MY MOVIE SHELF: Jurassic Park III

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 215  Days to go: 218

Movie #162:  Jurassic Park III

So I said in the last post that Jurassic Park III wouldn’t make quite as much of a blunder as The Lost World does in world-building and taking its sweet time to get to the island. This is true, but just barely. There are still several opening scenes in which the audience is apprised of the status of Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) in the intervening years and the pitch by the Kirbys (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) to entice Grant and his assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola) into joining them on an aerial tour of Isla Sorna. It’s really only the opening scene — so much stronger than The Lost World‘s — wherein the film’s inciting incident occurs in the skies around Isla Sorna, that builds enough tension to carry the viewer through the next few establishing scenes without them dragging.

This time, the filmmakers decide to hell with the experts, let’s populate this team of island visitors with a bunch of imbeciles. True, Dr. Grant (despite his cocksure stance to the contrary — arrogance is always punished, sir) accompanies the Kirbys and team onto the island, along with tag-along Billy, but nobody really wants to listen to him — even less so than they did in the first movie. These fools just want to come onto the island and stomp around screaming for young Eric Kirby (Trevor Morgan, offspring of the aforementioned Kirbys) and his stepfather Ben, who were the two parasailers in the opening scene.

Proving absolutely everything is commercialized, a tourist company in Costa Rica called Dino-Soar (classic), takes parasailers around the island for a unique view of whatever might be lurking there (still nobody has bombed these islands??). Their view of their boat obscured by fog, they feel some violent tugs and then notice as the fog clears that the boat crew is missing and the boat itself has sustained damage. Frantic, they disconnect their cable from the boat and float off into the air above a dinosaur-populated island and the big blue ocean, so these two aren’t that smart either. I mean, really, wouldn’t it be better to let the boat beach itself, fall into the sea still attached to said boat, and then, I don’t know, radio for help? Instead of just letting the wind whisk you off into wherever? Anyway, they don’t follow my advice and of course have gone missing, which is where the desperately seeking Kirbys come into the picture.

The Kirbys trick Dr. Grant into being their guide with an enormously kited check and big talk of being an international captain of the import/export industry. Then they land on the stupid island (the island, by the way, that Dr. Grant has never been to, but instead was the subject of Dr. Malcolm’s nightmare in The Lost World: Jurassic Park), and start screaming for their son and immediately get one of their crew killed. (The other two members don’t last much longer.)

Eventually they find the parasail, still attached to dear old stepdad, now eight weeks deceased. The boy is nowhere in sight, but luckily Dr. Grant stumbles upon him while trying to evade some nasty raptors. In fact, it’s Eric who saves the Dr. from said raptors, by using an old Injen gas bomb. Then it becomes a task to get back with the Kirbys and Billy and get off the island in one piece.

The raptors really take center stage here, as part of the exposition of the early scenes is to explain how they can vocalize and communicate with one another, for assistance or to send a warning or whatever. They are on the hunt for these human interlopers because genius Billy swiped a few of their eggs — he figures they’ll be worth a fortune, because who could foresee any problem with hatching live dinosaurs back in the States? (Billy unfortunately skipped The Lost World.) The raptors come across smarter and scarier than ever, even going so far as to set a trap using one of the aforementioned ill-fated team members as bait.

As always, though, the raptors aren’t the only threat. There’s a simply fabulous sequence in a birdcage with some nasty Pterodactyls (another reason I maybe wouldn’t have tried parasailing around a dinosaur island, DUH) in which young Eric is snatched away to be bird food in a dino-nest and valiant Billy risks himself to parasail in there and save him.

There’s also the newer, bigger, scarier dinosaur (with a back fin )known as the Spinosaurus, which apparently wasn’t on Injen’s initial species list. Uh-oh, looks like Injen wasn’t upfront about their business, if you can believe that. The Spinosaurus is a brutal killer, unfooled by standing still, and apparently super attracted to T-Rex urine. It’s also assumed to be the water-bound attacker of the boat, both at the beginning and end of the film (by virtue of the fin, I guess) but in my opinion the film doesn’t do enough to establish its land and sea dominance. I mean, on land it doesn’t look like much of a swimmer. Thank God, Paul Kirby (Macy) is, then, I guess. (Never introduce swimming lessons in the first act without deploying them in the third.) What the film does establish is that the Kirbys’ satellite phone is some kind of heavy duty miracle of engineering, tough enough to withstand the digestive system of a Spinosaurus — my cell quits working if I type too fast — and that a Spinosaurus, while seriously into T-Rex pee, has no interest in anything that smells like its own droppings.

So, Jurassic Park III is maybe a little too easy to make fun of at this point. I still enjoy it quite a bit. It’s still thrilling, it’s still awe-inspiring, it’s still a warning about the hubris of man, and it still offers Jurassic Park‘s Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) to save the day by deploying her state department husband to the island with a gazillion land and sea tanks when her little boy indicates the Dinosaur Man (illustrious Dr. Grant) is on the phone with a big growling monster in the background. (Okay, she infers most of that. The boy is 3; I’m sure all Ellie does is infer what he’s talking about.) It’s far-fetched, sure, but it’s still a fantastically thrilling popcorn adventure, and I’ll rarely complain about those.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Jurassic Park

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 217  Days to go: 218

Movie #160:  Jurassic Park

So much of Jurassic Park is exposition and world-creating, it’s hard to believe it’s as successful a monster movie as it is. But, oh man, is it ever successful. I remember seeing this in the theater and just having the pants scared right the hell off of me by the tension and the set up and the gruesome payoffs.

In the matter of storytelling, exposition is often required, but the film is well-constructed to frame the exposition in unique and satisfying ways: the instructional film, the park ride’s audio, the malicious description to a bratty kid of how a velociraptor would eviscerate him, and a cast full of scientific expert characters meant to educate the hobbyists and children (as well as the audience).

Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum are those scientific experts, Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Dr. Ian Malcolm. Each with their own area of expertise, they provide insight into the biology and behavior of dinosaurs, as well as the unpredictability of life. Their expertise butts heads with the hubris of resident mastermind John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough), as he fails to see how reckless and dangerous it could be to bring humans and dinosaurs together.

Every monster movie also needs the corrupt and/or negligent fool (Wayne Knight) whose self-interest puts the people in danger, as well as a couple of supporting role heroes (Samuel L. Jackson and Bob Peck) who will inevitably make the ultimate sacrifice. But no monster movie is complete without the requisite monsters, and Jurassic Park has quite a few.

There’s the venom-spitting carnivore that gets Knight’s character — a messy, fitting end to him and his misdeeds — that is a personal favorite of mine, and an underrated villain as far as I’m concerned. But, of course, the real marquee monsters are the T-rex and the velociraptors.

The T-rex is imposing and terrifying, stomping through the terrain and terrorizing all the lesser animals, screaming her blood-chilling roar. She gets herself a goat, a human victim, and goes after Dr. Grant and the kids (Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards), only being foiled by her tricky motion-sensor vision. The best and most terrifying aspect of her approach, however, is the tremor going through the water cup (which I read Spielberg created by stretching a guitar string under the Jeep and plucking it) — though the chase seen through the side mirror is iconic and amazing as well, for the ingenuity as well as the flawless depiction of the massive creature.

The raptors, on the other hand, are small and lithe. They move quickly and silently, pouncing on prey almost undetected. Their threat is a more panicking one, if only because it uses your imagined fears against you and then usually proves them to be true as well. Who could forget the sneak attack on Muldoon (Peck), prompting his oft-quoted “Clever girl” line? Or the tense and spectacularly scary kitchen scene in which the raptors engage in a battle of wits with the children and only just lose out.

The movie is wonderful, on all levels, from the strong-minded and brave presence of Dern’s Ellie Sattler, to the shocking (haha) turn of events on the electrical perimeter fence. And the movie doesn’t shy away from the awe-inspiring beauty and grandeur of these animals, making it at least somewhat understandable why someone would act as Hammond does. The beasts are truly both great and terrible, which is why the T-rex, in its way, is hero as much as villain.

Honestly, it’s not all that different from various portrayals of Godzilla in that sense. But that’s another post.