CHENNAI:So we just realised something. If you were born the same year that the first Jurassic Park film came out, that’s 1993, you would be 22! On the flip side, those who are ‘not’ fans could sarcastically quip that the franchise is hardly as old as its youngest dinosaur. But how many not-really-a-fan twenty somethings are out there anyway? City Express decided to go back in time fans who have grown up with Spielberg’s dinosaurs and still can’t get enough more than two decades later.
Though there are no paleontologists in this bunch, Ramaraja Ramanujan who is exactly as old as the film franchise tells us in his case, it was a near miss. “I watched the movie when I was around seven during my summer holidays and I just got crazy about dinosaurs,” he recalls. Wanting to dig up bones became his mission for awhile, until of course he admits with a sigh, “Like everyone else, my parents convinced me to do engineering.” Still, he lives the dream through the movies and tells us, “I’m really hoping for a sequel with a fresh storyline next.”
For many who have caught the recently released Jurassic World in theaters already, the similarities to the original film bring back more nostalgia than anything else. Sruti Vijaykumar, who just finished writing her IAS exam can still remember the wow factor her five-year-old self enjoyed watching Jurassic Park for the first time with family. “Right after that, I got my aunt in the US to send me a Jurassic Park T-shirt and pencil box,” she says with a laugh. And besides watching all the four films in the series, she not only knows the names of several dino breeds — but was the only fan who directed us to the Egmore Museum to look at the statue of what she says is a 20-foot-tall Brachiosaurus outside!
Over the last 20 years, fans tells us they have done everything from collect action figurines of dinosaurs via their cornflakes to stickers books to memorise the names of the breeds.
Roshni Rao who grew up to be an artist reminisced with a laugh, “When I was little, I even created a comic book that I hand drew and the central character was ‘Debbie the last dinosaur.’” This one was a little different from the ones you see onscreen though. “She had a bow on her head,” Roshni tells us with a giggle and “no she didn’t eat any of her human friends!”
Fan or just a regular movie goer, there’s no denying the impact of this larger than life franchise. It turns out these man-eating beasts onscreen have given kids more memories than nightmares over the years. Here’s to a new era of kids who love dinosaurs with Jurassic World in theaters. You know you’ve been bitten by the bug, when you watch Chris Pratt stroking a dying dinosaur with the adorable face of a teletubby and want to take him home to live with you in your kitchen. Ahem. That wasn’t me.
