90s Blockbuster Hits

Let’s rewind and take a look at five of our favorite 90s blockbusters featuring scenes filmed in the National Parks!

1. Thelma and Louise (1991)

Thirty-one years ago, Thelma and Louise left for a weekend getaway in the mountains but encountered some trouble along the way, which caused them to flee to Mexico. 

Thelma and Louise drove through Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, but filming of Thelma and Louise primarily took place in California and Utah. The film features scenery from Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park. Oddly enough, the dramatic “Grand Canyon” scene at the end of the movie wasn’t actually filmed at Grand Canyon National Park, but rather at Dead Horse Point State Park.

2. Forrest Gump (1995)

One day, for no particular reason, Forrest Gump decided to go on—in his words—a little run. Forrest ran for three years, two months, 14 days, and 16 hours; he ran upwards of 16,00 miles on his “little run,” which took him through 34 states. 

In a montage, Forrest is shown running down piers, through fields and woods, and across a stone bridge with mountain-peaks in the background—this is actually the St. Mary Entrance of Glacier National Park. 

Bonus fun fact: The Shining and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe also featured scenes filmed in Glacier National Park! 

3. Armageddon (1998)

In this 90s sci-fi hit, NASA scientists sent a team of skilled oil-drillers into space to prevent a Texas-sized asteroid from colliding with Planet Earth. 

The dry terrain of Badlands National Park made it the perfect place to film the surface of the asteroid. Another 90s movie set in space, Starship Troopers, also used Badlands’ landscape as the filming location for the home planet of the arachnids.

4. Blade (1998)

26 years after Marvel introduced Blade the Vampire Slayer in their comic-book series The Tomb of Dracula, Marvel released their first Blade movie, which doubled as their first box office hit. 

Although filming of Blade primarily took place in Los Angeles, parts of the movie were filmed in Inyo County—and, in particular, Death Valley. 

Bonus fun fact: the Star-Wars franchise also used Death Valley as the filming location for the desert-planet Tatooine. 

5. Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Steven Spielberg revealed John Hammond’s dinosaur park on Isla Nublar in the early 90s, and the Jurassic Park movie-franchise has been going strong ever since. In Lost World: Jurassic Park, fans discovered that Hammond owned another dinosaur island just 87 miles away: Isla Sorna. 

Isla Nublar was primarily filmed on Kauai—with some filming done at Universal Studios and Red Rock Canyon State Park; Lost World: Jurassic Park was set to be filmed in a similar environment. However, research indicated that dinosaurs actually lived in forests similar to those in Northern California, so the majority of Isla Sorna was instead filmed in Redwoods National and State Parks.