Jurassic Park star Ariana Richards, who portrayed Lex Murphy, recreated her famous jello scene in honor of the movie's 30th anniversary. Based on the best-selling novel by Michael Crichton, 1993's Jurassic Park remains one of Richards' most recognizable roles as a child actor who initially began her career at just eight years of age. In a film that boasts several memorable moments, the scene in which Lex's spoonful of jello quivers at the sight of a velociraptor still ranks as one of the movie's most iconic images.
Three decades since Richards first shot the famous jello scene, the official Jurassic World TikTok account released a clip of the actor recreating it beat-for-beat. Check out the video below:
The latest clip follows from another Jurassic Park anniversary video that was recently released via the official Jurassic World YouTube channel. In this other clip, Richards joined her fellow co-stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Joseph Mazzello as they discussed their involvement in the ground-breaking film.
​​​​​​​Despite being lauded for its technological advances and effectively laying the groundwork for CGI use in modern-day filmmaking, Jurassic Park is notable for only containing about 15 minutes of actual dinosaur footage. Of the 15 minutes, only four to five minutes were computer generated and consisted of a reported 63 special effect shots. By contrast, the CGI used in 2015's Jurassic World consisted of over 2000 special effects shots.
These numbers seemed surprising since Jurassic Park felt it contained far more dinosaurs than it did. Due to Steven Spielberg's expert direction, he harkened back to tricks he had learned during his time on 1975's Jaws. Like Jurassic Park, the titular shark in Jaws only appeared for a total of four minutes throughout the two-hour movie. Instead, Spielberg was able to build tension and hint at the shark's offscreen presence through the horrified reactions of his actors and other environmental clues.
It was this same technique that Spielberg employed during Richards' notable jello scene, where her character reacts to seeing a velociraptor's silhouette rather than the actual dinosaur itself. While the Jurassic Park franchise would later go on to feature bigger and better special effects, the brilliance of Spielberg's original film still holds up 30 years later. If the legacy of Jurassic Park's jello scene proves anything, cutting-edge CGI is no substitute for clever filmmaking.
Source: Jurassic World/TikTok