Sam Neill: Moviegoers No Longer Accept Jurassic Park's Slow Pacing

[Paul MacLean]

Brief interview with Sam Neil where he talks about returning to the JP franchise, and how audiences would never sit through a slow-paced action movie like Spielberg's original today...

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/sam- ... 235275007/

[AndyDursin]

His discussion of his accent is fascinating. I think Spielberg's head was somewhere else while he was making this movie -- after all he took off for SCHINDLER'S LIST and let George Lucas supervise post-production (he worked with Williams).

“He came up to me halfway through the day and he said, ‘Hey, Sam, you know the accent we were talking about?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been working on it for four weeks.…’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, just use your own voice,’” Neill told Vanity Fair last month. “I said, ‘That’s great, Steven, thank you so much.’ And then four days later, he came up to me and said, ‘You know that voice you’re using now?’ I said, ‘Yeah, my voice?’ He said, ‘Somewhere in between.’”

“It’s an actor’s nightmare!” Neill added. “So that’s why I get a lot of flak to this day: Sam Neill’s American accent in ‘Jurassic Park’ was a load of T. rex poo.”

[Eric Paddon]

The funny thing is back in 1993 when I saw Jurassic Park, I noted how it "cut to the chase" much quicker than had been the case in "Jaws". Imagine how impatient moviegoers would be with *that* today! (or who would find the Indianapolis scene dull and boring)

[Monterey Jack]

Imagine how impatient moviegoers would be with *that* today! (or who would find the Indianapolis scene dull and boring)

I don't know...when I saw the film in theaters in the summer of 2015 for the 40th anniversary, the audience (nearly a sold-out showing) seemed totally engrossed by it, and you could hear a pin drop during Quint's Indianapolis speech. Everyone was laughing and screaming at all the right spots, even the teenagers and kids present.

It's not that audiences no longer have "patience" for the slower pace of older films, it's that these kinds of movies are no longer MADE. It's like Disney defending throwing hand-drawn animation under the bus in favor of CGI with claims that "No one wants to see it anymore", when it was yanked away from audiences due to that "Ooo, shiny new toy...!" reaction to CGI in the late 90s and early 00s.