst Dennis Nedry, Grant and Sattler arrive on Isla Nublar, where a hand-written sign welcomes them to Jurassic Park—a theme park filled with dinosaurs resurrected from the deep past using genetic sequencing and cloning technologies. Hammond’s grandchildren Lex and Tim Murphy join the group as park warden Robert Muldoon, chief geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, and chief engineer John Arnold show off the nearly completed park. In the genetics lab, Wu explains the process of extracting genetic material from parasitic bugs preserved in amber, sequencing the DNA, and inserting it into crocodile eggs. They must do this because Wu has made all the dinosaurs female to keep them from breeding in the wild. While Nedry stays behind to address bugs in the park’s computer system, electric ride vehicles whisk the rest of the guests around the island. The highlight of the pre-programmed itinerary is the chance to watch the adult tyrannosaurs gobble up a live goat. Next, the group stops at the stegosaur enclosure, where Grant and Ellie help the park’s veterinarian, Dr. Harding, diagnose a periodic illness the giant herbivores experience. While doing so, Grant discovers fragments of a dinosaur egg.
A storm brews in the distance. Ellie stays with Dr. Harding as Grant and Malcolm radio the discovery of the dinosaur egg fragments to the control room. A revised computer survey of the animals reveals dozens running loose on the island; some species, including the raptors, have developed the ability to breed without anyone noticing. What’s worse, on the drive back to the visitor center, Tim and Lex catch a glimpse of two stowaway raptors heading back to the mainland on the island’s supply ship. As they’re trying to warn the control room, the storm breaks overhead and Nedry cuts power to the park’s security systems so he can steal some of the dinosaur embryos. With stolen goods in hand, he heads for a rendezvous with a buyer who has hired him to steal the embryos, but he gets lost and eaten by a herd of small carnivorous dinosaurs.
The power outage cut electricity to the enclosure fences, allowing the tyrannosaurus to break free. It attacks the stalled vehicles and their occupants, throwing Tim into a tree, seriously wounding Malcolm, and killing park publicist Ed Regis. Although Muldoon and Gennaro race to the scene, where they find Regis’s dismembered leg and the injured Malcolm, Grant and the children have already fled in search of safe shelter.
Throughout the night, Arnold and Wu uncover and begin to undo Nedry’s sabotage while Muldoon, Harding, and park employees fix the fences and round up escaped dinosaurs. Malcolm spends the night in the lodge tended by Ellie, while Grant and the children find shelter in the sauropod enclosure maintenance hut.
In the morning, Arnold restores the park systems with a hard reboot, allowing the control room to watch the escaped adult tyrannosaurs hunt and kill another dinosaur. Because they are trying to cross the field at the time, Grant and the children get a much closer view of the attack. Desperate to find a way back that affords some protection from the carnivorous beast, Grant finds a raft to carry himself and the children back to the resort on the park’s manmade river. They float through the dangerous territories of the park’s aviary (the giant cearadactyls are excessively territorial) and the dilophosaur enclosure (these animals can spit venom). The tyrannosaur stalks them the whole time, until it corners them where the river ends by going over a waterfall into a lagoon. Fortunately, they find a maintenance shed that contains a vehicle and a juvenile, wild-bred raptor that Grant tranquilizes and brings along as evidence.
Back in the control room, the entire park suddenly goes dark. When Arnold rebooted the computers, he forgot to restart the main generator. Running on auxiliary power for hours drained the secondary generators. And it means that the enclosure fences have been unelectrified for hours, allowing the park’s dangerous raptors to escape. When Arnold tries to access the power plant to restart the generator, they attack him. Muldoon kills one and wounds another, and the surviving animals scatter. One corners and kills Arnold in the power plant and another—the injured one—attacks Gennaro, frustrating his attempt to restore the power. When Grant, Tim, and Lex finally make it back to the visitor center, they find utter chaos and destruction. But they also find a radio, allowing them to learn that the survivors are all in the lodge, where the raptors are chewing through the (currently unelectrified) bars on the skylights.
Leaving the children in the cafeteria, where Tim successfully fends off an attack by trapping a raptor in a freezer, Grant gains access to the power plant, restarts the generator, and finds the terrified Gennaro huddled in a powerless vehicle. The two men return to the visitor center, but no sooner have they found the children than the raptors corner them all in the genetics lab. Grant dispatches the dinosaurs with the lab’s dangerous chemicals. With the danger managed, they can turn their attention to restoring the park’s systems through the computer interface in the control room.
While the survivors await rescue helicopters from the mainland, Hammond wanders off, and some of the smaller carnivores attack and kill him. Meanwhile, Malcolm succumbs to his injuries. Grant forces Gennaro to confront the consequences of InGen’s actions by helping them count the wild-bred raptors. Finally, after arriving on the mainland, Grant learns from Dr. Guitierrez that more evidence of escaped Jurassic Park animals has surfaced. Until the government gets a handle on what happened on the island, no one associated with the park will be allowed to go home.
