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Steven Spielberg made some of the best movies of the 1990s. With beloved films like Hook and Saving Private Ryan, the Academy Award winner knows how to make memorable movies that audiences are still talking about. If you recall, Spielberg also defined 1993 with big movies like Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. Now, we've learned about a cool story regarding how the dinosaur flick was a blessing to the director while he was making his historical drama.
Imagine wrapping up a fun dinosaur movie like Jurassic Park, only to head into one of the most devastating times in history for Schindler’s List. Well, in Vulture’s Oral History of Steven Spielberg flicks, Amblin Entertainment co-founder Kathleen Kennedy, cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, and screenwriter/director David Koepp spoke about what made Jurassic Park such a “blessing” for Spielberg while filming Schindler’s List:
- Kennedy: It’s the only time I’ve ever seen this happen with Steven: I ended up having to take over the postproduction on Jurassic almost entirely because he was so immersed in Schindler. He couldn’t compartmentalize the way he had before.
- Kamiński: We were doing Schindler’s List, and he was having satellite transmission to look at the Jurassic effects, which was totally surreal.
- Koepp: He said that it was kind of a blessing sometimes, in that he’d had these incredibly intense days on set and then he’d come home and look at effect shots for several hours of dinosaurs running around. It was actually a great place to park his mind for a while.
I can imagine what a “blessing” it must have been to take a break from the Holocaust-centered epic with effects shots of the prehistoric dinosaurs. While it feels like it could also cause whiplash, working on a fun dinosaur movie had to be a welcome distraction from such a heavy war film.
Even though Steven Spielberg was a pro at tackling those two different cinematic worlds in 1993, he admitted in 2019 that he actually hated working on Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List simultaneously. I can’t blame him, considering the Indiana Jones director had to switch from the emotional hurdles of his movie about Oskar Schindler to focusing on dinosaurs running rampant, which felt like a “burden” to him.
However, Spielberg clearly found a way to tackle two cinematic worlds, with both films having a massive yet different impact on cinema.
Jurassic Park revolutionized visual effects with its computer-generated imagery and inspired six other movies to expand the franchise. Schindler’s List thoughtfully portrayed the horrors the Nazis inflicted on Jews in German-occupied Kraków and was one of the greatest movies to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
Ultimately, the Jaws director proved that going back to his CGI dinosaurs was a great way to balance emotional storytelling with groundbreaking entertainment that helped shape cinema.
As challenging as it was for Steven Spielberg to move between Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, it eventually showed he was more than capable of pivoting from blockbuster spectacle to devastating historical drama without reducing the impact of the two films.
Feel free to dive into both worlds yourself by streaming Schindler’s List with a Netflix subscription and Jurassic Park with a Peacock subscription. You also gotta tune in for Steven Spielberg’s 2026 movie release of Disclosure Day in theaters now.
