The Jurassic Park Appreciation Thread

[Drizzle]

That book...

 

[DarkKnight88]

They’ve been really anxious to get raptors chasing motorcycles in a Jurassic sequel ever since The Lost World.

 

[Pittman4Two]

Jurassic Park as a whole is one of my favorites. The T-Rex paddock scene has to be one of the most iconic in recent memory. That entire scene was incredible from start to finish.

I always max out my surround sound volume for that scene. Just amazing and one I always want to thank Spielberg for (among other films as well obviously)

 

[Kane52630]

 

[BobJM]

Looking forward to that! And all the unmade Jurassic Park 3 story ideas. Apparently there were lots!

Original Jurassic Park III below (with a little bit of fan-casting to visualize as you read what could have been):

JURASSIC PARK: EXTINCTION (2001)
dir. Joe Johnston
exec. producer Steven Spielberg

Dr. Alan Grant: Sam Neill, 54
Paul Roby: John C. Reilly, 36
Susan Brentworth: Jennifer Connelly, 31
Miles Roby: Hayley Joel Osment, 13
Billy Hume: Derek Luke, 27
Cooper: Michael Clarke Duncan, 44
Tom Udesky: Elya Baskin, 51

ADDITIONAL
Harlan Finch: Matthew Broderick, 39
Simone Garcia: Gina Torres, 32
Carlos Lopez: Alfred Molina, 48
Colonel Peters: Michael Ironside, 51


FULL CAST GALLERY

Dr. Alan Grant: Sam Neill, 54

Paul Roby: John C. Reilly, 36

Susan Brentworth: Jennifer Connelly, 31

Miles Roby: Hayley Joel Osment, 13

Billy Hume: Derek Luke, 27

Cooper: Michael Clarke Duncan, 44

Tom Udesky: Elya Baskin, 51

ADDITIONAL
Harlan Finch: Matthew Broderick, 39

Simone Garcia: Gina Torres, 32

Carlos Lopez: Alfred Molina, 48

Colonel Peters: Michael Ironside, 51

STORY TREATMENT

Jurassic Park: Extinction begins with two wealthy American tourists, Jeannie and Rick, parasailing over Isla Sorna, before cutting to Costa Rica, where Harlan Finch, a representative of the US State Department, has just flown in for a meeting with Carlos Lopez, Costa Rican minister of the interior. Jeannie and Rick have disappeared—the latest visitors to go missing at Site B.

Finch is soon accosted by Simone Garcia, a local environmentalist who urges to visit the local police station where he’s shown the lacerated remains of a dinosaur victim.

The story then switches to Utah, where Dr. Alan Grant is lecturing at a dig, courting potential donors for a raptor research substation he wants to build on Isla Sorna. Grant is assisted by a graduate student, Billy Hume, who uses a 3D-printer to replicate a Velociraptor larynx chamber.

In the audience is wealthy businessman Paul Roby, who has brought his dinosaur-crazy twelve-year-old son, Miles, to the dig, along with his business associate Susan Brentworth. Paul and Susan are a couple, though they’ve yet to tell Miles, whose mother died three years earlier in a car crash with Roby at the wheel.

Finch arrives at the lecture to tell Grant that if helps the United States gain sovereignty over Site B by testifying at a hearing the next day in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, he will grant him exclusive research rights to the island.

Roby also promises Grant a substantial donation if he will host a sightseeing flight over Isla Sorna, with himself, Susan, Miles and bodyguard Cooper on board. As he’s planning to testify at the hearing in Costa Rica, Grant agrees to participate.

During the trip, Roby’s pilot, Tom Udesky, ignores Isla Sorna’s no-fly zone and skims over the island but is forced to land after hitting an unidentified object as they barely clear a ridge. When they try to take off from the island, the plane clips the Spinosaurus as it suddenly emerges from the jungle, sending the aircraft spiraling into the trees.

The creature rips off the nose of the plane. Udesky is yanked out but Cooper saves Miles, shortly before the fuselage falls to the jungle floor. The group escapes the wreckage but they encounter a T. rex, which squares up to the pursuing Spinosaurus—and loses.

Parallel to this, on the mainland, the hearing that Grant was sent to attend gets underway. Simone Garcia reveals attacks have taken place as far north as Baja California and as far south as Panama, which Harlan Finch tells Carlos Lopez that if the dinosaurs are breeding, “this is not a Costa Rican problem. It is a world problem.”

After encountering the skeleton of Rick, one of the missing American tourists, Grant and the others discover and InGen compound with a dinosaur-hatching laboratory. The group spends the night and makes the space their temporary base of operations.

Velociraptors sneak into the lab, showcasing a heightened intelligence and predatory prowess as they attack the group who barely manage to evade on dirt bikes and later hiding in treetops—though Cooper is killed while selflessly protecting Miles.

Grant is in awe of the raptors’ intelligence, opining aloud their mental processes, deductive reasoning. It’s revealed that they’ve targeted the group because Billy stole several eggs earlier when they happened upon the nests nearby the crash site. The two argue and stumble out of the treetop to the jungle floor. To escape the raptors, Grant uses a 3D-printed velociraptor chamber from earlier in the film to create raptor calls to distract the egg-hunting creatures long enough so the two can escape.

The story continues to switch back back and forth to mainland Costa Rica. There, Finch visits a village where a dinosaur has supposedly been captured, only to find a broken cage and several dead villagers. Police also encounter frightened fishermen who have netted a headless carcass. Simone identifies the corpse as a Pteranodon at the exact moment Grant's group unwittingly enters a giant bird cage and encounters the terrifying winged creatures for the first time.

Miles is snatched by a Pteranodon, which drops him in its nest of hungry babies. Billy takes the parasail recovered from Rick's remains and jumps into the canyon to save Miles, they're attacked by four of the winged beasts. Miles survives but Billy dies at the claws of a massive Pteranodon.

The survivors take a barge and head to the InGen Marina, where they encounter the Spinosaurus which bites through the boat’s wheelhouse.

Grant’s group gets trapped in a giant cage that falls in the water. Miles manage to escape and fire a flare gun at the dinosaur, igniting a spilled slick of gasoline. The creature retreats but the danger is not over…

Although satellite footage shows Roby’s wrecked plane on Isla Sorna, the US government nooses to send in A-10 Warthog fighter jets to wipe out the dinosaur population. Bombs are dropped, causing a dinosaur stampede, but a pilot spots Roby on a ridge and aborts the attack.

After the group is saved, the mission’s commander, Colonel Peters, wants to finish the job but Grant refuses to leave the island as a defiant act to protect the inhabitants from extinction.

Alan Grant is last seen running into the jungle..

JURASSIC PARK: EXTINCTION

 

[Drizzle]

And you know what? That ad campaign worked. I remember basically any house I went to as a kid in the mid-late '90s had a copy of that VHS.

 

[Arachnerd]

Original Jurassic Park III below (with a little bit of fan-casting to visualize as you read what could have been):

JURASSIC PARK: EXTINCTION (2001)
dir. Joe Johnston
exec. producer Steven Spielberg

Dr. Alan Grant: Sam Neill, 54
Paul Roby: John C. Reilly, 36
Susan Brentworth: Jennifer Connelly, 31
Miles Roby: Hayley Joel Osment, 13
Billy Hume: Derek Luke, 27
Cooper: Michael Clarke Duncan, 44
Tom Udesky: Elya Baskin, 51

ADDITIONAL
Harlan Finch: Matthew Broderick, 39
Simone Garcia: Gina Torres, 32
Carlos Lopez: Alfred Molina, 48
Colonel Peters: Michael Ironside, 51


FULL CAST GALLERY



STORY TREATMENT

Jurassic Park: Extinction begins with two wealthy American tourists, Jeannie and Rick, parasailing over Isla Sorna, before cutting to Costa Rica, where Harlan Finch, a representative of the US State Department, has just flown in for a meeting with Carlos Lopez, Costa Rican minister of the interior. Jeannie and Rick have disappeared—the latest visitors to go missing at Site B.

Finch is soon accosted by Simone Garcia, a local environmentalist who urges to visit the local police station where he’s shown the lacerated remains of a dinosaur victim.

The story then switches to Utah, where Dr. Alan Grant is lecturing at a dig, courting potential donors for a raptor research substation he wants to build on Isla Sorna. Grant is assisted by a graduate student, Billy Hume, who uses a 3D-printer to replicate a Velociraptor larynx chamber.

In the audience is wealthy businessman Paul Roby, who has brought his dinosaur-crazy twelve-year-old son, Miles, to the dig, along with his business associate Susan Brentworth. Paul and Susan are a couple, though they’ve yet to tell Miles, whose mother died three years earlier in a car crash with Roby at the wheel.

Finch arrives at the lecture to tell Grant that if helps the United States gain sovereignty over Site B by testifying at a hearing the next day in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, he will grant him exclusive research rights to the island.

Roby also promises Grant a substantial donation if he will host a sightseeing flight over Isla Sorna, with himself, Susan, Miles and bodyguard Cooper on board. As he’s planning to testify at the hearing in Costa Rica, Grant agrees to participate.

During the trip, Roby’s pilot, Tom Udesky, ignores Isla Sorna’s no-fly zone and skims over the island but is forced to land after hitting an unidentified object as they barely clear a ridge. When they try to take off from the island, the plane clips the Spinosaurus as it suddenly emerges from the jungle, sending the aircraft spiraling into the trees.

The creature rips off the nose of the plane. Udesky is yanked out but Cooper saves Miles, shortly before the fuselage falls to the jungle floor. The group escapes the wreckage but they encounter a T. rex, which squares up to the pursuing Spinosaurus—and loses.

Parallel to this, on the mainland, the hearing that Grant was sent to attend gets underway. Simone Garcia reveals attacks have taken place as far north as Baja California and as far south as Panama, which Harlan Finch tells Carlos Lopez that if the dinosaurs are breeding, “this is not a Costa Rican problem. It is a world problem.”

After encountering the skeleton of Rick, one of the missing American tourists, Grant and the others discover and InGen compound with a dinosaur-hatching laboratory. The group spends the night and makes the space their temporary base of operations.

Velociraptors sneak into the lab, showcasing a heightened intelligence and predatory prowess as they attack the group who barely manage to evade on dirt bikes and later hiding in treetops—though Cooper is killed while selflessly protecting Miles.

Grant is in awe of the raptors’ intelligence, opining aloud their mental processes, deductive reasoning. It’s revealed that they’ve targeted the group because Billy stole several eggs earlier when they happened upon the nests nearby the crash site. The two argue and stumble out of the treetop to the jungle floor. To escape the raptors, Grant uses a 3D-printed velociraptor chamber from earlier in the film to create raptor calls to distract the egg-hunting creatures long enough so the two can escape.

The story continues to switch back back and forth to mainland Costa Rica. There, Finch visits a village where a dinosaur has supposedly been captured, only to find a broken cage and several dead villagers. Police also encounter frightened fishermen who have netted a headless carcass. Simone identifies the corpse as a Pteranodon at the exact moment Grant's group unwittingly enters a giant bird cage and encounters the terrifying winged creatures for the first time.

Miles is snatched by a Pteranodon, which drops him in its nest of hungry babies. Billy takes the parasail recovered from Rick's remains and jumps into the canyon to save Miles, they're attacked by four of the winged beasts. Miles survives but Billy dies at the claws of a massive Pteranodon.

The survivors take a barge and head to the InGen Marina, where they encounter the Spinosaurus which bites through the boat’s wheelhouse.

Grant’s group gets trapped in a giant cage that falls in the water. Miles manage to escape and fire a flare gun at the dinosaur, igniting a spilled slick of gasoline. The creature retreats but the danger is not over…

Although satellite footage shows Roby’s wrecked plane on Isla Sorna, the US government nooses to send in A-10 Warthog fighter jets to wipe out the dinosaur population. Bombs are dropped, causing a dinosaur stampede, but a pilot spots Roby on a ridge and aborts the attack.

After the group is saved, the mission’s commander, Colonel Peters, wants to finish the job but Grant refuses to leave the island as a defiant act to protect the inhabitants from extinction.

Alan Grant is last seen running into the jungle..

JURASSIC PARK: EXTINCTION

I still have those concept posters for JP3 tucked away in a folder. A lot of them are really dope and I really love the variation on the logo.

 

[BobJM]

There's an excellent podcast called The Cancelled Movie Report that recreates screenplays that were unproduced in Hollywood.

They have a two-part episode about the unmade Jurassic Park IV--many of the ideas originated in that script eventually got repurposed/recontextualized for Jurassic World and its sequel, Fallen Kingdom. Definitely recommend it to any fans of the series.

 

[DarkKnight88]

 

[Iceman]

Jurassic Park as a whole is one of my favorites. The T-Rex paddock scene has to be one of the most iconic in recent memory. That entire scene was incredible from start to finish.

I always max out my surround sound volume for that scene. Just amazing and one I always want to thank Spielberg for (among other films as well obviously)

Jurassic Park is my favourite all-time cinema experience. Unbelievable what they achieved back in 1993.

 

[Dave McFly]

it was the first movie to be shown in my 2 year old multiplex theater to have the new DTS digital sound. just the opening scene alone with all the jungle sounds sounding so crisp and clear it felt like I was IN Jurassic Park.

 

[Arachnerd]

Love seeing Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazello again. A part of me was bummed Lex and Tim didn't pop up or were even brought up in Dominion, but considering the quality of that movie, it was a blessing in disguise.

 

[Drizzle]

Still one of my all-time favorites. I was a tad too young to have seen it in theaters in '93 (Lord knows I begged my parents) but I was happy to have caught it in IMAX 3D for the 20th anniversary in 2013. I can never get tired of this movie.

Love seeing Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazello again. A part of me was bummed Lex and Tim didn't pop up or were even brought up in Dominion, but considering the quality of that movie, it was a blessing in disguise.

I was bummed about it too. It would have been fan service to the highest degree but it still would have been less stupid than a lot of what happened in Dominion anyway.

 

[Arachnerd]

I wasn't even born when this movie came out.

But I remember when I was younger that one of my older cousins had the movie on VHS and I ended up watching it at some point and becoming obsessed with it. My cousin and I really bonded over our love for those movies back in the late 90s/early 2000s through the toys and games, and even now on occasion we talk about it (had a family lunch earlier today and he asked if I wanted to borrow his Steam account to play JW Evolution which I haven't yet).

I still have my own VHS copy of Jurassic Park so I'm definitely giving it a re-watch come June 11th.

 

[squeekness]

Jurassic Park was one of my first DVDs and I always remember how rich the sound was of that first crack of thunder was during the triceratops examination. Fantastic. That and the T-Rex roar. Not sure your VHS can hold up to that though I appreciate your nostalgia.

 

[Arachnerd]

I ended up giving away most of my VHS tapes to an old family friend's son a decade (something I regret, at least in regards to not keeping some other tapes), but the quality and the retro VHS previews beforehand still add to the experience for me and don't detract in anyway. Then again, I'm also someone who just loves the VHS aesthetic since I was young so that helped lol

 

[Dave McFly]

do you guys remember seeing THIS play before JP back in 1993?

 

[Gothamsknight]

I was born the year this film came out. This was one of the first movies I ever watched, and I remember owning loads of T-Rex merchandise for this and The Lost World. Easily one of the most nostalgic movies for me in general.

 

[DarkKnight88]

do you guys remember seeing THIS play before JP back in 1993?

Being a kid sitting for a Jurassic Park movie and anticipating a Flintstones movie the next summer was pretty exciting! Suffice it to say, dinosaurs were the talk of the summer lol

I also love the fact that the dinosaurs in Flintstones were goofier Jim Henson creations as opposed to the realistic Stan Winston ones. It was such a great juxtaposition at the time, both being so state of the art but for different intentions.

 

[Drizzle]

Happy 30th to one of the all-time greatest blockbusters.

 

[Arachnerd]

A very happy anniversary to my favorite film of all time.

 

[DarkKnight88]

Happy 30th Jurassic Park!

 

[Arachnerd]

Am now sad that there was never a movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger fought against dinosaurs. :disappointed:

 

[squeekness]

A very happy anniversary to my favorite film of all time.

It still holds up!

 

[Arachnerd]

I don't 100% recall if this is allowed on here or not, and if it's not, let me know and I'll delete this post, but I recently put together a video compilation featuring every trailer and preview I could find for Jurassic Park online to commemorate this occasion. To anyone interested: