Blechlight - Jurassic Park III

Today is a special day: for the first time in fourteen years, Jurassic Park will return to the silver screen. I haven't seen it yet, but I will tonight if everything goes according to plan. Until then, we have the last of the "Jurassic Park" movies to cover. Unlike the others, this one was only produced by Steven Spielberg, who passed the reins on to Joe Johnston. Without any affiliation with Michael Crichton's novels, the screenwriters had to produce a story off their own. While this isn't inherently bad, the result in this case was something along the lines of a disaster of a Jurassic Park film.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Jurassic Park III.
So, what's the story? Sam Neil reprises his role of Alan Grant from the first movie, continuing his research on Velociraptors and, generally, wanting to forget about Isla Nublar. However, a mysterious couple comes along (played by William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) and offers funding if he'll give them a tour of Isla Sorna. So, he's back to the island that "no force in Heaven or Earth" would get him to with his student, Billy (Alessandro Nivola), and a group of mercenaries when, wouldn't you know it, something goes horribly wrong. With a downed plane and the secret out that the donors aren't who they say they are, the group must survive on an island of old threats and a few new ones as well.
Now, I can go on and on about why this movie doesn't work. For instance, that above paragraph is all covered in the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the movie. The 'secret' is out before you know it, and it doesn't really have any bearing on what happens throughout the rest of the film. From that point on, it's just sequences of running from dinosaurs, taking five-minute breathers, and then running again. I have heard the argument that the first two films were similar, but at least they tried to keep a message with it. The first was "don't be careless about what you don't know about", the second was a message about animal rights, but there's really nothing here. There's just about no memorable dialogue, and what is worth remembering is laughably bad, even with Sam Neil to back it up.
Well, we could forgive it if the action is good, right? Well, I could, if it was, but it's all a mixed bag. While the trailer shows a few animatronics, most of those are gone by the final cut. They are replaced, instead, by a large number of CGI models, even for the medium shots. Using 2001 animation technology for close-ups like that, most look incredibly dated. Even at the tender age of five, I remember the others looking so real and tangible, while this one looked and felt like a Saturday morning cartoon with a little bit more violence. There are still a few scenes where they opted for a practical model, most memorably when the Spinosaurus is attacking the plane in the tree-tops, but those really are very clunky-looking and only make it feel more like a theme-park ride: without a single hint of danger.
Speaking of which, I'd like to take a moment to point out who was really running the show. The T. rex was originally going to be the main villain, but the paleontological advisor Jack Horner (whom Alan Grant's character was based off of) was on a personal campaign at this time to show the king of the dinosaurs as a harmless scavenger. Instead, he decided to replace him with the lesser-known dinosaur at the time Spinosaurus aegypiticus. His reasoning? That it was bigger, so it absolutely had to be badder. Even fifteen years ago, we knew better than this: the few fossils we had of Spinosaurus showed a really delicate frame, more accustomed to catching fish. This didn't stop Horner, though, as he allowed the team to make progressively worse inaccuracies to the model to beef it up. I appreciate the guy and all that he's done to the field of paleontology, but when you take something that looks deadly, over-stuff it into something that looks regrettably goofy, and only do so to kill of everybody's favorite dinosaur, you may want to rethink your strategy.

"What is it? A T. rex?"
"I don't think so. It think it's a weird amalgamation of a duck and a folded balloon of a Spinosaur..."

While Spinosaurus is the biggest problem for me, the movie in general seemed to fail rather miserably with their dinosaurs. The Velociraptors, the ruthless hunters that killed for sport in the other two films, only kill one person in this film, and they have a motivation now, like some sort of slasher villain. There's a cage full of Pteranodons that is set up well, but it full of too many plastic CG models and green-screen effects for the threat to really settle in. And then there are animals that are just thrown in for the sake of having said animals. T. rex? Only there to be killed by Spinosaurus. Ankylosaurus? Only there for fifty frames. Brachiosaurus? No interaction with the characters at all, and might've looked more realistic as a cardboard cutout. Does Ceratosaurus have any fun moments? Nope; he's built up for three seconds just so he can waltz out of frame, never to be seen again. For the legacy of a franchise that took its monsters so seriously, it all feels really pointless. 

All in all, it's not really worth your time. Besides a few performances and one fun scene, there isn't anything truly memorable or, really, that good. Considering that it's the Jurassic Park franchise, they don't seem to really try to make anything like the first two . The result is a step down from a monument in film making to something that managed to be more generic than "the Lost World: Jurassic Park." Thankfully, almost everyone involved has moved on to something better- Joe Johnston directed 2011's "Captain America: the First Avenger," and Jack Horner is providing some pretty interesting insight on how to make a real-life Jurassic Park. The world is forgetting about this little film, and it's about time we do the same.

That leaves two ratings the series hasn't earned yet: "Buy it" and "Burn it". Which one will "Jurassic World" hold? Will it be a great new addition to the franchise, or will it be a forgettable retread of the same ground the first three covered? We'll all find out today, tomorrow, or next week.

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