https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20027-why-jurassic-park-s-s...

I still listen to Guns'n Roses "You should be mine" frequently mostly due to that movie.

Also, Robert Patrick is the best terminator.

100% agreed. Really was a magical time.

For me what "infinite CGI" has done is completely dull the wow factor of literally any movie. Decades ago the effects of T2 and others blew everyone's minds in a way people who weren't around can't comprehend. CGI was brand new and special effects really felt like you were witnessing elaborate magic tricks (since that's what they were).

Now we've seen movies do basically everything and the answer to "how'd they do that???" is just "yeah they used CGI." And CGI still doesn't feel grounded in reality like practical effects do.

Yes, a strong female character in big budget movies wasn't a common theme. Aliens 2 also had a strong female protagonist played by Sigourney Weaver. The movie was also directed by James Cameron.

Terminator 2 was a huge cultural phenomenon. I remember going to the movie theater with my Dad to see it. I think it was the first R rated movie I saw in the theater, so it was something that we bonded over. Many of my friends had a similar experience.

When looking back, all these movies (Alien, Terminator 2, and Jurassic park) were very well done. They never tried to achieve anything that was out of reach back then, and story-wise they were simply very entertaining. They didn't rely on, say, pornography (some movies clearly had too many naked men/women) to appease to their customers. The characters felt like real human-being who can hate and love strongly. They were done so well that it felt like nature. Movies nowadays couldn't do that anymore, somehow.

I'm in that age range and I lived through T2 and Endgame and I'll have to disagree.

T2 is one of my favorite movies of all time but experiencing the Endgame premiere, as a hardcore fan, with the other hardcore fans, was something else, it had the whole teather howling during the climax.

I also get that T2 is "easier" to enjoy in the sense that you need to watch like 22 movies to really get into Endgame.

Another possibility that fits these facts is that everyone is impressionable at 10-15 years old.

Perhaps it’s generational. It clearly did well in the box office, so somebody went out and saw it. But nobody I know directly, indirectly, or remotely has seen it.

It got zero chatter in any of the places that I frequent, and that includes some SF themed communities.

Big picture. Lots of tech, very expensive, Cameron, the whole kit. But whatever impact it had, clearly I was out of its blast radius.