The Jurassic Park Series

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by gottenbold, May 25, 2018.

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  1. FredHubbard

    FredHubbard Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    the 3rd one is clearly the best. at least that's what the hash cookies told us whilst we watched it in the cinema.
     
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  2. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    Jurassic Park is a classic, I'd probably include it in my top 10 films of all time. The Lost World I always thought was a good movie though others do not, the scene where the T-Rex attack the caravan is a master class in directing. Jurassic Park 3 was enjoyable enough on the big screen when I saw it for the first time but now I think it's a bit crap, I don't think I'd see it again unless there was a screening with a Joe Johnston Q and A following as that could be interesting to attend.
    As for the world movies, I'm not all that interested in them. The first one felt gave me the impression that they lost focus on the core story and I just haven't seen the most recent one.
     
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  3. SgtPepper1983

    SgtPepper1983 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    The first one is a cinematic masterpiece. Its conclusion and story, though, are so beautifully over at the end of JP that every subsequent sequel feels superfluous. Just like Jaws, this should have never been a franchise at all.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2019
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  4. budwhite

    budwhite Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

    Location:
    Götaland, Sverige
    Any opinions on the soundmix for the first movie? Wasn't it the first theatrical 5.1 DTS mix at that time?

    I'm pretty sure that it's been remixed several times since then. Two different 7.1 mixes and later DTS:X from the top of my mind
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  5. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    I like the Lost World a lot as well, some great scenes like the caravan and the scene in the field with the raptors.
     
  6. dprokopy

    dprokopy Senior Member

    Location:
    Near Seattle, WA
    I just watched Fallen Kingdom last night. What a mess. This movie absolutely did not need to exist.
     
  7. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    The first movie was truly a remarkable event, much like Gladiator was several years later. I've watched it recently and I still think it holds up. The second one I haven't seen in many years but I remember it as being OK, a bit redundant really. As @SgtPepper1983 says, the story should have been over after the first movie, there was surely enough evidence at that point that bringing dinosaurs back to life for entertainment was a very poor idea.

    The following movies were so poorly reviewed I've never bothered to see them. I've been tempted by the prospect of better CGI dinos, but when that's the motivation, it kinda comes up short.
     
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  8. keefer1970

    keefer1970 Metal, Movies, Beer!

    Location:
    New Jersey
    The first Jurassic Park movie was great, though I'm kind of burnt out on it now after so many repeated viewings over the years (There was a period in the late 90s/early 2000s where it seemed like it was on TV every couple of hours!).

    The second ("Lost World") was meh.

    Jurassic Park III seems to get a lot of hate but I thought it was actually pretty good.

    The two Jurassic World flicks are basically remixes of "Jurassic Park's Greatest Hits," but they're watchable enough... Bryce Dallas Howard is purty...
     
  9. Matt Richardson

    Matt Richardson Forum Resident

    Location:
    Suburban Chicago
    I did an ebike tour through there just last week. It's some very cool acreage, all privately owned. Many of the large props were left behind from the various film productions by request of the owner to encourage the tourist trade.

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  10. Brenald79

    Brenald79 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    That’s really cool. I’m tentatively planning Hawaii next September and want to do a tour there. Critchton’s my #1 author.
     
  11. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    Would be cool if they made a movie that followed the book closer. I am thinking a animated movie the quality of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse would be a good way to go.
     
  12. Crabcakez

    Crabcakez Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Baltimore Maryland
    This is awesome, I had no idea you could do this... now I know where my next vacation will be
     
  13. bostonscoots

    bostonscoots Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    I like the Jurassic Park films - mostly because I love dinosaurs - but once the buzz of their clever re-introduction (cloning) into our world from the first film wore off, the movies quickly fell into that well-worn cliche of people getting marooned on an island full of dinosaurs. Again...and again...and again. The dinosaurs are lulus - they're never less than spectacular - but every movie since the first Jurassic Park gets perfectly summed up by Jeff Goldblum in The Lost World - "There's oo-ing and ahh-ing and then there's running and screaming". Just add popcorn.

    Now, I'm on board for any movie with dinosaurs - but given the resumes of the filmmakers and the resources available to them, one would think they'd strive for something different than, say, The Land Unknown. Godzilla: King of the Monsters wasn't everyone's cup of G, but the filmmakers attempted to give the monsters a fuller context as - good or bad - defenders of the natural world fully capable of reversing the harm humans are causing the planet. And if we're nice, they might let us stay. Perhaps a missed plot point in the Jurassic Park movies is how well dinosaurs might thrive on an increasingly warmer, wetter planet.

    I'd hoped Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was something different - the trailer made it clear dinosaurs had escaped the island and existed "at large" in the modern world. I wasn't expecting dinosaur-powered armageddon - cool as it sounds - but live dinos reintroduced to America would keep local animal control and U.S. Fish and Wildlife officers pretty damn busy and be entertaining as hell to watch. Sadly, the invasive dinosaur threat is only teased at the end of Fallen Kingdom - on screen while Jeff Goldblum issues another stern warning about messing with Mother Nature before the credits roll. No fun.

    ...but someone else over at the JP brain trust has issues of co-existence on their mind, too.

     
  14. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    The first is a classic obviously. I also really liked Jurassic World. Having the park open it was clinches it for me. So I watch those two as a duology and really enjoy them.

    Lost World could have been much better. I love the book.
     
  15. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
     
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  16. Jord

    Jord Forum Resident

    Location:
    The Netherlands
    I've seen all the movies and have read the original novels of the 1st 2.
    Here are my thoughts:

    Jurassic Park 1 (movie)
    The movie was mind blowing and still holds up very, very well due to the mix of practical as well as CGI effects. The story is tense, it had a sense of wonder and a likeable cast.
    It's the kind of movie that gets better when watching it multiple times.
    Extra note: The 3D re-release was really well done. It was one of the best 3D experiences I had in movie theatres, even though it was an conversion.

    Jurassic Park 1 (book)
    Even though the start of the book is somewhat slow, it's a very interesting read, especially if you've seen the first 3 movies. It has a ton of action and the first 3 movies all have parts of the books in them.
    (more on that later) What's also interesting is that many of the characters are different from the movie to the book. John Hammond isn't the nice old man of the movie to name an example. Different people die in the book too, so it's like an alternate version if you've seen the movie beforehand.

    Jurassic Park 2 (movie)
    It's....okay. The freshness of seeing new dinosaurs is noticeably less with the sequel. The characters are less interesting this time though. Ian Malcolm is less "Jeff Goldblum-y" and acts a lot more serious than he did in the first movie. His girlfriend is the dumbest zoologist ever. (Going to a nest with baby Dinosaurs with the parents nearby or taking a baby T-Rex into a trailer) The rest of the cast is okay but doesn't stand out. Even though there are cool scenes and better effects, this one feels like a direct to video sequel, even though it wasn't.

    Jurassic Park 2 (book)
    This one is completely different from the movie and even though the book has some interesting and vivid imagery, it's kinda boring. It takes a ton of time before the main cast arrives on the island and when they're there, they basically just go watch dinosaurs. There are some action scenes here as well but they are far and between. The bad guys are more interesting than in the movie but they feel really separated from the main cast since both mostly operate on their own. It's almost like 2 separate stories in one, in a bad way.

    Jurassic Park 3
    This movie is dumb...and it knows it. It doesn't pretend to do anything else. This movie contains some of the most interesting action scenes from the JP1 book that weren't used yet in the previous movies and it really feels like they wanted to use those scenes and just wrote a story around them. That being said, it is an entertaining movie. Seeing how decrepit the island has become is an interesting approach and the aviary spectacle is amazing. There are some downsides to this movie such as the short T-Rex - Spinosaurus fight (unfortunately due to technical difficulties, the T-Rex animatronic literally got killed by the Spinosaurus animatronic) but it's a nice and entertaining popcorn flick. Having Sam Neill back doesn't hurt either.

    Jurassic World
    Let's call it for what it is; it's a JP1 reboot. That being said, it's pretty entertaining. The whole consumerism angle is both entertaining and ironic and I like how the new cast does their own thing instead of being new versions of old characters. I like Chris Pratt as the trainer which is an interesting angle for a movie like this and brings some freshness to the movie. It's not groundbreaking but it's very entertaining. Plus, it's refreshing to see so much action in daylight and nice to see how a "successful" Jurassic Park theme park would look like.

    Jurassic World 2
    Yeah, this one is a turkey. It's very badly written and contains leaps of logic that are too hard to ignore. I'll just list the worst ones:

    SOME SPOILERS FOR A DUMB MOVIE:
    • So now we discover that JP was build on an island with an active volcano? Noone would build a theme park there, especially not an expensive one like JP.
    • The "heroes" capture and rescue the dinosaurs from the island and want to take them to a safe place. How do you smuggle DINOSAURS?
    • Apparently, the guy living in a mansion didn't notice that there was an entire complex build below his mansion?
    • In this complex there were dinosaurs being held and he never heard or noticed anything?
    • They auction dinosaurs off to evil people. The price of most dinosaurs was lower than the budget of this movie!
    • The evil people want the dinosaurs to help in wars. Guess what? If you put wild animals in a war zone, they will not follow orders but end up in a panic. It's like using rhinos and lions in a war.
    • The idea of the new dinosaur is that you have a laser gun which puts a red dot on the target. The dinosaur then attacks the target. This is convoluted beyond belief. If you have your target in sight where you aim a laser at them you can, you know, just SHOOT them, without the use of a dinosaur.
    • At the end of the movie, the dinosaurs are released into the world and we're supposed to be afraid that they'll take over but when you look at the big picture it isn't that scary. There were around 30 dinosaurs. They would be killed before they even have a chance to reproduce, assuming there were male/female dinosaurs of every released specie.
    • Why were the heroes okay with releasing them in the open in the first place?
     
  17. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    I have the five-film set on 4K and it looks and sounds quite amazing. You can get a better sense of what's modeled with robotic props and what is CGI, not that this was a big challenge. Of course normal skin tones and clothing textures look better defined too.

    The films just capitalize on the dinosaur fascination of kids, and use the superior Crichton book as a starting point. I wish someone would do a proper film based on the book when Spielberg's stranglehold on it peters out. His approach is too childish. The first film is ok. The next two were awful, although my kid likes them. The fourth is the strongest, I think, and I also like the most recent one, Fallen Kingdom.
     
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  18. bostonscoots

    bostonscoots Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA
    Spielberg certainly "Spielberg'd" the first Jurassic Park (although I prefer his take on John Hammond over Crichton's tired old greedy capitalist pastiche) but back in the early 90's making a "proper version" of the book was simply not possible. In a lengthy pre-production Spielberg and his team (Crichton included) literally broke the book down into "what scenes can we do?" and developed the movie from there. A lot of cool stuff from the book got left out - the river chase, aviary, raptor nest - because none of it could have been done convincingly.

    Too Childish? I'm not so sure. Few people love dinosaurs more than kids and Spielberg didn't exactly spare them nightmares of a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to eat them alive. Won't see that on Dinosaur Train.

    That said, with books like The Stand and IT being revisited, why shouldn't someone take another pass at Crichton's original novel? It would be different enough than the existing film and probably work very well as a limited series on Netflix or HBOMax. Visual effects technology is substantially more advanced (and cheaper) than when the first film was shot, making even the wildest things Crichton's envisioned doable.
     
  19. DPM

    DPM Senior Member

    Location:
    Nevada, USA
    I'd be up for seeing a more accurate film presentation of the first book. They could name it Jurassic Park: The True Story.
     
  20. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    I thought the only real difference between Hammond by Crichton and Hammond by Spielberg was the "grandfatherly" sort of dumbing him down to the point where he was essentially a kid's movie character. Even his interactions with Nedry were like those of a grandpa. This made his brief forays into philosophy, e.g., his ant circus, more belabored and cringeworthy. Likewise Ellie's comments were often silly. The only one who could sort of pull it off was Malcolm, but that was because he wasn't saddled with some sort of child interest--which Spielberg promptly "remedied" in the sequel by giving him a black tween adopted daughter, which was quite bizarre.

    What I loved about the Crichton book was the deep dive into corporate espionage and Nedry's contacts with the competing companies. Spielberg all but ignored this, aside from the silly scene at the beginning with the shaving cream kit to smuggle the dinosaur eggs, and the childish antics of Nedry that came after that. But it could be done much better in a miniseries, as you say. I also am rather horrified that the dinosaur faces were "kid-ified" to make many of them look cute and babyish. If someone wanted to use the Crichton book as the basis of a series on biotech corporate espionage, that would be interesting but of course focusing more on dinosaurs guarantees better ratings.
     
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