‘Jurassic Park III’ is a Big-Budget Midnight Monster Movie
Jurassic Park is one of the best blockbusters ever made so, naturally, any attempt to make a sequel had an uphill battle from the very beginning. But the first sequel, The Lost World, had had two major things working in its favor: it was also based on a novel by Michael Crichton and it featured the return of Steven Spielberg as director. Jurassic Park III had neither of those things. On paper, that’s a pretty doomed start. As a kid, though, I didn’t care, because I was absolutely starved for new Jurassic Park content. I’d grown up with all the toys, the games, watched both movies over and over. When the third one hit, I was in sixth grade and supposed to have outgrown dinosaurs, but I hadn’t then and haven’t now. Plus, everything about it, at that age, sounded extremely promising. Spinosaurus? Pteranodons? The return of Dr. Grant, the character I’d idolized so much from the original? Music to my young ears. Of course, even with all of those individual elements, there was no way that it could be what the original was. And it isn’t. And I think that, ultimately, that has proven to be its greatest strength.
Things are different right out of the gate. Spielberg’s Jurassic Park is the ultimate popcorn blockbuster, yet this one manages to be even more of a popcorn flick, a no doubt intentional move on the part of director Joe Johnston. A protege of Spielberg’s, Johnston is similar enough in style to make this a believable continuation, but is also in some respects a filmmaker who seems more at peace with his campier sensibilities than Spielberg. Johnston is also no slouch, by any stretch, having helmed The Rocketeer, October Sky, Captain America: The First Avenger and 2010’s The Wolfman, just to name a few.
To truly examine Jurassic Park III, though, we need to look at the movies that followed in the wake of Jurassic Park, the slew of low-budget flicks aimed at capitalizing on its success. I’m talking about films like Raptor, Gargantua, Tammy and the T-Rex, and, above all, the Carnosaur franchise. Carnosaur is well known for being the biggest and most blatant Jurassic Park ripoff, even though it is based on a novel that predated the publication of Michael Crichton’s book by several years. Still, there’s a grain of truth to that, given that Jurassic Park began to generate enormous hype from the moment the movie was announced and legendary B-Movie producer Roger Corman saw an immediate way to capitalize on it with a film of his own made for a fraction of a fraction of the cost. The Carnosaur movies have teeth in the way Jurassic Park didn’t, given that they were genuine, R-rated low-budget horror movies.
Jurassic Park III, however, is essentially a Carnosaur movie that happened to have several zeroes added to the end of its budget. Spiritually, it is totally in keeping with that series and that kind of film. It’s a full-blown late night monster movie, the kind of thing that one used to stumble across on USA Up All Night or MonsterVision, but one that just so happened to be made for the cost of a studio blockbuster. The key to the success of Jurassic Park III is, in essence, that it’s Spielberg in the streets and Corman in the sheets.
This is immediately clear through the presentation of the dinosaurs themselves. In the original Jurassic Park, the T-rex was an obvious threat. There was clear reason to be afraid when in its presence, but it was never a villain. It was an animal. They simply kept intersecting its path and it would chase them until it lost interest. In other scenes, it literally did not even notice they were there. The Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III is very different. They encounter it pretty much the moment they hit the island. They knick it with their plane as they’re trying to leave and from that single encounter, they are marked for death. It will stop at nothing to destroy them. It’s reminiscent of Michael Myers, the moment he lays eyes on Laurie in the original Halloween and then fixates on her for the rest of the film.
The Spinosaurus is an antagonist. It’s a killing machine, and even though it was designed for somewhat accuracy at the time, it is clearly also designed to look absolutely terrifying. This is a fast, humongous killer crocodile on giant legs. It is a literal replacement for the T-Rex, a lead dinosaur designed to be bigger and badder, blatantly showcased in a scene where it fights a T-Rex and quickly kills it. There’s a scene on the river where they need to basically set it on fire and “defeat” the Spinosaurus (but like any great monster, surprise, he lives!) in a way neither of the previous movies had done for the T-Rex, because even if it was a Hollywood-ized animal, that was an animal and this is a movie monster. The Spinosaurus relishes in being evil in a way it’s hard not to love. Pretty much the only scene in the entire film to treat the Spino like an animal is a sequence reminding us that it poops.
Even the raptors are portrayed very differently than they had been in the past, and much more in keeping with the kind of film that Jurassic Park III is compared to the previous movies. In the original, the intelligence of the raptors was absolutely meant to be scary and convey them as a threat, but they were still smart for animals. They have clever attack patterns that can lead to even a skilled hunter being killed if he doesn’t know to look for it. It’s treated as terrifying when they learn how to open doors, but it’s portrayed like watching any smart animal solve a puzzle. They’re a definite threat, but they still fall for the reflection in the kitchen scene. They are animals that can be outsmarted by human beings.
In Jurassic Park III, they are evil geniuses. The whole notion of being able to outsmart them is out the window, as there’s now literally a line in the film to bluntly state, “they were smarter than primates.” They’re no longer a pack, they’re a tribe with clear hierarchy and communication. There were raptor calls in the first two movies that clearly signified calling for help or calling out in distress, but now it’s very evident that they fully have a language of their own.
In the scenes just depicting the raptors by themselves, one has to wonder if they even thought about giving the creatures subtitles. It truly walks right up to that plate. They are portrayed as cruel and calculating in a different way than the Spinosaurus. Essentially, the raptors have been talked up as so intelligent that there’s really no defeating them on their own turf. Whereas the Spinosaurus had to be fought at a certain point, the raptors can only be bargained with.
The tone of the film is much more befitting a late night monster movie than the two previous movies, which had always had a sly sense of humor. This goes for outright camp, and for a late night monster movie that’s the best possible choice. David Koepp had a great rhythm for banter in writing the first two films, particularly in the first, but much like the rampaging dinos, this one takes it to the extreme. The banter is a mile-a-minute, the humor is over-the-top, and it appears to be going for a tone much closer to the ’80s horror heights of something like Night of the Creeps. That’s pure popcorn flick, but that’s also pure late night creature feature. That’s exactly the tone this should have, for the kind of film that it is.
None of this is to say that Jurassic Park III doesn’t feel like a Jurassic movie, it does. It is great to see Grant and Ellie, my favorite characters of the original, once again. It is great to see some scenes from the original book — or at least a close approximation — on screen at last. Sam Neill is believably terrific as always as Dr. Grant, who absolutely wants no part of any of this, stuck in a situation in which he’s almost certainly going to die. Jurassic Park III does feel like the next step in the Jurassic series coming off the heels of Lost World. It is very much a part of the franchise, but it goes about being that by way of a low-brow, high-camp, tooth-and-claw creature feature and that is precisely what makes it so great.
