Extra dimension gives beasts more bite
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks — but Jurassic Park 3D proves you can make an old dinosaur even more terrifying.
Adding the extra dimension to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 monster thriller turns out to be more than just a 20thanniversary cash-in. This movie doesn’t just stand the test of time, it transcends it.
The already impressive tyrannosaurus, velociraptors and other rampaging dinos become more lifelike in 3D. So much so that today’s parents have even more reason to make sure their younger children can handle the frights.
The film’s large amount of violence, mostly of the claw and fang variety, seems more intense now than before. This could just be a trick of memory, but more likely it’s the way the critters literally pop off the screen — such as in the scenes where the T. rex is chasing a jeep and raptors are hunting kids in the kitchen.
The score by John Williams, at once triumphant and fearful, still resonates. The story by David Koepp and Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton hasn’t changed.
Paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his paleobotanist girlfriend Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) are brought to remote Isla Nublar off Costa Rica by wealthy showman John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). Hammond needs the scientists to endorse the novel theme park he plans to soon open: a wildlife preserve for dinosaurs, brought back from extinction thanks to a new DNA cloning process.
Along for the trip are a wisecracking “chaos theory” mathematician (Jeff Goldblum) and a worried lawyer (Martin Ferraro), the latter representing insurers and investors who fear expensive lawsuits if computer-controlled electric fences break and the animals run amok. The concern is justified, thanks to an approaching tropical storm and treachery by a rogue computer programmer (Wayne Knight). Even knowing the story beat-for- beat (who hasn’t seen Jurassic Park and its sequels?) doesn’t diminish the thrill of watching it again on the big screen, upgraded from the original celluloid 2D to digital 3D.
It really does enhance the experience, unlike most 3D conversions, which is saying something for a film that set the bar for CGI innovation and excellence when it was released in 1993.
Jurassic Park 3D also offers a few retro charms. The park’s computers look positively ancient, and it’s funny when Hammond’s grandkids squeal with delight when they discover a CD-ROM player in their tour tram.
It’s even funnier watching Goldblum hamming it up as a horndog math whiz in leather jacket and bare chest. He seems more of the 1980s than 1990s.
And it’s downright awesome seeing Samuel L. Jackson as a serious chainsmoking computer techie, one of the many minor screen roles he did before hitting it big with Pulp Fiction a year later.