Chances are that if you’re reading this, you’re a big fan of Jurassic Park and probably watch it regularly. Do yourself a favour the next time you put the film on: change the colour settings on your TV so that it’s completely drained of all the familiar hues. That’s not the proper way to convert a film to black and white but it will give a taste of what I’m talking about (the same goes for the images in this post, which are quick conversions to give a hint of what could be achieved). It’s not an improvement on the film we love, it’s not the best way to enjoy the film, it simply adds a new dimension. For me, it made it feel fresh, like I hadn’t already seen the film a million times.
This isn’t a novel idea as there are a handful of films which had full colour cinematic releases but were later brought out on DVD/Blu-Ray with black and white alternative versions – some even got a limited cinema release drained of colour. Frank Darabont’s The Mist was not envisaged as a colour film by the director; studio pressure led to a colour release but the versatility of DVDs allowed for Darabont’s preferred version to be released (my preferred version too, by a long way). More recently, Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning Parasite has been given the monochrome treatment, something he also did for Mother (if anyone can track down a black and white copy of Mother, let me know, as I can’t find it anywhere). An even more recent example is the Snyder cut of Justice League, which means I’m going to have to watch the lengthy film twice in order to compare.
Not all films are fit for conversion to black and white, particularly as different techniques are used when filming in different formats – check out The Lighthouse for an example of what can be achieved when deliberately filming in black and white. And some films make good use of colour which would be lost in translation. I do believe, however, that Jurassic Park would shine in black and white and would love to see it done professionally.
I didn’t intend to watch Jurassic Park in black and white, I’d actually sat down to do some drawing and put the film on in the background. The idea came to me around a third of the way in, probably because I’ve been watching a lot of black and white films lately, including some of the films available in colour. I did it in time to see the Tyrannosaurus rampaging around the cars and I was hooked. I stopped drawing and watched the film instead, even though I’d picked it to provide background noise. It gave the scene a B-movie quality, which I don’t mean in a derogatory sense. It felt like a classic monster flick, albeit one with an enormous budget, and it really emphasised the acting throughout the film. The same can be said about The Mist when viewed in black and white, which is exactly what Darabont was going for (in the case of The Mist, it also makes the CGI more palatable).
Jurassic Park is such a good family film because it perfectly balances the dark, intense scenes with its lighter side. And it manages to entertain whilst probing some deep questions. Watching the film in black and white lends some gravity to its darker, deeper side, which sets a different balance where the softer side is provided by its new B-movie feel. When you watch a film drained of colour, you notice different things. Jurassic Park is the sort of film you can revisit over and over, always noticing something new in the background. Try it in black and white and you’ll find a new way to see some scenes which you probably know like the back of your hand.
Watching the film in monochrome helps emphasise how good the film is in terms of cinematography and direction, something I also found with the black and white versions of Logan and Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which I would recommend for many of the same reasons I’d like to see JP in black and white. But what really struck me was just how good the lighting is in the film, particularly for the night scenes. When all you have is shades of grey, the way light hits an object and casts shadows becomes really noticeable. Jurassic Park is lit in a way which could have me believing that it was filmed with the intention of altering the film for black and white (though I do expect that people more knowledgeable in film production might disagree).
Jurassic Park could easily be released in black and white on an extra disc as a limited edition, I’d definitely buy it. I’d watch it in the cinema too if it were an option. I just hope that they don’t call it Jurassic Dark. For me, watching a desaturated version of the film allowed me to explore it from a different perspective and gave it a classic feel, I’d love to know if anyone has given it a go and found the same.
I did find this set of pictures where someone had changed still images from Jurassic Park and made them look like black and white film. I think they look great but I chose not to use them in this post because I wanted to use images which looked like what I saw on my screen, where all I did was turn the colour down to zero and had it in the TV’s cinema setting, which slightly tweaked the light and contrast. I think it’s testament to how well the film was made that it can look so good with minimal alteration.
Keep reading if you want my brief reviews on the black and white versions of The Mist, Mad Max: Fury Road, Logan, and Parasite. Also, check out the #FossilNoir trend on Twitter for some spectacular pictures of fossils in black and white.
The Palaeobabbler 