On the occasion of the release of yet another Laura Dern–less installment of the Jurassic Park franchise, we’re revisiting this GIF of Laura Dern’s face. This post first appeared in 2014, and a slightly updated version is reprinted below.
Jurassic World takes the DNA of Jurassic Park and updates it with even more state-of-the-art special effects, but there’s one secret weapon that Jurassic Park has that Jurassic World doesn’t: Laura Dern’s remarkably expressive, almost acrobatic mouth.
I asked the creator of this GIF, Reddit user TheTzu, if we could share it on Slate. TheTzu said he was inspired by a blog about Dern’s face, perhaps this one, and he assembled it from stills from that site as well as elsewhere. Taken together, it’s a reminder that no matter how much CGI you can afford, few effects are as powerful as an old-fashioned close-up of the human face—especially if you have an extraordinary face.
Read more in Slate about Jurassic Park:
