Jurassic Park | |
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Directed by | Steven Spielberg |
Produced by | Kathleen Kennedy Gerald R. Molen |
Screenplay by | Michael Crichton David Koepp |
Based on | Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton |
Starring | |
Music by | John Williams |
Cinematography | Dean Cundey |
Editing by | Michael Kahn |
Studio | Amblin Entertainment |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 127 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $63 million[1] |
Box office | $914,691,118[1] |
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction thriller film[2] directed by Steven Spielberg, and is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello, Martin Ferrero and Bob Peck. The film centers on the fictional Isla Nublar near Costa Rica's Pacific Coast, where a billionaire philanthropist and a small team of genetic scientists have created an amusement park of cloned dinosaurs.
Before Crichton's book was even published, many studios had already begun bidding to acquire the picture rights. Spielberg, with the backing of Universal Studios, acquired the rights before publication in 1990, and Crichton was hired for an additional $500,000 to adapt the novel for the screen. David Koepp wrote the final draft, which left out much of the novel's exposition and violence, and made numerous changes to the characters. Filming locations were in both California and Hawaii.
Jurassic Park is regarded as a landmark in the use of computer-generated imagery, and received positive reviews from most critics. During its release, the film grossed over $900 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing film released up to that time (surpassing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and surpassed four years later by Titanic), and it is currently the 23rd-highest-grossing feature film (adjusted for inflation, it is the 20th-highest-grossing film in North America). It is the highest grossing film produced by Universal and directed by Spielberg. It won the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects.
Owing to the film's success, two sequels were made: The Lost World: Jurassic Park directed by Spielberg as well, which was released on May 23, 1997, and Jurassic Park III, directed by Joe Johnston, which was released on July 18, 2001.
A 3D re-release is due for April 5, 2013, to commemorate the movie's 20th Anniversary.
John Hammond, CEO of InGen, has created Jurassic Park: a theme park populated with dinosaurs cloned from the DNA extracted from insects preserved in prehistoric amber.
Hammond's investors, represented by attorney Donald Gennaro, demand that experts visit the park and certify that it's safe. Gennaro invites mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm while Hammond invites paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. They are joined on the island by Hammond's grandchildren, Lex and Tim Murphy. The group sets off to explore the park while Hammond observes his guests along with chief engineer Ray Arnold and game warden Robert Muldoon.
With a storm heading in, everyone returns to their vehicles except for Ellie. Jurassic Park's chief computer programmer, Dennis Nedry, secretly employed by one of InGen's corporate rivals, steals dinosaur embryos. During the theft, Nedry deactivates the park's security system, allowing him access to the embryo storage. The park's electric fences are deactivated as a result, releasing a Tyrannosaurus which devours Gennaro, injures Ian, and assaults Alan, Lex, and Tim, but they escape. Nedry is killed by a Dilophosaurus as he tries to leave the island with the embryos.
Sattler and Muldoon search for survivors of the Tyrannosaurus attack, but only find Malcolm before they flee from the pursuing T. rex. Meanwhile, unable to decipher Nedry's code to reactivate the fences, Hammond, Arnold, Muldoon, Malcolm and Sattler take the drastic measure of rebooting the park's computer and electrical network. They shut down the park's grid and retreat to an emergency bunker, and Arnold journeys to a maintenance bunker to complete the process of rebooting the system. When he doesn't return, Sattler and Muldoon decide to head to the bunker.
As Muldoon and Sattler proceed to the maintenance bunker, Muldoon notices that they are being hunted by Velociraptors and draws their attention while Sattler continues to the bunker. Ellie restarts the park's systems, but is attacked by a raptor from which she escapes. Muldoon is killed by a raptor, before Alan, Lex, and Tim climb an electric fence out of the park's animal zone and Tim is nearly killed when the fence is reactivated.
Grant and the children head for the visitor's center; he leaves them alone in the kitchen while he reunites with Sattler and the others. The kids escape two stalking raptors before reuniting with Alan and Ellie. Lex restores the park's security systems from the control room. Grant contacts Hammond and tells him to call the mainland for rescue before the two raptors find the group and attack.
The group flees before the T. rex breaks into the main hall and kills the raptors, allowing the four to flee outside, where they are rescued by Malcolm and Hammond.
Michael Crichton originally conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur; he continued to wrestle with his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel Jurassic Park.[3] Even before publication, Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series ER.[4] Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross. Warner Bros. and Tim Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante bid for the rights,[4] but Universal eventually acquired them in May 1990 for Spielberg.[5] Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel,[6] which he had finished by the time Spielberg was filming Hook. Crichton noted that because the book was "fairly long" his script only had about 10 to 20 percent of the novel's content; scenes were dropped for budgetary and practical reasons.[7] After completing Hook, Spielberg wanted to film Schindler's List. Music Corporation of America (then Universal Pictures' parent company) president Sid Sheinberg gave a green light to the film on one condition: that Spielberg make Jurassic Park first. Spielberg later said, "He knew that once I had directed Schindler I wouldn't be able to do Jurassic Park."[4]
Spielberg hired Stan Winston to create the animatronic dinosaurs, Phil Tippett to create go motion dinosaurs for long shots, Michael Lantieri to supervise the on-set effects, and Dennis Muren to do the digital compositing. Paleontologist Jack Horner supervised the designs, to help fulfill Spielberg's desire to portray the dinosaurs as animals rather than monsters. This led to the entry of certain concepts about dinosaurs, such as the theory that dinosaurs had very little in common with lizards. Thus, Horner dismissed the raptors' flicking tongues in Tippett's early animatics,[8] complaining, "[The dinosaurs] have no way of doing that!" Taking Horner's advice, Spielberg insisted that Tippett take the tongues out.[9] Winston's department created fully detailed models of the dinosaurs before molding latex skins, which were fitted over complex robotics. Tippett created stop-motion animatics of major scenes, but, despite go motion's attempts at motion blurs, Spielberg still found the end results unsatisfactory in terms of working in a live-action feature film.[8] Animators Mark Dippe and Steve Williams went ahead in creating a computer-generated walk cycle for the T. rex skeleton and were approved to do more.[10] When Spielberg and Tippett saw an animatic of the T. rex chasing a herd of Gallimimus, Spielberg said, "You're out of a job," to which Tippett replied, "Don't you mean extinct?"[8] Spielberg later wrote both the animatic and his dialogue between him and Tippett into the script, as a conversation between Malcolm and Grant.[11] As George Lucas watched the demonstration alongside of them, his eyes began to tear up. "It was like one of those moments in history, like the invention of the light bulb or the first telephone call," he said. "A major gap had been crossed, and things were never going to be the same."[12] Although no go motion was used, Tippett and his animators were still used by the production for knowing how the dinosaurs should move correctly. Tippett acted as a consultant regarding dinosaur anatomy, and his stop motion animators were re-trained as computer animators.[8]
Malia Scotch Marmo began a script rewrite in October 1991 over a five-month period, merging Ian Malcolm with Alan Grant.[13] Screenwriter David Koepp came on board afterward, starting afresh from Marmo's draft, and used Spielberg's idea of a cartoon shown to the visitors to remove much of the exposition that fills Crichton's novel.[14] Spielberg also excised a sub-plot of Procompsognathus escaping to the mainland and attacking young children, as he found it too horrific.[15] This sub-plot would eventually be used as a prologue in the Spielberg-directed sequel, The Lost World. Hammond was changed from a ruthless businessman to a kindly old man, because Spielberg identified with Hammond's obsession with showmanship.[16] He also switched the characters of Tim and Lex; in the book, Tim is aged 11 and into computers, and Lex is only seven or eight and into sports. Spielberg did this because he wanted to work with the younger Joseph Mazzello, and it also allowed him to introduce the sub-plot of Lex's adolescent crush on Grant.[17] Koepp changed Grant's relationship with the children, making him hostile to them initially to allow for more character development.[4] Koepp also took the opportunity to cut out a major sequence from the book, for budgetary reasons, where the T. rex chases Grant and the children down a river before being tranquilized by Muldoon. This scene was revived in part in Jurassic Park III with the Spinosaurus replacing the T. rex.[14]
After 25 months of pre-production, filming began on August 24, 1992, on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi.[18] The three-week shoot involved various daytime exteriors.[5] On September 11, Hurricane Iniki passed directly over Kauaʻi, which caused the crew to lose a day of shooting.[19] Several of the storm scenes from the movie are actual footage shot during the hurricane. The scheduled shoot of the Gallimimus chase was moved to Kualoa Ranch on the island of Oahu and one of the beginning scenes had to be created by digitally animating a still shot of scenery.[11] Additional scenes were filmed on the "forbidden island" of Niihau.[20] The crew moved back to the mainland U.S. to shoot at Universal Studios's Stage 24 for scenes involving the raptors in the kitchen.[5] The crew also shot on Stage 23 for the scenes involving the power supply, before going on location to Red Rock Canyon for the Montana dig scenes.[21] The crew returned to Universal to shoot Grant's rescue of Tim, using a fifty-foot prop with hydraulic wheels for the car fall, and the Brachiosaurus encounter. The crew filmed scenes for the Park's labs and control room, which used animations for the computers lent from Silicon Graphics and Apple.[22]
The crew moved to Warner Bros. Studios' Stage 16 to shoot the T. rex's attack on the SUVs.[22] Shooting proved frustrating due to water soaking the foam rubber skin of the animatronic dinosaur, which caused the animatronic T. rex to shake and quiver from the extra weight when the foam absorbed the water.[23] The ripples in the glass of water caused by the T. rex's footsteps was inspired by Spielberg listening to Earth, Wind and Fire in his car, and the vibrations the bass rhythm caused. Lantieri was unsure of how to create the shot until the night before filming, when he put a glass of water on a guitar he was playing, which achieved the concentric circles in the water Spielberg wanted. The next morning, guitar strings were put inside the car and a man on the ground plucked the strings to achieve the effect.[24] Back at Universal, the crew filmed scenes with the Dilophosaurus on Stage 27. Finally, the shoot finished on Stage 12, with the climactic chases with the raptors in the Park's computer rooms and Visitor's Center.[25] Spielberg brought back the T. rex for the climax, abandoning his original ending in which Grant uses a platform machine to maneuver a raptor into a fossil tyrannosaur's jaws.[26] The film wrapped twelve days ahead of schedule on November 30,[5][27][28] and within days, editor Michael Kahn had a rough cut ready, allowing Spielberg to go ahead with filming Schindler's List.[29]
Special effects work continued on the film, with Tippett's unit adjusting to new technology with Dinosaur Input Devices:[30] models which fed information into the computers to allow themselves to animate the characters traditionally. In addition, they acted out scenes with the raptors and Gallimimus. As well as the computer-generated dinosaurs, ILM also created elements such as water splashing and digital face replacement for Ariana Richards' stunt double.[8] Compositing the dinosaurs onto the live action scenes took around an hour. Rendering the dinosaurs often took two to four hours per frame, and rendering the T. rex in the rain even took six hours per frame.[31] Spielberg monitored their progress from Poland during the filming of Schindler's List.[32] Composer John Williams began work on the score at the end of February, and it was conducted a month later by John Neufeld and Alexander Courage.[33] The sound effects crew, supervised by George Lucas,[34] were finished by the end of April. Jurassic Park was finally completed on May 28, 1993.[33]
Despite the title of the film referencing the Jurassic period, most of the dinosaurs featured did not exist until the Cretaceous period, with the exception of Brachiosaurus and Dilophosaurus, both of which lived in the Jurassic period.[35] The screenplay acknowledges this when Dr. Grant describes the ferocity of the Velociraptor to a young boy, saying "Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous period..."
Universal spent $65 million on the marketing campaign for Jurassic Park, making deals with 100 companies to market 1,000 products.[43] These included three Jurassic Park video games by Sega and Ocean Software,[44] a toy line by Kenner that was distributed by Hasbro,[45] and a novelization aimed at young children.[46] The released soundtrack included unused material.[47] The film's trailers only gave fleeting glimpses of the dinosaurs,[48] a tactic journalist Josh Horowitz described as "that old Spielberg axiom of never revealing too much" when Spielberg and director Michael Bay did the same for their production of Transformers in 2007.[49] The film was marketed with the tagline "An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making." This was a joke Spielberg made on set about the genuine, thousands of years old mosquito in amber used for Hammond's walking stick.[50]
The film premiered at the National Building Museum on June 9, 1993, in Washington, D.C.,[51][52] in support of two children's charities.[53] The film made its VHS and LaserDisc debut on October 4, 1994,[54] and was first released on DVD on October 10, 2000.[55] The film was also released in a package with The Lost World: Jurassic Park.[56] The DVD was re-released with both sequels on December 11, 2001,[57] as the Jurassic Park Trilogy, and as the Jurassic Park Adventure Pack on November 29, 2005.[58] The film was re-released in UK cinemas on September 23, 2011.[59] A Blu-ray release of the trilogy was released on October 25, 2011.[60] A 3-D version of the film is due to be released on April 5, 2013.[61]
Following the film's release, a traveling exhibition began.[62] Steve Englehart wrote a series of comic books published by Topps Comics. They acted as a continuation of the film, consisting of the two-issue Raptor, the four-issue Raptors Attack and Raptors Hijack, and Return to Jurassic Park, which lasted nine issues. All published issues were republished under the single title Jurassic Park Adventures in the United States and as Jurassic Park in the United Kingdom.[63] Ocean Software released a game sequel entitled Jurassic Park 2: The Chaos Continues in 1994 on Super NES and Game Boy.[44]
Jurassic Park was broadcast on television for the first time on May 7, 1995, following the April 26 airing of The Making of Jurassic Park.[64] Some 68.12 million people tuned in to watch, garnering NBC a 36 percent share of all available viewers that night. Jurassic Park was the highest-rated theatrical film broadcast on television by any network since the April 1987 airing of Trading Places.[65] In June?July 1995 the film was aired a number of times on the TNT network.[65]
"The Jurassic Park Ride" went into development in November 1990[66] and premiered at Universal Studios Hollywood on June 15, 1996,[67] at a cost of $110 million.[66] Islands of Adventure in Orlando, Florida, has an entire section of the park dedicated to Jurassic Park that includes the main ride, christened "Jurassic Park River Adventure", and many smaller rides and attractions based on the series.[68] The Universal Studios theme park rides have been designed to support the film's plot, with Hammond supposedly having been contacted to rebuild the Park at the theme park location.[67]
Jurassic Park was the highest grossing film released worldwide up to that time, beating Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which previously held the title (though it did not top E.T. in North America).[69] The film opened with $47 million in its first weekend[1] and had grossed $81.7 million by its first week.[70] The film stayed at number one for three weeks and eventually grossed $357 million in the U.S. and Canada.[71] The film also did very well in international markets, breaking opening records in the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan,[72] ultimately earning $914 million worldwide,[1] with Spielberg reportedly making over $250 million from the film.[73] Jurassic Park's worldwide gross was topped five years later by James Cameron's Titanic.[74]
The film was widely acclaimed. High praise was heaped on the visual effects, although there was some criticism leveled at departures from the book. Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it "a true movie milestone, presenting awe- and fear-inspiring sights never before seen on the screen? On paper, this story is tailor-made for Mr. Spielberg's talents?[but] [i]t becomes less crisp on screen than it was on the page, with much of the enjoyable jargon either mumbled confusingly or otherwise thrown away."[75] In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers described the film as "colossal entertainment?the eye-popping, mind-bending, kick-out-the-jams thrill ride of summer and probably the year [...] Compared with the dinos, the characters are dry bones, indeed. Crichton and co-screenwriter David Koepp have flattened them into nonentities on the trip from page to screen."[76] Roger Ebert noted, "The movie delivers all too well on its promise to show us dinosaurs. We see them early and often, and they are indeed a triumph of special effects artistry, but the movie is lacking other qualities that it needs even more, such as a sense of awe and wonderment, and strong human story values."[77] Henry Sheehan argued, "The complaints over Jurassic Park's lack of story and character sound a little off the point," pointing out the story arc of Grant learning to protect Hammond's grandchildren despite his initial dislike of them.[16] Empire magazine gave the film five stars, hailing it as "...quite simply one of the greatest blockbusters of all time."[78] Rotten Tomatoes rated the film a "Certified Fresh" of 90%, with an average score of 7.6 out of 10, mostly from critics giving Jurassic Park a positive write-up with 100% of top critics being positive, and the site's consensus states "Jurassic Park is a spectacle of special effects and life-like animatronics, with some of Spielberg's best sequences of sustained awe and sheer terror since Jaws."[79]
In 1994, the film won all three Academy Awards it was nominated for: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing (at the same ceremony, Steven Spielberg, Michael Kahn, and John Williams took home Academy Awards for Schindler's List). The film won honors outside of the U.S. including the 1994 BAFTA for Best Special Effects, as well as the Award for the Public's Favorite Film.[80] It won the 1994 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation,[81] and the 1993 Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction, Best Writing for Crichton and Koepp and Best Special Effects.[82] The film won the 1993 People's Choice Awards for Favorite All-Around Motion Picture.[83] Young Artist Awards were given to Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello, with the film winning an Outstanding Action/Adventure Family Motion Picture award.[84]
The American Film Institute named Jurassic Park the 35th most thrilling film of all time on June 13, 2001.[85] The Chicago Film Critics Association also ranked Jurassic Park as the 55th scariest movie of all time and, in 2005, Bravo chose the scene in which Lex and Tim are stalked by two raptors in the kitchen as the 95th scariest movie moment of all time.[86][87] On Empire magazine's fifteenth anniversary in 2004, it judged Jurassic Park the sixth most influential film of the magazine's lifetime.[88] Empire called the first encounter with a Brachiosaurus the 28th most magical moment in cinema.[89] In 2008, an Empire poll of readers, filmmakers, and critics also rated it one of the 500 greatest films of all time.[90] On Film Review's fifty-fifth anniversary in 2005, it declared the film to be one of the five most important in the magazine's lifetime.[91] In 2006, IGN ranked Jurassic Park as the 19th greatest film franchise of all time.[92] In a 2010 poll, the readers of Entertainment Weekly rated it the greatest summer movie of the previous 20 years.[93]
Most significantly, when many filmmakers saw Jurassic Park's use of computer-generated imagery, they realized that many of their visions, previously thought unfeasible or too expensive, were now possible. Stanley Kubrick, the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, contacted Spielberg to direct A.I. Artificial Intelligence.[88] Filmmaker Werner Herzog was similarly impressed, citing the movie as an example of Spielberg being a "great storyteller" and that he knows how to weave special effects into coherent stories.[94] George Lucas started to make the Star Wars prequels,[95] and Peter Jackson began to re-explore his childhood love of fantasy films, a path that led him to The Lord of the Rings and King Kong.[96] Jurassic Park has also inspired films and documentaries such as the American adaptation of Godzilla, Carnosaur, and Walking with Dinosaurs.[88] Stan Winston, enthusiastic about the new technology pioneered by the film, joined with IBM and director James Cameron to form a new special effects company, Digital Domain.[97]
Film historian Tom Shone commented on the film's innovation and influence, saying that "In its way, Jurassic Park heralded a revolution in movies as profound as the coming of sound in 1927."[98]
This section does not cite any references or sources. (October 2012) |
Jurassic Park was released on VHS and Laserdisc in the summer of 1994. In 2000, the film was released on DVD as a single disc "Collector's Edition" with the original film mastery and loads of bonus features contained on the disc. It has been numerously released with its sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park in a "Deluxe Edition" set with collectible content for its consumer. Otherwise, it has been re-released twice on DVD in a boxed set with its two sequels in 2001 following the release of Jurassic Park III and in 2005 as an "Adventure Pack" boxed set. On October 11, 2011, the trilogy was brought on Blu-ray and DVD again with digitally remastered versions of the films that included Digital Copies on some and two bonus discs included.
Award | Year | Category | Nominee(s) | Result |
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66th Academy Awards[99] | 1994 | Best Visual Effects | Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri | Won |
Best Sound Mixing | Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy and Ron Judkins | Won | ||
Best Sound Editing | Gary Rydstrom and Richard Hymns | Won | ||
Saturn Awards | 1994 | Best Director | Steven Spielberg | Won |
Best Science Fiction Film | Won | |||
Best Special Effects | Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri | Won | ||
Best Writing | Michael Crichton and David Koepp | Won | ||
Best Actress | Laura Dern | Nominated | ||
Best Costumes | Nominated | |||
Best Music | John Williams | Nominated | ||
Best Performance by a Young Actor | Joseph Mazzello | Nominated | ||
Best Performance by a Young Actor | Ariana Richards | Nominated | ||
Best Supporting Actor | Jeff Goldblum | Nominated | ||
Best Supporting Actor | Wayne Knight | Nominated | ||
2012 | Best DVD Collection | Nominated | ||
Awards of the Japanese Academy | 1994 | Best Foreign Film | Won | |
BAFTA Awards[100] | 1994 | Best Special Effects | Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri | Won |
Best Sound | Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy and Ron Judkins | Nominated | ||
BMI Film Music Award | 1994 | BMI Film Music Award | John Williams | Won |
Bambi Awards | 1993 | International Film | Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards | Won |
Blue Ribbon Award | 1994 | Best Foreign Language Film | Steven Spielberg | Won |
Bram Stoker Award[101] | 1994 | Screenplay | Michael Crichton and David Koepp | Nominated |
Cinema Audio Society | 1994 | Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Feature Film | Gary Summers, Gary Rydstrom, Shawn Murphy and Ron Judkins | Nominated |
Czech Lions | 1994 | Best Foreign Language Film | Steven Spielberg | Won |
Grammy Awards[102] | 1994 | Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television | John Williams | Nominated |
Hugo Awards[103] | 1994 | Best Dramatic Presentation | Won | |
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards | 2000 | Best DVD | Nominated | |
2011 | Best DVD [104] | Nominated | ||
MTV Movie Award[105] | 1994 | Best Action Sequence | Nominated | |
Best Movie | Nominated | |||
Best Villain | T-Rex | Nominated | ||
Mainichi Film Concours | 1994 | Best Foreign Language Film | Steven Spielberg | Won |
Motion Picture Sound Editors | 1994 | Best Sound Editing | Won | |
People's Choice Awards[106] | 1994 | Favorite Motion Picture | Won | |
Young Artist Awards[107] | 1994 | Best Youth Actor Co-Starring in a Motion Picture Drama | Joseph Mazzello | Won |
Best Youth Actress Leading Role in a Motion Picture Drama | Ariana Richards | Won | ||
Outstanding Family Motion Picture - Action/Adventure | Won |
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Template:Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation 1981?2002 Template:Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film 1991?2010