Jurassic Park III Review

The Spinosaurus animatronic weighed 12 tons. This made it the largest animatronic ever built.

Jurassic Park and The Lost World author, Michael Crichton, worked with screenwriters for several days brainstorming ideas for a story. Crichton left after failing to come up with any satisfactory ideas.

The Raptors refusing to abandon their young came from the research of paleontologist, Jack Horner. Horner is also the inspiration for Sam Neill's character, Alan Grant, and he also consulted on all three Jurassic Park movies.

REVIEW:

Couple years after the incident in San Diego, Alan Grant and his assistant, Billy, are hired by the Paul and Amanda Kirby to help search for their lost son on Isla Sorna after a parasailing tour goes terribly wrong.

I don't remember a whole lot when I went to see Jurassic Park III in theaters other than that another movie was coming out. I have seen a lot of dislike towards the movie, but are they justifiable?

The story of Jurassic Park III does not really expand anything or does anything new with the series. The whole movie looks very rushed and it is obvious that it was meant to be a quick cash grab. The aim for Jurassic Park III was to come up with a bigger and meaner dinosaur than the T-Rex and the Velociraptors. The Spinosaurus was thought to be that answer, but proved otherwise when it was met with outrage by fans. I will get to the Spinosaurus, but I will save that part for last. Other than that, there was no clear aim of where they wanted to go with this movie's story. It was obvious that they didn't have any ideas or books this time to go on since there were no more books. Even though Michael Crichton was there with the screenwriters to brainstorm ideas, he left because even he couldn't come up with a good idea. So a third movie was a bad idea from the start if they couldn't come up with a good story idea for the movie. There were even scenes in the movie that were slapped on there for no reason. One of those scenes that I find humorous is the nightmare scene where Dr. Grant wakes up from his nap to see a Velociraptor calling his name. While I did chuckle it was because of how out of place it was. In fact, a lot of the movie seems to have forced humor that just falls flat because of how ridiculously idiotic the scenes are. The last complaint is that there is no antagonist in the movie. Usually, there is one person that has some alternate motive. The closest to a bad guy character was Dr. Grant's assistant, Billy, which he stole the eggs of Velociraptors so he can sell them at a high price to fund for a couple more Summers at their excavation site. Dr. Grant was livid when he found out, but in the end Billy was not a true antagonist. His motives did not affect the plot other than to have an excuse for the Velociraptors to chase them. Also, is it just me or is there a lot of necks being snapped in this movie? T-Rex, Udesky (played by Michael Jeter), even that random mercenary had their necks snapped whether it was from the Spinosaurus or the Velociraptors. That is not physically possible for any of them to do even if these dinosaurs aren't scientifically accurate.

Left to Right: Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Téa Leoni, and Alessandro Nivola

Sam Neill reprises his role as Dr. Alan Grant and was one of the things that I was excited about since he was not in the second movie. While I was glad to see this character returning his character acted like a hypocrite and was written sort of half-assed. In Jurassic Park, Dr. Grant loves dinosaurs. Even when he was with Tim and Lex he explained to them that their just animals. In this one, I don't want to say he hates dinosaurs, but he really disliked the dinosaurs that were made by John Hammond at his park. He even goes out to call them nothing more than theme park monsters. While I get that the cloned dinosaurs are not completely accurate it contradicts every aspect of the character from the first movie. In Jurassic Park, he loved the dinosaurs even to the point of resting on the belly of the sick Triceratops. He looked like he was in heaven already. In this one, he wants nothing to do with the dinosaurs on either of the islands. Grant goes on to even claim that no force on Earth or Heaven would get him to the second island, but as soon as he was offered money he instantly agreed despite knowing that the island is off limits to everyone and even claiming on stage in front of a hundred students that nothing will send him back to these islands. I always wanted to know if he and Ellie Sattler ever did get married. That would make sense from their relationship in the first movie. Even though Laura Dern does come back to play her role as Ellie Sattler the whole relationship between the two characters in the first movie was suddenly tossed out the window immediately in Jurassic Park III. This was sort of a missed opportunity to carry over the development of both Dr. Grant and Ellie Sattler over to this movie. Also, the scenes with Laura Dern are very short and seemed like they didn't know what to do with her, so they made her a stay at home mom with two kids and a husband that ISN'T Dr. Grant. I would have liked to see her character develop as well. Perhaps, she could have been the mother of the missing son and she could have gone to Dr. Grant to ask for help since they've known each other a long time. Yet, even that sounds awkward. I could only imagine their conversation being like this. "Hi, I know that we had a thing once and we broke up after almost being killed by dinosaurs, but can you help me save my son that is trapped on a completely different island full of dinosaurs?"

The rest of the cast I could not really care about. William H. Macy and Téa Leoni play the divorced couple, Paul and Amanda Kirby. They essentially kidnap Dr. Grant by lying about their true intent. The plot starts when Dr. Grant and Billy were asked to meet them at a bar and bribed them for a sky tour around Isla Sorna for vacation. Their true intentions were revealed after the plane crashes and their encounter with the Spinosaur and T-Rex fight that they were looking for their son, Eric. For the rest of the movie, they become sort of annoying when they don't want to listen to Dr. Grant's advice or start talking about awkward fishing memories of when Paul was being threatened by the tow man that he was going to knock his lights out like it was suppose to be a funny moment. To be honest I feel bad for the T-Rex more than any of the other characters. Leading up to what is needed to be talked about most.

T-Rex vs. Spinosaurus fight

When I was first introduced to the Spinosaurus I didn't think that a dinosaur like that actually

existed. Me being a kid at the time my only thought was, "Oh! My! GOD!" You can tell how amazed I was. I even remember going to a convention and getting a replica of a Spinosaurus claw after seeing this movie. After some study on this particular dino, I realized that the one in the movie behaved nothing like the real one. It was actually a piscivore (aka a fish eater) and would have had no interest in fighting other dinosaurs. It was disappointing, but what the movie did do was get me to actually take interest in finding out more about the Spinosaurus. After watching Jurassic Park III now, I watched it with a different mind set. One that I would agree with Dr. Henry Wu in Jurassic World that nothing about the dinosaurs are really natural. Do you know that by now we learned that dinosaurs had feathers or that the long neck sauropods like Brachiosaurus or Diplodocus don't have swan like necks? Yet, we still don't see anything changed to look or behave to what we currently know of these ancient animals. So I don't agree with most of the hate towards the Spinosaurus entirely. The only thing that I do agree with the fans on is the fight between the Spinosaurus and the T-Rex. For two movies, the T-Rex already made a staple into the franchise that it can't just be killed off. It was very jarring that the director even had the balls to make that decision. There was not even a build up to the two of them fighting. It happened by shear coincidence that while the characters were running from the Spinosaurus that the T-Rex was near by as well and the fight ended as soon as it began with the T-Rex being killed off. This was quite sad since it's mainly the T-Rex that people go see these movies for and they see this happen. Kind of a slap in the face in my opinion.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Jurassic Park III is very faulty, but still watchable or put on as background noise. It was purely made as a quick cash grab and it really showed that there was really nothing to do with the franchise. The story did nothing new other than introduce a new dinosaur. I couldn't care about the characters and I feel more for the T-Rex dying than anyone else. I know I said that The Lost World: Jurassic Park is barely watchable, but I find The Lost World: Jurassic Park more watchable than Jurassic Park III. Recently, I learned that there is a fan cut of this movie that fixes some of the errors thanks to YouTuber, Klayton Fioriti. It is called the Site B cut and it is on vimeo. The video is sort of pixelated, but if you are a Jurassic Park fan I say check that one out over the actual movie.