The microscope from the teaser trailer to the original Jurassic Park. Universal Pictures

The Strangest Trailers of Pop Culture History: The Original JURASSIC PARK Teaser

Originally posted on Nerdist | By Eric Diaz | Last updated Jul 3, 2025 9:42 PM ET

These days, a teaser trailer for a movie will almost always contain footage from the film. Usually edited sometime while the movie itself was in principal photography. But before the turn of this century, teaser trailers were often their own unique thing, shot specifically just to “tease,” as the name suggests, and not much else. Such was the case for the original Jurassic Park teaser, which hit theaters in winter 1992. The trailer for Spielberg’s classic doesn’t show a single dinosaur. Instead, it focuses on the prehistoric mosquito in amber, explaining to audiences how the dinosaurs return. You can watch this classic trailer right here:

After we see miners digging in a cavern, the trailer shows a microscope examining the mosquito, while the narrator explains how this was all made possible due to a scientific breakthrough in the year 1990 . Why use the year 1990? Well, that was probably Steven Spielberg’s clever way to pay homage to the Michael Chricton novel, which he published in (you guessed it) 1990. It also means that John Hammond built an entire park populated with dinosaurs within three years. But hey, life finds a way. Especially when one has billions of dollars and a bad idea.

This era of blockbuster movie teaser trailers was very different. The teaser for Terminator 2: Judgement Day was in theaters a full year before the movie was released. And it didn’t feature a single shot used in the film. Going back even further, the teaser for The Empire Strikes Back just showed concept art for the film, with Harrison Ford narrating it. The last such trailer we can recall, with footage shot specifically for a teaser, was Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man. That teaser showed Spidey stopping bank robbers in a getaway copter, suspending them in a web between the World Trade Center. Once 9/11 happened, Sony pulled it from theaters, marking the end of an era for this kind of teaser. But Spielberg’s Jurassic Park remains among the very best of this now-lost art.

This article first appeared on Nerdist and was syndicated with permission.

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