i want you to hit me as hard as you can... How do you make a favorite franchise go
extinct? Or at least put it on ice for over a decade until a page one reboot was necessary?
In the case of the series endangering fiasco known as Jurassic Park 3, there's a pretty long
list of ways, from strange creative decisions, to a perpetually incomplete script, to a bumpy
production with more troubles than trying to open a theme park filled with live dinosaurs.
Pack your bags for Isla Sorna as we find out what the [ __ ] happened to this movie!
After the release of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park in 1993, the director's longtime friend Joe
Johnston expressed his desire to helm a potential sequel. Johnston had worked with Spielberg as an
art director on Raiders of the Lost Ark and had also directed Honey I Shrunk the Kids,
The Rocketeer, Jumanji, and episodes of the young Indiana Jones TV show.
Spielberg handled the first sequel, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, for himself, at which point
Johnston again lobbied to direct the next film in the series. The Hollywood titan was burned out by
his first two visits to Jurassic Park and agreed to vacate the director's chair for another entry.
In June 1998, Universal officially announced plans to make a third Jurassic Park movie, with an eye
on a summer 2000 release date. Spielberg was on as producer, with author Michael Crichton set to work
with him on a brand new storyline, since there was no novel on which to base the film as with the
previous two cinematic blockbusters. But a script for Jurassic Park 3 would remain a major problem.
Crichton flat out left the project after a few days when he became dissatisfied with the story
ideas under consideration. Crichton also later claimed to have never watched the final film.
Although Jan de Bont and Stephen Sommers were also first considered,
Joe Johnston was officially announced as the director of Jurassic Park 3. Spielberg gave
complete creative control to Johnston with the understanding that he would not attempt to imitate
his style or recycle what he did in the first two movies. So much for that... Johnston had already
rejected a story idea presented by Spielberg, in which Sam Neill's character Dr. Alan Grant would
have snuck into the park to research the dinosaurs and was living in a tree like Robinson Crusoe.
Johnston went on to say: I couldn't imagine this guy wanting to get back on any island
that had dinosaurs after the first movie. In June 1999, Craig Rosenberg was hired to write
a draft for Jurassic Park 3. Rosenberg's initial storyline involved a group of teenagers becoming
stranded on Isla Sorna before encountering an aquatic dinosaur called kronosaurus.
But his script was discarded by Johnston, who said that it quote: read like a bad episode of Friends.
With cameras expected to roll in early 2000, new writers had to be brought in quickly.
The second draft was penned by Peter Buchman. His story involved a flock of pteranodons terrorizing
Costa Rican locals, with a subplot involving Dr. Grant crash landing on Isla Sorna along with
several new characters. The draft also included a lengthy sequence set inside the main laboratory.
The entire shoot was planned for 18 weeks, including filming on Maui in Hawaii.
In June of 2000, Sam Neill agreed to reprise the role of Dr. Alan Grant,
with filming to finally commence two months later in August. However, the start was delayed another
month to accommodate William H Macy, who initially turned down the film due to scheduling conflicts.
Soon after, Tea Leoni and Trevor Morgan were cast to play Macy's family members.
The mercenary Cooper was ultimately played by John Diehl after Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub and
Stellan Skarsgard were considered for the role. Considering the character gets chomped in the
first 20 minutes, they probably don't feel like they missed out. More problems arose when Johnston
expressed concerns about the complicated nature of the Buchman script. Jurassic Park and Lost
World screenwriter David Koepp, who initially was not interested in writing part three, was brought
in to consult, and he implored Johnston to drive the narrative with a more basic rescue mission.
Just five weeks before filming was set to begin, Johnston and Spielberg completely abandoned
Buchman's script. By that time around 18 million dollars had already been invested based on that
draft, with detailed storyboards and a few sets already built to accommodate the story details.
Koepp's story idea was chosen instead, and although fragments from the earlier two drafts
were retained as a means of preserving some of the physical work that was completed, the end result
is an obvious patchwork of story beats that do not feel organically linked. Alexander Payne and
Jim Taylor were swiftly hired to rework Buchman's script, despite having no particular affinity for
the franchise. Payne and Taylor spent four weeks writing their draft, which added a return of Laura
Dern's character Ellie Sattler from the first film. The duo had collaborated with Dern on the
1996 film Citizen Ruth and wanted to include her for no other reason than to work with her again.
Dern spends her brief scenes in the movie at a suburban home - it seems like she's the lucky
one. While Charlie's Angels writer John August was hired to further tinker with the script
during filming, ultimate screenplay credit went to Buchman, Payne and Taylor. According to Payne,
all of the humor and characterization they added were eliminated in favor of pure action.
Principal photography on Jurassic Park 3 began on August 30th 2000. Filming lasted five months,
going two weeks over the original schedule, with the screenplay in flux for the entirety
of the production. Several of the actors became disenchanted with only getting through a fraction
of a script page each day. Johnston, however blamed the shooting delays on inclement weather
and unforeseen technical hiccups. In a December 2000 interview, William H Macy
said: Tthe script has been evolving and being rewritten as we go, and what you want to say is,
who launched a hundred million dollar ship without a rudder? And who's getting fired for this? But
that's the way it goes. I think someone should be shot but I'm not in charge. During filming, Steven
Spielberg was too busy preparing his next film A.I. Artificial Intelligence to be present on the
Jurassic set. And his regular composer, eight-time Oscar winner John Williams was preoccupied scoring
A.I. and recommended Don Davis of The Matrix as a replacement on Jurassic Park 3. While his iconic
theme is used in the movie, Jurassic Park 3 is the only film in the franchise not scored by Williams.
The overwhelming troubles with the script and uncertainty of the end product made
Johnston want to quit the project several times. The director called the experience,
quote: a living hell on a daily basis. And he said that shooting without a finished script
was nerve-wracking, having to literally decide each day how he wanted a scene to progress. He
did admit there was a freedom to that but it was decidedly not his preferred method of filmmaking.
Of the actors, Macy wasn't the only one to express his displeasure. Alessandro Nivola,
who plays the deceitful Billy Brennan, called his time on the film quite maddening, claiming there
was no real character for him to work with. Billy was also originally written to die in the film but
Nivola protested so strongly that he eventually convinced the director to let him survive.
Billy wasn't the only one whose fate was changed at the last minute - Michael Jeter's character was
originally meant to be killed during the initial spinosaurus attack, while the mercenary Nash would
be slaughtered by velociraptors near the end. In the final version their fatalities are reversed.
Actors were also called on to perform many of their own stunts, on land and underwater,
leading to injuries while filming. Tea Leoni was repeatedly wounded while filming the sequence
where she's attacked in the water. According to Leoni: More of my makeup was to cover the
real bruises than to create fake ones. When she would return home after a day of filming,
her then husband David Duchovny saw her condition and half-jokingly asked: At what point in this
movie do they whip you? The time filming in Hawaii spanned several locations on various islands,
although much of that footage ended up being limited to establishing shots.
As the script continued to develop, production moved back to Los Angeles. The majority of the
film ended up being shot on a Universal Studios backlot, where the production spent 96 days.
The fog drenched jungle rainforest was physically constructed on a Universal soundstage.
Jurassic Park 3 incorporated a mixture of practical animatronics designed by late great
special effects master Stan Winston and his team, and computer-generated imagery provided by ILM.
Winston and his team spent more than a year designing and building the movie's animatronic
dinosaurs. ILM would scan the sculptures and augment them with state-of-the-art CGI.
For the sequel's flying pteranodons, which Spielberg insisted be included after they proved
too expensive for The Lost World, the creatures were primarily the result of ILM's cutting-edge
CGI. The animators patterned the motion on bats and various birds in flight, while Winston and
his crew brought the baby nesting birds to life using puppet rods. In collaboration with technical
advisor Jack Horner, the real-life paleontologist who Dr. Grant is based on, Winston agreed to
introduce a different dinosaur villain to visually contrast the classic T-rex model from the first
two films. After considering the baryonyx, which was used in various concept art and preliminary
poster designs, the savage spinosaurus was chosen as the primary dinosaur foe.
According to Horner's theory, scientific evidence at the time had shown that the T-rex was actually
more of a scavenger, whereas the spinosaurus was a true predator. Creating the full-scale spinosaurus
animatronic took 10 months. At that time it was the biggest of its kind, measuring 25 feet high,
44 feet long and weighing 12 and a half tons. The entire contraption was operated by a hydraulic
system inside the animatronic, marking a major technological advancement from the previous two
movies. The humongous prop had to be transported by flatbed truck to the Universal backlot,
where a dolly allowed the spinosaurus to move. Operating the complex animatronic required four of
Winston's technicians. For all the labor-intensive effort of bringing it to life, the spinosaurus
appears on screen for just three minutes. As for the other dinosaurs, prior velociraptor
models were upgraded with quills on the head and neck to give them extra emotion on screen.
A T-rex animatronic from The Lost World was also recycled and repainted for use in the clash with
the spinosaurus. It can still be recognized by the identical facial scarring in close-up shots.
Jurassic Park 3 employed over 400 digital effects shots, nearly twice the combined total of both
previous movies. Of those shots, more than half were used on the fight scene between T-rex and
spinosaurus. According to Johnston, that fight is his tribute to the dinosaur stop-motion work
done by legendary animator Ray Harryhausen. The fight was also one of the last scenes to be shot,
and the spinosaurus animatronic was so big and powerful that it destroyed the T-rex by nearly
decapitating the robot with one final strike. According to effects technician Robert Ramsdell,
the dinosaurs were going to be scrapped after production anyway,
so they really rammed the two robots together to get as much great footage as they could. As the
battle was filmed, producers and studio execs on set had a great time rooting for their favorites,
but the effects crew was a bit dispirited after all the time and effort put into their creations.
Another challenging scene to film was the spinosaurus's airplane attack.
To create the illusion of the spinosaurus crushing the fuselage, Winston and crew ended up building a
full-scale dinosaur leg and slammed it onto the exterior of a prop airplane. For the interior
shots, a different plane prop was outfitted with a hydraulic device that compressed the
inside to make it appear as if the spinosaurus caused the damage. The actors in the scene
performed their own stunts, and Macy compared it to being trapped inside a clothes dryer.
In November 2000, the ending underwent more changes when it was considered too tame.
A new conclusion was cobbled together, adding the military rescue of the remaining survivors. Along
with helicopters and amphibious vehicles, the Pentagon provided the production with 80 Marines
and the cast and crew all went back to Hawaii to shoot the new sequence. After all the production
pains and persistent script problems, Jurassic Park 3 was pushed to a release in summer of 2001,
a full year after its initial target date. The film opened wide on July 18 2001 and it went
on to gross 368 million dollars worldwide. But with a cost of 93 million, the third movie was
the most expensive in the trilogy, but only made a fraction of its predecessors. It's also the
shortest - the end credits start rolling after a mere 84 minutes of frantic dinosaur mayhem.
Critically speaking, Jurassic Park 3 is also the lowest rated movie of the bunch. That is
one big pile of [ __ ]. The biggest criticisms were the lack of plot story and character,
which all took a backseat to the breakneck pace and the admittedly impressive special effects.
As a result of the critical and financial shortcomings, the franchise was put into
a cryogenic freeze and wasn't thawed out until 2015 with the release of the hit Jurassic World.
The next chapter of the rebooted franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion,
will finally reunite the principal trio from the original Jurassic Park movie. Maybe this time,
Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm will have a better outcome than Jurassic Park 3.
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