The Jurassic Park trilogy, especially the first film have become classics among the genre and that is why I will do a quick review of them today. Be forewarned there will be spoilers for the entire franchise, including Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Jurassic Park III, Michael Crichton's novels, and minor spoilers for the Jurassic World movies.
Jurassic Park 1 is directed by Steven Spielberg, as is The Lost World. One of my favorite aspects of the movie is the emphasis of nature and the environment and you get that through Richard Attenborough character John Hammond. Fitting, considering his brother, David Attenborough is naturalist. My favorite character in the whole franchise has to be Ian Malcolm, his scientific perspective through chaos theory on the dinosaurs is very intriguing. The music composed by John Williams is one of the best parts of the movie and of course is iconic. A part of the book that was really cool that wasn't adapted to the movie is Dr. Alan Grant killing each velociraptor, one by one, through injecting poison into dinosaur eggs and making them eat them. In the movie the raptors are killed by the T-Rex smashing into the building. While I would have liked to see this scene adapted, I think the movie's version is more cinematic, while possibly making it seem like the characters aren't smart enough to handle the problem themselves. The only real complaint I have is that there is not much of a resolution for the island as in the book, although we get part of that in The Lost World and fully in Jurassic World. In conclusion the first Jurassic Park is a wonderful film featuring ground-breaking effects and awesome cultural points. They really spared no expense.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park-
Although still directed by Steven, he has had some misses and The Lost World is on the lower end of his directed films. I will start with characters, Malcolm returns as the main character and Hammond returns briefly, which are both positives. Another good character is Sarah Harding, a paleontologist dating Ian Malcolm and is very invested in the nature and the dinosaurs. She is in The Lost World book, but in the movie takes several traits from the character Richard Levine, as a scientist and a conflicting voice to Malcolm, there's only so much that can fit in a movie, but I feel as if Levine was an unworthy disclusion. An unworthy inclusion, in my opinion is Malcolm's daughter Kelly, aka black gymnastics daughter, they even make jokes about their resemblance in the movie. But, she's just a version of a character named Kelly from the book, that's not Malcolm's daughter. This character also has no reason at all to sneak on the trailer to the island, but they are just trying to use the plot from the book, except that when you change or leave out details, big plot points can make no sense and that happens numerous times in this movie. I actually did like that some details from the book were adapted to the movie, especially seeing the compys. This movie is fun and I would definitely recommend it, although overall, The Lost World has a lot of problems and has some wacky pacing.
Jurassic Park III:
It is surely worth noting that three is the first Jurassic Park movie not to be based on a book, not to be directed by Spielberg, and to be made solely for the purpose of profit. While I'll say this is the shortest, worst, and least important Jurassic Park movie, it does have Alan Grant back and a large appearance of Pteradons, only seen prior at the end of The Lost World. For a large part of this movie, the character obsess over the raptor's vocal chords and a raptor says the word, "Alan" in a dream sequence. There's not much more to say, that statement really sums up the whole movie.
I would also like to comment that after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I noticed that every Jurassic Park movie has the big action ending scene at night and in the rain.
So, there we have it, my review of the first Jurassic Park trilogy. I might do another of these once the Jurassic World trilogy comes to a close. I would also like to note that even though I was kind of hard on some of these movies, I enjoy them all and Jurassic Park is one of my favorite film franchises and the first movie is one of my all-time favorite films. I would also recommend reading the books, as they are also amazing. The Lost World book is actually better than the movie and doesn't have most of the film's problems. ;)
That's it for my review. I'll be reviewing Thrawn Alliances soon-ish and I am also going to Unversal Studios soon, so I might write something about that. That's all folks. Stay Connected.
