JP III, Awful, or just bad?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, we ran predictions for Tomb Raider which were sadly accurate. I just saw a commercial for Jurassic Park III. It seems to follow in the footsteps of the first two movies by first postulating the fascinating concept that dinosaurs can be cloned and then exploring the most unimaginative possible ramification, to wit: dinosaurs get loose and kill people.

So my prediction, based on nothing but the commercial: The animation will be great. The tissue-thin plot will consist of random people getting chased and eaten. In the end, the good guys (identified by them being either hunky scientists or hot babes) will escape, and the morally questionable or geeky will become Purina dinosaur chow.

2

Oh, come on, its not going to be that good! :smiley: I mean, just because JP had the same basic plot as Westworld, doesn’t mean that JP III is going to be just as lame or derivative. Why, I’m sure that they’ve got an incredibly original idea for a sequel! What’s that? Would I like to try on a white jacket with wrap around sleeves? Sure! Hey, wait a minute! I’m not done here! Whaddya mean you’re gonna give me a room with soft wallpaper? What’re you doing with that needle? Hey! That huuuuuurrrrrrrrtttttsssssssss … ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

3

I am confident that it will be just like the first two, in that dinosaurs will roam about, looking very cool with their computer-animated selves, eating a bunch of people (though from what I’ve heard, this isn’t a major expedition this time around - how many people will be available to eat?), and that somehow kids will be involved.

I will, of course, be there to see it, since the JP series has had the most amazing depiction of dinosaurs since…well, forever. Well, except for that Dilophosaurus - that was lame beyond mortal comprehension. The poison idea was good, but the frills? Gag.

I went to see the first one because I had read the book and thought, “Hey, this would make a really cool movie!”
Unfortunately, Spielberg made a really crappy movie out of it, which just happened to have amazing special effects. So, my general opinion was, “Plot? Actors? What are you talking about? There are dinosaurs on the screen!”

Then, I read the second book, The Lost World, and it sucked worse than the first movie did. I hoped beyond hope that this time, the movie wouldn’t follow the book. And, for the most part, it didn’t, which I consider a good thing this once. The movie still sucked, though not as badly, but that didn’t matter because there were more dinosaurs!

I currently own both JP and The Lost World on DVD :slight_smile:

This third installment, now, doesn’t have a book that it is based on (as far as I know). This means I have no prior expectations for it to live up to. So, I expect a poor plot with some characters who I probably couldn’t care less about being chased around (and possibly eaten) by dinosaurs!

And how cool is that for a movie! :smiley:

4

I remember one of the characters in JP2 saying something along the lines of: “These creatures haven’t walked the earth for tens of millions of years, and now all you want to do is shoot them?”

I have a similar reaction. The filmmakers have such magnificent subjects (thanks to their animators), and they just want to make a scary monster movie. I remember an actual sense of wonder developing when I first saw the dinos in the first movie – why not have a documentary-style movie about peaceful dinosaurs? Money, I guess.

5

AlbertRose: check out (if you haven’t already) the BBC’s Walking with Dinosaurs. The producers of that series pretty much do what you are talking about - the graphics are on par with JP’s dinos (though, admittedly, the close-ups aren’t) and it is most definitely documentary in style.

6

A group of friends and I went to see the original either on opening night or close to it, the latest screening they had. My favorite memory of it has nothing to do with the film, but watching the families walking out of the theater from the previous showing. Many of the children looked like they had just gazed upon the face of God. And that was pretty cool.

Crappy movie, though. But I only say that because I was bitter that it came along about twelve or so years too late for me.

7

I was obsessed with dinosaurs when I was a kid, Jurassic Park WOULD have been a religious experience for me too had it been released around 1985 or earlier. I had a lot of problems with the movie, though, largely because I read the book first, which is very different from the movie (though it was a lot closer to the original than the second one). None of the JP movies have been good, I doubt this third one will be any better.

I sure wish I could post images here, this would be a perfect time for the ‘Raptors doing Long Division’ photoship pic someone did at the SA forums.

8

I predict it will be exactly as bad (or good depending on viewpoint) as JP2, which is to say, exactly 5 times more watchable than Tomb Raider or AI (that’s not saying much, really).

Luckily, it’s a simple formula that’s impossible to screw up. I hope.

9

I was one of those kids whom Jurassic Park was a religious experience. I was 11. For about a year and a half it was nothing but Jurassic Park for me. Then it wore off. Then came The Lost World. I thought it was the coolest, but after seeing it at least five times that summer I got sick of it. Now, I’m not too excited about JP III. I’m just going to see it because of nostalgic tradition. Plus, my friend and I are going for the sole reason to make fun of it. That’d oughta be easy.

10

Aw, c’mon, it’ll be fun! JP2 had that lame eco-message worming through the whole flick. Darn near ruined it for me. It was revolting how Mr. Greenpeace was supposed to be viewed as a hero or something, even though his antics (releasing the caged dinos, screwing with the hunter’s bullets) caused all the problems. If he hadn’t released the dinos, the dinos wouldn’t have trashed all the equipment, and they’d have been able to just call for help, rather than trekking through the jungle and dying by the truckload.

JP3, at least, looks like they’ve dropped all pretense of social consciousness and decided to have an all-out dino bash. At last, there’ll be pteranodons attacking people. And they’ve added a spinosaurus, the largest land predator ever, to slap the T-rex around. Rock!

11

Don’t mind me, I’ll just sit over in the corner sobbing - a poster here casually mentions having seen JPI when they were a chiiiiiiiiiiild :::Sob Sob:: [sub]( I, of course, took my -ahem- child to see JPI)[/sub]

12

Come on, someone has to speak up for JP Trois.

After the weak ending of JP1 (obvious deus ex machina) and the plot hole of Lost World (so how did they die again? :p), I’m not expecting too much in the ways of a plot. This isn’t going to be Hitchcock or Kubrick, it’ll be dinosaurs with a plot/characters as an excuse.

Everyone needs a guilty pleasure. For me, this is the one movie series I will see mainly for the cool graphics. To denigrate the movie because it has a horrible plot and unrealistic characters is just kicking it when it’s down. No one expects the plot to be great, you know they’re going in for the dinos. That’s all.

About the kid thing…yeah I saw it when i was young. Don’t feel bad, wring, my parents let me, my cousin, and my brother see it when we were about nine, seven, and five respectively. :slight_smile: We all survived intact. However, my best friend at the time, same age as me, freaked out and had to leave when she saw it…

I think it had that effect on me. When you’re a kid…dinosaurs, man! hehe.

13

I’ll probably see JP3, but what I’m really looking forward to is the six-hour miniseries adaptation of James Gurney’s Dinotopia. However, we’ll have to wait another year or so; it’s not due to be shown on ABC until May 2002.

Dinotopia is being produced by the same folks who brought us Gulliver’s Travels with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen; Alice in Wonderland; Merlin; Jason and the Argonauts; The Tenth Kingdom and Arabian Nights (for better or worse; IMHO, Gulliver’s was their best effort, but I haven’t seen Merlin). Digital effects will be handled by the same people who did effects for those miniseries and for the BBC documentary mentioned by Darwin’s Finch.

The producers claim this will be the most elaborate and expensive TV miniseries ever made (though they haven’t said exactly how much they are spending).

14

My mistake: The budget for Dinotopia is $80,000,000.

15

I guess they’ve also dropped any pretense of scientific accuracy, too, eh? (Not that they’ve been too careful about it in the past, but still…)
Spinosaurus is known from relatively little material (the type specimen was destroyed in WWII), and what we do have shows that it would have been no match for an allosaur, much less a T. rex. It may well have been the longest therapod, but it is estimated that T. rex probably outweighed it by a good ton or two. It was also not the savage meat-eater that other carnosaurs were - its teeth were conical and non-serrated. Which means it probably ate fish. Not dinosaurs.

My money’s on T. rex…apparently as the underdog, given the accuracy of past JP movies.

16

What’s with all this Dilophosaur bashing? In my opinion, that was super cool. We don’t have a record of the soft parts, sure. Dilophosaurus probably didn’t have a frill or spit poison, sure. But I’d bet a godzillion dollars that some dinosaurs had absolutely astounding soft tissue structures that would knock your socks off. So, IMHO giving the Dilophosaur a frill was genius.

17

And here I was thinking we had a new Pope. I need to read the papers more…

18

NBC is going to show JP again on Saturday and they will show clips from JP3.

19

I could teach you all something about reptilian soft tissues.

If you know what I mean.