# Jurassic Park in 3D; who saw it?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [April 7, 2013, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054 "2013-04-07T04:00:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 18\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/1 "2013-04-07T04:00:22Z")

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I saw it today. The 3D was okay considering it was a conversion, but I didn’t see it because of the 3D. I saw it because I wanted to see in theater for first time since I was a kid.

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**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/2 "2013-04-07T05:30:28Z")

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The ads look like it’s done in Viewmaster 3D with 2D people you can’t see around in front of a 2D background. No plans.

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**Author:** ![PapSett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/3 "2013-04-07T14:58:06Z")

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Went last night, in fact. The 3D wasn’t great, but I wasn’t about to miss the chance to see one of my favorite movies of all times in IMAX. Had a great time!

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**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/4 "2013-04-07T17:26:11Z")

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I saw it, and was honestly surprised how well that movie holds up. A lot of it is the full-scale models, I suppose; they add a “legitimacy” to the dinosaurs that I’m guessing your brain then transfers to the CG models of same.

The 3D was hit or miss… Brilliant in some scenes, not so great in others. Gennaro on the raft at the beginning had the classic “cut-out” look, like somebody pasted a perfectly flat man onto the scene. The moment when Grant sees the Brachiosaurs in the lake also had no depth at all. Those two moments really stuck out as a failure of the 3D, but I’m not remembering any other particularly bad moments, so overall I’d call that a success.

The best part of the experience for me was the family sitting just a row in front of me. It was obvious early on that none of them, from the parents to the three kids, had ever seen the movie before. They gasped when the goat leg dropped on the jeep, screamed at the raptor head appearing behind Sattler, and cheered when the T-Rex ate the raptor at the end. For all the talk about how the general public ruins the movie-going experience, it was actually kinda awesome seeing the movie “fresh” through their eyes.

Overall? Totally worth going and seeing, if for no other reason than DINOSAURS!

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**Author:** ![expectopatronum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/expectopatronum/32/173_2.png) [@expectopatronum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/expectopatronum)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/5 "2013-04-07T19:27:25Z")

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jurassic park was one of the first movies i went to with my friends and no parents along, and man did it blow me away. i definitely wasn’t missing this.

saw it yesterday, and i wasn’t disappointed. it holds up, as noted, and the effects are still impressive. the scene where the t-rex attacks the kids in the jeep was as intense as it was when i was a kid. i checked myself after they escape and my whole body was tense.

**Astral Rejection** , i know what you mean. my theater had plenty of kids in it and i thought to myself “these kids are about to have the crap scared out of them”. in a good way.

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**Author:** ![LH75](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lh75/32/4438_2.png) [@LH75](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LH75)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/6 "2013-04-07T19:50:14Z")

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This was the first time we had seen a 3d movie since it has come back into fashion. We remember the old fifties 3d and its re-emergence in the seventies. We weren’t all that impressed.

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**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/7 "2013-04-07T19:55:32Z")

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It will be a long time before I see any 3D movies. At least long enough that I don’t have to wear some bulky glasses to do it.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/8 "2013-04-07T20:05:17Z")

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I kind of wonder why the would do a conversion-job. Most of the dinosaurs were computer-generated to begin with; it shouldn’t be too hard to take the original animation files and do the 3D properly. OK, you’d still have to convert the humans and most of the scenery, but nobody’s watching this movie to see the humans, anyway.

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**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/9 "2013-04-07T20:21:39Z")

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There are theaters near me showing it in plain-old 2D, so if you still want to see it again without the hassle of 3D, you probably can. 😃

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**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/10 "2013-04-07T20:23:14Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> I kind of wonder why the would do a conversion-job. Most of the dinosaurs were computer-generated to begin with; it shouldn’t be too hard to take the original animation files and do the 3D properly.

You’d be surprised at how much of the dinosaur shots are actually model work. They used CG very sparingly in the film, and even some of the raptor shots are good old-fashioned animatronics.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/11 "2013-04-07T20:41:40Z")

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Really? All the press at the time was all about “Look at these amazing computer animations we made!”. Though I suppose it’s not too surprising, given how new computer animation (especially of living creatures) was at the time.

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**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/12 "2013-04-07T20:53:52Z")

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I saw it in a nice, bright IMAX 3D theater and I thought the 3D conversion was really well done.

It had been a while since I saw the whole movie, from beginning to end without commercials, even though I have it on DVD. I saw it something like 11 times in the theater when it first came out in 1993. It was great to watch it again on the big (really big) screen. I started to tear up when Alan and Ellie first see the brachiosaur.

Regarding the CGI, sure there were lots of “regular” effects shots, but the movie marked a sea-change in how movie-makers could go about creating fantasy on the screen. The first views of the brach and parasaurolophus were digital, as were the shots of the T.Rex walking and running, both after Malcolm and after the gallimimus flock. It all still holds up today.

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**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/13 "2013-04-07T21:46:42Z")

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That’s true, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I was just saying it wouldn’t necessarily be that easy to go back to the CG when 3D-ifying the movie, since a fair amount of the dinosaur work was models.

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**Author:** ![Unpronounceable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de0a6/32.png) [@Unpronounceable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unpronounceable)\
**Post date:** [April 7, 2013, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/14 "2013-04-07T23:40:33Z")

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> [@Astral\_Rejection](#):
>
> You’d be surprised at how much of the dinosaur shots are actually model work. They used CG very sparingly in the film, and even some of the raptor shots are good old-fashioned animatronics.

Animatronics? Ha!

Quite a lot of the raptor scenes were [guy-in-a-rubber-suit](https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/jurassic-park-evolution-of-a-raptor-suit).

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**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/15 "2013-04-08T00:11:02Z")

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I stand corrected! I thought some of the kitchen shots were animatronic (since you can see a hand reach out to stabilize a raptor when they first walk in), but I suppose they were stabilizing a man in a suit, instead?

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**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/16 "2013-04-08T00:23:34Z")

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There’s still animatronics in the head and neck.

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/17 "2013-04-08T00:31:30Z")

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> [@dropzone](#):
>
> The ads look like it’s done in Viewmaster 3D with 2D people you can’t see around in front of a 2D background. No plans.

See, all I’ve seen are the online trailers. I know that YouTube has a 3D option now, and I’ve seen a bunch of trailers that way. But, for some reason, both this and Titanic 3D don’t seem to have them, even though 3D is the only thing that makes them different from the original.

From what you guys describe, it sounds worse than the automatic 3D on YouTube.

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**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\
**Post date:** [April 8, 2013, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jurassic-park-in-3d-who-saw-it/655054/18 "2013-04-08T01:35:55Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Really? All the press at the time was all about “Look at these amazing computer animations we made!”. Though I suppose it’s not too surprising, given how new computer animation (especially of living creatures) was at the time.

[Yeah, you can read some more about the non-cgi aspects of it here.](http://www.cracked.com/article_20320_7-amazing-movie-special-effects-you-wont-believe-arent-cgi_p2.html)
