Jurassic Park III
By Daniel Parkes
A huge spotlight circled the Dunedin Otagon, momentarily illuminating
huge film posters, while anxious crowds and GE protesters lined the red
carpet, held back by a team of security personnel. At a cocktail party
inside an art gallery, celebrities and special guests mingled over cheese
plates and bottles of Two Paddocks as photographers picked their way through
the crowds, cameras flashed intermittently interrupting the excited roar
of conversation.
The atmosphere that enveloped the Australasian premiere of Jurassic
Park III in Dunedin last week was pure Hollywood. New Zealand
actor Sam Neill, star of the film and who choreographed the night’s proceedings,
did not fail to deliver. The pre-premiere cocktail party was a proverbial
constellation of New Zealand stars he had personally invited. At
the premiere itself he and his Japanese wife Noriko were received with
enthusiasm seldom seen this far south, while at the party afterward he
managed to get almost everybody onto the dance floor. Not that it
would have been hard. A rarely seen line up of talented kiwi musicians,
including Midge Marsden, Annie Crummer, Tim Finn and multi-talented Bic
Runga, played into the early hours of the morning.
In fact, with all the hype one could almost be forgiven for forgetting
the purpose of it all. That the film premiere began an hour late
didn’t help, thanks to speeches by Sam Neill, Dunedin Mayor Sukhi Turner
and Variety Club President Simon Dallow who revealed a penchant for stand-up
comedy in addition to being a rather good "auto-cue jockey". But
the frustration in the audience was almost palpable: they wanted to see
dinosaurs. And preferably eating people.
Before I had even seen the film I had grave concerns: Steven Speilberg,
who was at the helm of the original Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost
World, was not going to direct this time around. Other key members
of the original creative team would also be absent: author Michael Crichton,
screenplay writer David Koepp and composer John Williams, although ideas
from all three would be used with Spielberg overseeing as executive producer.
Instead, lesser known Joe Johnston (Jumanji) took the reins as director
and wisely retained much of the formula from the first two. The story
revolves around the familiar theme of a paleontologist being duped into
going to the island for monetary gain and/or a rescue mission and then
all hell breaking loose. In this instance Sam Neill reprises his
role as Dr. Alan Grant, now a raptor expert, who is dragged along as a
tour guide on an alleged sightseeing flight over the island that in actual
fact is a doomed rescue mission which of course results in a lot of running
and screaming.
Some scenes are almost identical from the original, notably arrival
at the island, (the helicopter journey being replaced with a fixed-wing
aircraft), an aircraft fuselage crashing down through a tree (instead of
a car) and an obligatory youth mad on palaeontology. Laura Dern also
makes an albeit brief appearance as a now married (not to Grant) Ellie
Sattler. Last, but certainly not least, Stan Winston and the team
at Industrial Light and Magic make a welcome return with even more impressive
live action and computer generated dinosaurs that stomp and maim with more
realism and vitality than ever seen before.
This is where Johnston and the third installment succeeds: a rollercoaster
ride of special effects that dazzle and exhaust you, filling that commercial
void among popcorn munchers and dino-philes the world over. What
it lacks is that Spielberg magic, the wide-eyed wonder at the recreation
of the prehistoric. The dinosaurs burst onto the screen, play their
part and then disappear. It is as if they too have grown tired of
forever chasing and eating these humans who constantly return to harass
them. The most famous of dinosaurs, the T-rex, has its all-powerful
image shattered when it is downed by an even larger yet less likeable spinosaurus,
while the intelligent and usually fearsome velociraptors seem to have also
lost their touch, outwitted by the simplest of plot devices. And
the inevitable finale is disappointingly straight out of a how-to-end-a-Jaws-sequel
handbook. All in all, the scare factor is well diminished ?no jumping
out of your cinema seat this time around.
There are clear explanations for the deficiencies: Spielberg is
a genius at creating fear, stimulating the viewer’s imagination, not through
in-your-face special effects but by means of subtle point-of-view shots
and gradual anticipation of the unseen. While protégé
Robert Zemekis (Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump and Cast Away)
has imitated this to a degree, Johnston has not, revealing why his background
in the film industry was primarily in the special effects department.
And if you thought the plot was limited before, then expect even less this
time around, with a screenplay strung together from ideas that were too
expensive or time consuming for the first two. There is also a distinct
lack of endearing characters and no strong female lead. Sam Neill,
his character unhappy at being deceived, mopes his way around the island
while Tea Leoni is so annoyingly dumb as the lost boy’s mother that you
are almost egging her on to join the list of dino-fodder.
However, the film is saved by a much larger dose of laugh-out-loud comedy,
by the huge flying pteranodons and undoubtedly by the far superior and
truly impressive computer effects. Like Sam Neill’s cleverly crafted
Dunedin premiere, it is pure Hollywood.