Jurassic Park Retrospective Pt. 4: Jurassic Park III
Great, just great. Here we are in the worst place in the world, and we’re not even getting paid- Dr. Alan Grant
After directing two immensely successful, but also very difficult to make, films for his and Michael Crichton’s beloved dinosaur franchise, Steven Spielberg was burned out on prehistoric thrills and wanted to hand the franchise over to a new director. His friend Joe Johnston had initially been considered to direct The Lost World before Spielberg decided to return to the director’s chair.
The film’s production ended up being a bit of a mess (although not quite as bad as Jurassic World Dominion, but that’s a story for another day). This was mainly due to the script, or rather lack thereof. The first draft was written by Craig Rosenberg and was based on the premise of a group of teenagers being stranded on Isla Sorna, an idea that was scrapped for sounding too much like “Friends with dinosaurs,” in Johnston’s words. The premise would eventually be revived for the animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous.
Peter Buchman was then hired to rewrite Rosenberg’s script. His version involved Alan Grant investigating a spate of strange deaths on the mainland (the perpetrators being a group of Pteranodons that escaped from Isla Sorna) and later crash landing on Isla Sorna while participating in a tour of the island. However, that script was thrown out just five weeks before filming began, as Johnston thought that its way of getting Dr. Grant back on a dinosaur-filled island was too complicated for its own good. He had also rejected Spielberg’s previous story idea of Grant staying in a tree house on Isla Sorna to study dinosaurs, as he didn’t think that Grant would want anything to do with genetically engineered dinosaurs after his experiences on Isla Nublar.
Upon a suggestion from David Koepp, who otherwise had no involvement in writing the film, Johnston and Spielberg instructed new screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor to follow a simple rescue mission plotline centering on the divorced Kirby couple conning Dr. Grant into participating in a rescue mission for their son, who has gone missing on Isla Sorna, which goes horribly wrong when the plane crashes, leaving the hapless interlopers at the mercy of an angry Spinosaurus and a pack of vengeful Velociraptors who want something that one of the group stole from them.
The biggest problem was that the script was never completed during production, often leaving the cast and crew uncertain what to do half the time. Paul Kirby’s actor, William H. Macy, who was initially excited to join the project because “I’m 50 and get to fight a dinosaur,” quickly soured on the project not only because of the unfinished script but because of how slow filming went on what was completed (often only managing to complete a quarter or an eighth of a page over a 12-hour workday). Alessandro Nivola, who played Billy Brennan, was also frustrated by the lack of a script, later complaining that “It was like the only part I’ve ever done that just had nothing for me to latch on to, character-wise” and that the only thing that kept him from quitting was Sam Neil letting Nivola play Beach Boys songs on his ukulele to help him calm down during breaks. Even Joe Johnston contemplated quitting on a few occasions because of how nerve-wracking shooting on an unfinished script was but ultimately decided to tough it out because the lack of a script could also free up the creative process.
A final problem came up during the filming of the infamous T. rex vs. Spinosaurus battle, when the animatronic Stan Winston’s team created for the latter proved to be more powerful than anticipated and ended up decapitating the T. rex animatronic, forcing the crew to cut the fight into a much shorter and much more anticlimactic scene.
Upon its premiere at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles on July 16, 2001 (followed by a wide release two days later), the film received mediocre reviews and turned out to be the lowest-grossing film in the franchise, earning $368.8 million against a $93 million budget. Critics decried it for its unlikeable characters, the bare-bones plot that often recycles elements from the previous films, and for focusing too much on action and scares while not leaving much room for wonder and awe. On the other hand, some, like Roger Ebert and Sam Neil (who reprised his role as Dr. Grant), have defended the film, with Neil even going as far as to call it his favorite of the franchise.
So which side is right? Is Jurassic Park III really as bad as its reputation, or is it a hidden gem that deserves to be reevaluated? I don’t know if there’s an objective answer to that question, but I can certainly give my opinion on what works and doesn’t work about this film.
Technical Aspects & Music
Billy: I don’t remember that one being on InGen’s list.
Dr. Grant: It wasn’t on their list, which makes you wonder what else they were up to.
As you can probably tell from the previously mentioned T. rex decapitation story, Stan Winston’s team went above and beyond the call of duty in designing the animatronics for this film. The Spinosaurus animatronic is given numerous moments to shine, most notably during the plane crash scene as it rolls the fuselage across the ground like a rolling pin and later in the riverboat scene, in which the build team really gets to flex its muscles by demonstrating how they were able to create an animatronic that could function while fully submerged in water.
Special mention also has to go to the practical effects for the Velociraptors and Pteranodons, especially the raptor feet closing in on Udesky to stab him in the back (which were prosthetics worn by a human actor but still feel chillingly convincing) and the animatronic pterosaur juveniles that try to eat Eric (which somehow manage to look terrifying yet utterly adorable at the same time). The CGI, meanwhile, looks a bit more cartoonish than the previous films but is still very well done, especially the raptors, the pterosaurs (especially the way the first one looms out of the mist like a Xenomorph), and the mixed herbivore herd the group stumbles across during the riverboat ride.
John Williams did not return to produce the score for this film. Instead, he recommended Don Davis, who had previously made a name for himself scoring the Matrix trilogy. I would say he fills Williams’ void pretty well, adapting the latter’s themes where appropriate and making his own memorable pieces as well. Highlights include the music during the plane crash sequence, the eerie tones while the group is exploring the abandoned genetics lab, the frenetic score for the Pteranodon attack, and the “Brachiosaurus on the Bank” composition, which swells into a beautiful rendition of the first film’s theme as we get our first glimpse of the eponymous sauropod and its companions.
The Story
Dr. Grant: Those things know we still have the eggs. If I drop them in the river, they’ll still be after us.
Paul: What if they catch us with them?
Dr. Grant: What if they catch us without them?
The story is noticeably more barebones than the previous two entries, with much more focus on the action and less on the corporate intrigue. Indeed, some fans have joked that the film mainly exists to adapt the parts of the books that they didn’t get to in the last two films. For instance, the river ride and pterosaur birdcage scenes are adapted from the first book, and the dinosaur cloning facility makes its first onscreen appearance after Hammond mentions it in the second movie.
Amanda: This is how you make dinosaurs?
Dr. Grant: No, this is how you play God.
One could also argue that the “stealing raptor eggs” subplot and the red-shirt mercenaries reference Lewis Dodgson’s plot from the second book and the mooks he brought along to do it.
The story’s lessened complexity is reflected in the runtime. Whereas all the other films in the franchise run in excess of two hours, this film clocks in at a measly 92 minutes. This lends the third film a much more breakneck pace, leaving little room for the quiet drama scenes and moments of wonder from previous films.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. Sure, the third film doesn’t have nearly the same depth as the other films, but it’s still one hell of a fun action flick. The action setpieces are just as entertaining and memorable as the others in the franchise, from the initial Spinosaurus attack and the first encounter with the Velociraptors in the cloning lab to the Pteranodon birdcage sequence and the final showdown with the Spinosaurus on the river boat. The T. rex vs. Spinosaurus fight is a little too truncated for its own good, but given what happened behind the scenes with the animatronics, it’s forgivable.
Even with the breakneck pace, the film still manages to sneak in some quiet moments of wonder and drama in there, like the scene near the end where Paul Kirby recounts a funny anecdote about sinking the trailer to his fishing boat and the tow truck sinking with it (“I miss fishing”) and the aforementioned “Brachiosaurus on the bank scene,” which is preceded by Grant, pensive and regretful after Billy’s apparent death, telling Eric about how he thinks you can divide young boys into astronomers and astronauts (“The astronomer, or the paleontologist, gets to study these amazing things from a place of complete safety.” “But then you never get to go into space.” “Exactly.”).
You know something, Dr. Grant? Billy was right- Eric Kirby
Before I move on from this section, however, I feel I should give my two cents on one of the franchise’s most enduring mysteries: what killed the crew of the Dino-Soar boat?
Joe Johnston and cinematographer Shelley Johnson have argued that Pteranodons were responsible, while many fans believe the Spinosaurus was the culprit. Personally, I lean toward Spinosaurus, as not only were the pterosaurs supposed to be safely locked away in the birdcage at that point, but I find it hard to believe they would have escaped Ben and Eric’s notice that easily. I also wonder if the Dino-Soar’s Mary Celeste act is a holdover from the earlier draft in which Kronosaurus was supposed to appear. However, I suspect a marine reptile that size (33 ft./10.3 m) would have reduced the boat to splinters. In any case, it’s a very effective portent of the horrors to come.
The Characters
Perhaps we should start with the two characters that virtually everyone who watches this film dislikes the most: Amanda and Paul Kirby (played respectively by William H. Macy and Tea Leoni). They get off to a bad start with their method of getting Dr. Grant on Isla Sorna (posing as millionaires and promising to fund Grant’s research if he gives them an illegal tour of the island) and only get worse once they land there. Paul reveals the truth about his family after they get stranded on the island (he runs a paint and tile shop in Enid, Oklahoma), and Amanda proves herself to be an annoying pest who constantly puts the group in danger with her screaming and general stupidity.
Indeed, many of the things that go wrong in the film are directly her fault. Her allowing her irresponsible boyfriend Ben Hildebrand (Mark Harelik) to take Eric on an illegal parasailing tour near the island is what got Eric stranded in the first place, and her screaming Eric’s name through a megaphone is what likely alerted the Spinosaurus to their presence (“Dr. Grant says that’s a very bad idea!”). Some have even gone as far as to blame her for the events of Jurassic World, given that she didn’t properly lock the door to the birdcage once the group escaped, which allowed Pteranodons to escape and nest on the mainland, which led InGen to hire Vic Hoskins to dispose of them, which led to him researching the possible military uses of the dinosaurs with Dr. Henry Wu, which led to Indominus rex.
I’m not inclined to hold it against her, though, as she had just gotten out of yet another life-threatening situation and likely was in a hurry to get the hell out of there, as was the rest of the group. Plus, Amanda’s son has been missing on the island for eight weeks, and at one point, she gets Ben’s decomposing corpse thrown in her face as Grant and Billy try to salvage his parasail, leading to one of her more understandable outbursts. Whether or not this, and her handing the eggs Billy stole back to the raptors at the end, redeems her, it is probably up to the eye of the beholder, as it doesn’t entirely make up for all her other stupid mistakes.
Personally, though, I feel Billy’s mistake of taking the raptors’ eggs in a harebrained scheme to sell them and secure funding for his and Grant’s dig is far more stupid than anything Amanda does throughout the film. It feels extremely out of character for an assistant to a man who not only studies dromeosaurs for a living but has also narrowly escaped being eaten by them to steal the offspring of animals he and Grant know to be as intelligent as primates. I feel like it would have made more sense for Billy to be secretly working for Biosyn or a similar company in a plot similar to Dodgson’s from the second book, as it would give him a better motivation than “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Again, whether or not he redeems himself by rescuing Eric from the Pteranodon nest (and, by extension, him turning up alive with Grant’s hat at the end) redeems him or not. Honestly, though, I think Billy deserved to live. The only problem I have with the Billy subplot is Grant’s “You’re no better than the people who built this place” speech, which I think is a little too melodramatic to take seriously.
All of the other human characters are far less problematic. Eric (Trevor Morgan) proves quite resourceful for a twelve-year-old stranded on a tropical island filled with flesh-eating dinosaurs. He successfully evades them for eight weeks by hiding in an abandoned InGen truck and warding the predators off with tear gas canisters. His reunion with his parents helps to tone down the elder Kirbys’ more annoying character traits, and his dialogue with Grant is fun to listen to (“I liked your first book more. You liked dinosaurs back then.” “Back then, they hadn’t tried to eat me yet.”)
There’s nothing much to say about the mercenaries the Kirbys bring along. There’s the sarcastic and mildly thuggish Cooper (John Diehl) and the pilot, Nash (Bruce A. Young), who quickly realize how in over their heads they are when they encounter the Spinosaurus, get themselves killed in their panic, and get the rest of the group stranded. Udesky, played by the late great Michael Jeter, sticks around a little longer, proving himself to be a meek and somewhat ditzy booking agent for the mercenaries who didn’t even do enough research to figure out that there were two dino-inhabited islands (hence why Grant’s there despite never having been on Site B). Still, he manages to endear himself to the audience with some snark at the bickering Kirby’s expense (“If we split up, I’m going with you guys,” he says to Grant and Billy at one point) and also gets one of the most horrifying deaths in the franchise when the raptors sever his spinal cord with their sickle claws in an attempt to draw the egg thief out and then snap his neck when it doesn’t work. To add insult to injury, he even admits that he was only there because another mercenary called in sick.
Grant, much like Malcolm in The Lost World, has also become much more jaded since Isla Nublar, having long since dismissed the idea of the animals on the two Islas even being genuine dinosaurs (“What John Hammond and InGen did at Jurassic Park is create genetically engineered theme park monsters. Nothing more and nothing less.”). His very justifiable grumbling after the group gets stranded provides some of the film’s best comedic moments (“If I lose you, it’s just me and the damn tourists,” he says to Billy at one point), as does the scene where he’s playing with Ellie’s son Charlie and his toy dinosaurs and gets carried away with describing the gory details of how they fought in real life (“Alan, he’s three,” Ellie says. “Wait until he’s five.”). The film’s attempts at showing the lingering trauma from the raptors on Isla Nublar are a bit more unevenly handled, though. There are some effective ways the film portrays this, like Grant’s reaction to Billy blowing into the 3D-printed raptor larynx and him and Ellie discussing the nightmares they still have about the encounter. Then there’s the infamous nightmare sequence where Grant wakes up to find the plane empty, with only a raptor saying his name in Billy’s voice as company. Maybe someone out there can make a talking dinosaur scary, but Joe Johnston isn’t it.
Speaking of Ellie (played once again by Laura Dern), while her breakup with Grant is much maligned by the fanbase, I appreciate how the film makes it clear that there’s no bad blood between the two or with Ellie’s husband, Mark. Charlie even calls Grant “the Dinosaur Man,” which is just adorable. Ellie even gets to save the day at the end when Grant calls her on the satellite phone the group recovered from the Spinosaurus’ feces, and she uses Mark’s connections with the State Department to send the Navy and the Marines to Isla Sorna. It’s a shame she’s in the movie so little, but she still manages to make the most of her limited screen time.
The Dinosaurs
Before I wrap this up, let’s talk about the real stars of the show: the dinosaurs.
Many fans, myself included, have lauded the dinosaur designs in Jurassic Park III as some of the best in the series because of their color and vibrancy. From the red and white striping on the Spinosaurus to the red and black ankylosaurs to the brilliant red Ceratosaurus to the striking color contrasts of the male and female Velociraptors, the colors here are very eye-catching.
The Spinosaurus has gotten much flak for killing off the much-beloved T. rex, which likely wasn’t helped by how short the fight was in the finished film (again, technical difficulties). Personally, though, I feel that using a different predator breaks up the monotony and gives the film an identity separate from the other films. It also helps that the Spinosaurus constantly stalks the group like a slasher movie villain, giving a much more sinister edge than the T. rexes from the previous films, who never really went out of their way to try to hunt the protagonists down. My only complaint about it is how its appearance is announced by the cheesy ringtone of Nash’s satellite phone, a la Captain Hook’s crocodilian nemesis from Peter Pan, which is way too cartoonish for a film that takes itself so seriously.
Ellie, they were smart. They were smarter than dolphins or whales. They were smarter than primates- Dr. Grant
I also like how this film began the trend of “humanizing” (for lack of a better word) the Velociraptors, who only pursue the protagonists after one of them steals some of their eggs. After two movies of them being portrayed as brutish maneaters, it’s nice to finally see more of their problem-solving intelligence portrayed onscreen, as well as their more cooperative side as they work together like a functional family unit to retrieve their young, as horrible as the results may be (like with Udesky). There are a few instances where the filmmakers get a little too carried away with showing how smart they are, however, especially in the cloning lab where one of them stands so still that Amanda mistakes it for a preserved specimen in a jar. I have a hard time believing an animal that Grant claims is as intelligent as a primate could be that cognizant.
Dr. Grant: Oh my God.
Amanda: What is it?
Dr. Grant: It’s a birdcage.
Amanda: For what?
The Pteranodons are equally intimidating and make for a new and novel villain to help close out the film’s third act. I’ve already mentioned how effectively the film handled the pterosaurs’ entrance and their offspring, but I also have to mention the one depicted in the GIF above, who stares Grant down as he tries to rescue Billy, as if daring him to try any funny moves. Granted, the fact that these pterosaurs have teeth is a little jarring, especially since Pteranodon literally means “toothless wing” in Ancient Greek, but, again, “genetically engineered theme park monsters.”
The only prehistoric animal I have a significant problem with is the Ceratosaurus, who approaches the group only to be warded off by the Spinosaurus dung (even giving an offended look to the camera as it walks off).
That look is dinosaur for, “That is one big pile of shit.”
While this scene is amusing, I can’t help but focus on how the CGI model feels half-assed, given how much less convincing the CGI itself is and how the ceratosaur has only one horn instead of the real-life genus’s three. I know it’s a rather petty nitpick, but it just bugs me, you know.
Final Thoughts
While this film is definitely the weakest of the original trilogy, with a much less polished script, annoying characters, and plot elements recycled from the previous films (a theropod on a rampage looking for its lost offspring, a human father trying to repair his relationship with his child, etc.), it also contains action set pieces as memorable as any others in the franchise, Alan Grant being the incredible everyman badass he always is (with Sam Neil being in fine form as always), and the special effects, both practical and computer-animated, being as sound as ever, although somewhat of a downgrade compared to the previous films. I can’t guarantee that every Jurassic Park fan will get as much out of it as I did, but I’d recommend checking it out at least once and seeing how much you like it. And I’m giving this one a 6/10.
Join me next time when I jump into Jurassic World and see whether or not it’s a rip-roaring return to form or a cynical corporate cash grab that spits all over what made the franchise special in the first place. Until next time, fellow prehistory fanatics.
