Dennis Nedry drives at full speed on the rain-muddy surface. The Jurassic Park computer scientist is betraying his boss, John Hammond , and intends to sell frozen dinosaur embryos to the competition in exchange for a good sum of money. But during his journey he loses control of the vehicle and ends up going off the road, leaving the Jeep without enough traction to continue his escape. Trying to fix the situation, Nedry runs into a dinosaur. He ignores him at first, then treats him like a dog, tossing him a stick to get him to fetch him, and as he heads back to the Jeep, Nedry slips and falls to the ground. The dinosaur approaches him, begins to tense up, and ends up unfurling two large frills on his neck as he lets out a terrifying scream and spits viscous poison onto the IT guy. One of the mythical scenes of ‘Jurassic Park’ (Steven Spielberg, 1993) has a great protagonist, perhaps not the main one: a Jeep.
And it is that the seventh art and Jeep can boast of a fruitful relationship that already exceeds six decades. If behind the scenes, the brand’s vehicles have been an ideal means of transporting actors, equipment and filming material to the most remote places, the various Jeep ranges have been an essential part of a wide variety of productions since the 1950s. In fact, Jeep did not premiere in the seventh art with a war film or set in the wildest nature, but with a suspense film, ‘The Man with my Face’ (1951), a disturbing thriller in which he plays with the impersonation of the personality of the protagonist.
Adventure movies have been a genre in which Jeep, due to the performance of its models, has always been very present. After appearing in the long-running television series ‘Lassie’ (1954-74), Jeep did not hesitate to go on safari in the most remote Africa in the company of John Wayne in ‘Hatari!’ (1962). Directed by Howard Hawks , this film shows the camaraderie and professionalism of the ‘hawksian’ heroes in all its splendor as well as incorporating a classic by Henri Mancini ‘The March of the Baby Elephant’, in its soundtrack. A year earlier, Jeep made its debut in Spanish cinema as a military vehicle in Button de Ancla, starring the Dynamic Duo.
In more recent times, the Jeep Wrangler is the perfect car to discover the dinosaurs, face them and escape from the T‑Rex in Jurassic Park (1993), a film directed by Steven Spielberg in which the brand’s most classic off-roader Enjoy many minutes of screen time. Precisely, the director of Cincinnati appears with a face of few friends at the wheel of a Jeep CJ 7 in a scene from ‘Back to the Future’ (1985) in which Marty McFly , with his inseparable skateboard, hooks himself to the rear bumper to avoid reaching late to class. In the second part of this franchise, set in an ‘alternative’ 2015, a 1987 Jeep Wrangler YJ appears in camo paint and fully equipped for adventure.
In ‘Twister’ (1996), the Jeep Pick Up Honcho Townside that faces the tornado takes on a special role, while the Jeep Cherokee is the vehicle of the Peletier family in the television series ‘The Walking Dead’.
Thus, Jeep’s presence in the cinema has been reflected in the range in the form of special series and limited editions. A well-remembered example is the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Tomb Raider Edition, based on the vehicle in which Lara Croft stars in the parachute scene in ‘Tomb Raider. The Cradle of Life’ (2003). In the superhero genre, the Jeep Renegade Dawn of Justice Special Edition features many of the unique features of the car that appeared in ‘Batman vs Superman, Dawn of Justice’ (2016).
