Jurassic Park III (2001)

Ah, unnecessary sequels. Like death, taxes, the poor, and Michael Bolton, they will always be with us. From The Matrix trilogy, Terminator 3, the Alien series and any Eddie Murphy franchise, they continue to swamp the multiplexes like spume, foisted upon us by any film studio with a marketable concept that turns a decent buck. And have lessons ever been learned from this most Hollywood of ideas? Have they hell. The original Batman movie franchise was demolished by its final two flatulent instalments and lack of new ideas, the only constant being that there is no problem that can’t be solved with a handy bat-rope gun thingy. The Matrix sequels were badly derailed by their own inflated sense of po-faced profundity and self-importance. And its a hardy soul who managed to sit through Jason X without lapsing into a full blown existential crisis over the abject creative worthlessness of humankind.

The template for this kind of thing is, of course, Jaws – a blockbusting adventure film with potential for continuing and increasingly improbable storylines and ever more inventive tag lines: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water”, “This time its personal”. There are endless variations: “This time its war”, “They saved the best till last”, “Something has survived”. And the phenomenon has vomited up some of the most cretinous and cynical movies in cinema history, such as Jaws:The Revenge, Superman IV, Alien Resurrection, Blair Witch 2, Batman and Robin, etc etc. Stinkers every one, and its a rare thing indeed to find a sequel that matches, never mind surpasses, the original. Superman II maybe, Aliens, and certainly Godfather 2 and The Dark Knight.

A follow-up film has the advantage of being granted a little leeway. The audience is generally willing to accept that there may be another story to tell. After all, the reason a sequel is made is because the first was so successful, so it follows that they’d be willing to see more. But there has very rarely been a second sequel that hasn’t been completely surplus to requirements. In 2001 Jurassic Park III bravely stepped into this dubious arena. And, surprisingly, it “ain”t too bad.

The original Jurassic Park was quite literally a box-office monster, the movie that heralded the arrival of CG graphics as the future of visual effects. Everyone remembers those first awestruck glimpses of the Brachiosaurus and the T-Rex, the realism of the Galimimus herd stampeding past Sam Neill. And also, it must be said, the unfortunate and pointless hand-wringing of the scientific community and the media over whether or not cloning the things would be wrong..A shame that, caught up in the moment, few thought to mention that the feasibility of actually doing it is shockingly remote, if not downright impossible.

But hey ho: The film was great and everyone loved it. And so came the flood of movies in its wake utilising the new CG techniques, until by the time of the sequel, The Lost World, the novelty value had completely worn off and we instead looked for action set pieces and a decent story. It half-delivered, but ultimately relied a little too heavily on the gimmick of an escaped Tyrannosaur farting around in San Diego.

Still, it did great box office, so the arrival of Jurassic Park III was a foregone conclusion. Spielberg passed the director’s torch to Joe Johnston, who had previously helmed Jumanji, Honey I Shrunk The Kids and the oft-overlooked 1991 classic The Rocketeer. All good, solid family action-based films with liberal doses of good-natured humour and a few inspired ideas. Johnston brings that sensibility to his dinosaur antics here, and while this is no classic, its still a consistently entertaining and competently executed adventure movie.

Johnston wisely decides against dicking around with any kind of complex story, figures we’re there to see the dinosaurs and cuts to the chase. A young boy has gone missing while on a paragliding trip to Isla Sorna, the Lost World of the previous movie, and now a restricted area due to the small matter of it being full of dinosaurs. The boy’s parents, the Kirbys (played by the great William H Macy and the not-so-great Tea Leoni) approach Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill), one of the few survivors from the first film, on the pretence that they are rich and want to go on an anniversary trip to the island, and will fund Grant’s dinosaur digs for a good few years. And – hang on to your hat – it all goes wrong, their plane crashes on the island, and they have to spend the rest of the movie evading the dinos while trying to find the boy. And that’s pretty much that. Don’t get much for your $100 million these days do you?

Actually, you do if your expectations remain realistic. This is a much better sequel than you would expect thanks to its deft and exciting action sequences, and Johnston’s savvy in not taking his material too seriously and simply giving the audience what they want: an action packed chase movie which rattles along from set-piece to set-piece and has no pretensions to being anything different. The dinosaurs themselves remain formidable and exciting spectacles. The previous top-billed star, the Tyrannosaurus, here makes only a brief appearance (must have asked for his own trailer this time), and is superseded as top-dog dino by a particularly nasty creature called a Spinosaurus, who spends much of the film pursuing our heroes and ramming through steel fences. It’s a worthy successor and a fearsome beast, and gets most of the best scenes. The velociraptors are back too, and we discover that they are considerably more intelligent than previously thought, having now evolved the ability to talk to one another. No doubt by the next instalment the raptors will be playing chess, smoking pipes and debating renaissance art.

Where the movie really wins out is in its big man-versus-dinosaur scenes. In particular, there is a superb sequence set in a pterodactyl aviary, which ranks as one of the best in the series. It’s set up with a great shot of one of the creatures emerging from the mist on a rickety metal bridge, as Grant realises in horror that “It’s a birdcage!” They grab the boy in their talons and swoop down to their nest where a gaggle of baby dactyls are waiting hungrily for their next meal. It’s a great scene and Johnston directs it with aplomb, easily matching the first T-Rex confrontation in the original. There are some typically tense and dramatic scenes with the raptors, particularly the shock moment when Mrs Kirby peers into a tank and realises the raptor face on the other side is real and not on display. And there is a pretty good boat chase sequence with the aforementioned Spinosaurus, as Grant tries to reach his old colleague Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) on his cell phone while evading the bad-tempered beast.

Johnston also throws in some effective moments of wry humour – The team root around in a 4 foot pile of dinosaur crap for a cell phone, to be confronted with another carnivore who promptly turns and flees. Ellie’s toddler son, upon answering a frantic phone call from Grant battling the Spinosaurus, is distracted by Barney the Dinosaur on the TV screen. The underrated Sam Neill plays the role of Grant with world-weary cynicism – he knows he’s about to spend a movie fleeing these critters and makes no pretence of trying to add gravitas to a movie like this.

There’s still moments of extreme silliness, mind you: humans outrun dinosaurs with ridiculous ease, raptors surround them and inexplicably don’t attack, some of the scenes with the Kirby family are horribly sickly sweet and sentimental as we have to listen to them really “bonding” again after a divorce. There’s no need for any of that kind of extraneous human drama in a Jurassic Park film, but thankfully it doesn’t take up too much screen time. Some of the supporting characters should have been listed in the credits as “Dino Fodder #1″ and Dino Fodder #2″, such are their utterly perfunctory roles and lack of personality. William H Macy is disappointingly irritating, given that he’s such a great actor. And why is it always necessary in these films to cast an annoying kid?

This is no masterpiece, obviously. It’s fairly free of depth, and is not without its flaws. But it is imaginative, and if you’re in the right mood, its fun, and better than The Lost World. As an example of a sequel doing what it should do and delivering popcorn thrills and family adventure, it’s certainly a cut above the rest. But let’s hope Universal doesn’t push their luck and make Jurassic Park IV. That’s quite enough now, lads.