Jurassic Park 3 [2001] is the third installment in the Jurassic Park franchise. This time directed by Joe Johnson (The Rocketeer, Jumanji), we follow Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) as he’s tricked into visiting the second island when his plane is suddenly attacked and crash lands onto the island leaving the entire flight and crew to fend for their lives.
Can dinosaurs be boring? You’d never think that, but here it truly is. The filmmakers decided that it would smart to replace the main bad guy from the first two films (the T-rex) with a dinosaur that no one in the audience has heard of. The designs of the new creatures in the film are extremely bland and even with some mild changes like feathers on the velociraptors, it feels completely ridiculous that the older dinosaurs have evolved so rapidly over the course of four years. Even the introduction of a flying dinosaur feels uninspired and the sequence itself feels like a recreation of scenes from previous installments with tiny variations to make it seem newer.
The exact opposite of the first two films. Unlike the first two films whose visual effects have aged like fine wine, Jurassic Park 3’s effects have aged horrifically. Still using the same mixture as the other two, it just doesn’t work in Johnson’s hands. He doesn’t know how to hide the often-terrible CGI and doesn’t know how to structure or edit a scene with the animatronics correctly. Shots seem to linger on the animatronics and it’s pretty clear to us that it’s just a machine underneath a fake rubber skin instead of a living breathing creature. This film relies on CGI way more than the first two films did, with the CG being put in the center of the frame and over the course of a decade, it hasn’t gotten any better.
Incomprehensible. The film is riddled with plot holes and the first five minutes even manages the mess up Dr. Grant’s whole character arc from the first film. Characters are annoying and greedy. There’s not a single character to root for and you would honestly rather watch them all die instead of making it safely off the island.
Bland, ridiculous and a low point in the series.
