James Cameron’s Darker R-rated Take on Jurassic Park! Would It Have Been Good?

James Cameron’s Darker R-rated Take on Jurassic Park! Would It Have Been Good?

James Cameron revealed in an interview recently that he almost directed Jurassic Park and that his version of the film would’ve been R-rated and much different from the film we got. Would I like to have seen it? Let’s talk about it!

My Thoughts

Upon doing research about this topic I didn’t realize that James Cameron has talked about this in the past. I found an interview he did back in 2012 where he first revealed this information. So it’s not brand new information but it’s new to me and since it resurfaced, I wanted to talk about it. This is a quote that I found where he discussed what his version would’ve been. “Spielberg was the right guy to make it. Not me, because I would’ve made it too terrifying and R-rated. It would’ve been Aliens with dinosaurs,” said Cameron. Doing a Jurassic Park movie whether it’s an adaptation of the book or a sequel that’s inspired by Aliens sounds awesome to me. 

But the question of course becomes, would James Cameron have made a good Jurassic Park movie? The simple answer is yes, I think he would’ve. Cameron’s track record is pretty fantastic. I haven’t seen all of his movies but I’ve liked all of the ones I’ve seen. If Avatar (2009) is his weakest film then he’s doing very well for himself and therefore his Jurassic Park probably would’ve been very cool. At the same time, Jurassic Park as is, I think is a near perfect movie. That’s one of my top 3 favorite movies of all time. It holds so well 30+ years later and I love it so much every single time I rewatch it. In those regards, I don’t know if I want to swap out a darker take on Jurassic Park for a more rated-R and violent take on the source material. 

With that said, if you’ve read the book, Jurassic Park then you know that the movie and the book are very different. The book is actually very violent, if Universal did a more faithful adaptation to the book it would be rated-R. That would’ve been an interesting take that would’ve taken this franchise in such a different direction so different from what we know it to be today. It probably wouldn’t have been as successful and so who knows what sequels we would’ve gotten from it. If this movie was a hit we probably would’ve gotten a more faithful adaptation of The Lost World, that maybe would’ve been better or just as good as the one we got. There’re so many hypertheticals that go on when thinking about Jurassic Park both as a movie and as a franchise if James Cameron directed and not Steven Spielberg. I am kind of glad for the version we did get, I think that’s a brilliant blockbuster and one of the greatest movies of all time.