Latest Review
I love Jurassic Park. It is, on any given day, my most likely response if I’m asked to name my favorite movie. To me, it’s a perfectly constructed film, and the absolute pinnacle of a type of event movie that is, unfortunately, no longer made. The way it blends state of the art (for the time) CGI with practical effects is unmatched, and somehow, over thirty years after the movie premiered, all of those effects still hold up. It honestly defies logic, but is a testament to the talent and ingenuity of Steven Spielberg that he was able to create something so timeless. It’s also, of course, just an incredibly exciting thrill ride, and seeing it in the theater as a dinosaur obsessed ten year old is a core memory.
So it was with great interest that I noted the new releases from Awake, a brand we’ve been covering since their inception. The “Jurassic Watch” project is a pair of watches inspired by the film, and according to the brand is the beginning of a new series they’re calling a “Tribute to the 7th Art,” which promises to interpret and pay tribute to cult classics in popular culture through Métiers d’Art. In other words, it’s a way to apply traditional craft to contemporary ideas that conjure real nostalgia for the Awake team and, I imagine, many of their customers. For someone like me, who can’t see the iconic Jurassic Park typeface (reproduced here on the caseback) without the John Williams score running through my head, there’s a great deal of intrigue here.
The watches themselves are in the same vein as the brand’s Son Mai series introduced late last year and feature the same 39mm stainless steel cases. The dials have been produced in the same way, with layers of hand applied lacquer over a base of silver leaf, a traditional Vietnamese technique. This gives the dials a deep and visually arresting texture, as well as a vibrant color. Each dial is accented with a lume treatment that effectively positions the luminescent material underneath the hour markers and hands, creating the appearance of a ring of lume around the outside of each lumed dial element. According to the brand, they are the only ones to use lume in precisely this way, and while it sounds relatively simple, in person it’s quite striking and complex – the lume appears to be radiating out from behind each marker.
Each “Jurassic Watch” is meant to evoke a signature scene from the film. The T-Rex Edition is rendered in a bright orange, a callback to the eye color of the dinosaur in the movie, as seen in the famous sequence where the T-Rex attacks the stalled tour group during an evening rainstorm (she eats a lawyer, chases Dr. Malcolm, flips an SUV, etc). You’ll find two claw marks near 6:00, a reminder of the dial’s inspiration.
The Raptors Edition is a vibrant green, again a reference to the eyes of the genetically engineered killing machines, who in real life, as we all know, were closer to the size of a wild turkey, and likely had feathers. But that’s neither here nor there. In the movie, the raptors can open kitchen doors, but have a difficult time with mirrors and cabinets. This dial has three claw markings at 6:00, a reminder that, as Dr. Grant explains to a small child as the film opens, a raptor will happily disembowel you and begin chowing down while you’re still alive.
The caseback of each watch features additional details that tie them to the film. The La Joux-Perret G101 is engraved with a “jungle” motif that is meant to be reminiscent of the film’s location, and each edition has a different line from the film lasered in as well. The Raptors Edition reads “Life finds a way,” and the T-Rex Edition features “Spare no expense.” Both of these phrases have truly entered the lexicon over the last three decades to the point that they’ve almost become memes unto themselves. “Spare no expense” in particular is often repeated in my own friend group at nearly every opportunity, usually when one of us encounters something where clearly expense has been spared. I’m sure we’re not the only ones.
As much as I love Jurassic Park, I have to admit I have some mixed feelings about these watches and how they use the film as a jumping off point. I’m a big believer in Awake and think they are really onto something with these dials – they are just incredibly well executed and really outstanding in person. I just don’t know what they really gain by using all of the Jurassic Park design elements – the claw marks on the dial and the typeface on the caseback, specifically. The Son Mai technique they’re using here, in my opinion, is more than capable of standing on its own, so creating a connection to a film that I have an admittedly unhealthy obsession with seems unnecessary.
That said, if Awake can turn on even a small handful of prospective customers and convince them to buy into the brand based on the storytelling here, it’s likely a worthy endeavor. New watch enthusiasts are out there and they don’t even know it yet, so reaching into the world of movies and pop culture to make people aware of your product is probably smart. I might prefer the T-Rex Edition without all the T-Rex “stuff” packaged into it, but I already know about Awake, and I don’t need my watches and my Jurassic Park ephemera talking to each other.
I also think it will be interesting to see how Awake is able to continue this idea to other properties. There’s a good chance that this might all make a lot more sense once we have a fuller picture of the brand’s long range plan when it comes to the “Tribute to the 7th Art” series.
Both the T-Rex and Raptor Editions are limited to 50 pieces and retail for € 2,075. The first batch of 25 for each reference has been sold out, but the next batch is still available at press time, with delivery expected in early June. Awake
