Here's the deal: I've got the money to buy either the Jurassic Park trilogy on blu-ray, or the Star Wars prequel trilogy, but not both. The way I decide these things is to compare not the two best films in either series, but rather the two worst, which are, as I count them, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) and Jurassic Park III (2001).
Hoo, boy. What big piles of crap we navigate.
What was wrong with Jurassic Park III? Well, for starters, how about: everything. The characters are entirely forgettable and are either complete morons or spineless dweebs. Every emotional moment is forced and cliched. Dialogue is easy and hackneyed. The movie stubbornly refuses to drop the ridiculous "cloning dinosaurs is against my religion" angle and the t-rex is in only one freaking scene. The spinosaurus illogically pursues our heroes across the entire island for no apparent reason.
Then there are the velociraptors. Apparently, they've been busy evolving in the four years since The Lost World (1997) because now they've got totally different colorations, they're about three feet taller, and they've grown special organs in their heads which allows them to speak to one another.
The raptors pursue our heroes across Isla Sorna because Billy the grad student was foolish enough to steal two of their eggs from their nest. And the raptors are such good parents that they would abandon their other three-dozen eggs just to recover these stolen two.
By now, what's the point of bringing up all the poppycock science? I mean, the movie's fatally flawed in so many fundamental ways that scientific inaccuracy is the least of its problems.
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| Between films, a raptor must've mated with a clown. |
Additionally, was there anyone in this movie who actually came from the other films? Sure, there was Alan Grant, but was he really playing a part that wasn't simply "alpha hero number one?" If they got a different actor to play Grant and changed the character's name to, idk, Sven, wouldn't this movie be totally unrecognizeable as a Jurassic Park film?
Why did this story have to be told? What was the reason? Besides the fact that Spielberg promised director Joe Johnston that he could direct the next installment in the franchise? Besides the fact that CASH MONEY?
Yuck. Ok. Glad that's over. What's next? Oh, right.
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones is the worst film in the Star Wars saga, IMHO. I know people who've made a good case for The Phantom Menace being the worst, but, simply put, Darth Maul be baller, and that podrace in HD is pretty incredible.
Attack of the Clones, by contrast, didn't even have visceral coolness going for it. The dialogue is as stilted and awkward as ever, the drama is unfocused and horrendously diluted, the romance between Padme and Anakin is the most ridiculous on-screen romance in the history of off-screen banging, and absolutely nothing makes sense.
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| In order to get the minimum required number of special-effects shots, George Lucas had to add that picnic basket in post. |
Why did Jango Fett hire a second bounty hunter to take out his client's target for him? Why were poisonous centipedes the weapon of choice? I hear blasters work nice. Why the heck did a greasy diner-owner know the location of Kamino and the Jedi archives didn't?
Attack of the Clones is filmed and edited poorer than Jurassic Park III. At least half the scenes in the gorram movie are just two people sitting on a couch, talking about sh*t, and it's presented with one master shot that then breaks into your standard shot/counter-shot coverage. The film features about a second of location-shooting and about 80% of the "sets" aren't even made of plywood but rather CGI.
Are we done yet? I guess we're finished doing inventory of all the terrible things about each film, but how do we decide which is actually worse?
I'm going to have to pass on Jurassic Park III, because, even though it's rendered with just a bit more skill than Attack of the Clones, Jurassic Park III sits comfortably outside the JP canon, whereas Episode II can't really be ignored. Anakin begins to break away from his Jedi training and he and Padme tie the knot -- two events which greatly influence Episode III, which is easily the best film in the prequel trilogy.
Not to mention Natalie Portman's midriff gets about four minutes of screentime.
So, yeah, when deciding between two bowls of cinematic sh*t, I'm gonna have to go with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones on this one. Thanks for playing.
--Serge
My pleasure
ReplyDeleteBut consider this: Maybe one of the extras in the Jurassic Park set is the scene where a raptor mates with a clown
ReplyDeleteI must heartily disagree. Not on the actual verdict--JP3 > Clones any day--but on the answer to the initial question which is JP trilogy versus prequel trilogy, and though the Sith lords are pretty cool across the board, I myself have no desire to actually own them. On the other hand, I do want to own Jurassic Park, and though Lost World isn't that good, it still has Pete Postlethwaite and some witty lines. (I haven't seen III in ages but I'm willing to give it one more re-watch for nostalgia.)
ReplyDeleteOh and congratulations: the image of a raptor mating with a clown is one that will not be leaving my nightmares any time soon.
I think what the world really needs is a movie wherein Darth Maul battles raptors.
ReplyDeleteHere's the question of the day: we've all had a thought about a raptor mating with a clown. Now the question is: what genders did we assign to the raptor and the clown?
ReplyDeleteI still think that Lost World is the worst out of the 3, it had more problems. Jurassic Park 3 has its flaws but at least it's fun. It was all it needed to be, a thrilling adventure with dinosaurs. Not saying it couldn't be something more with a better vision, but as is it's alright.
ReplyDeleteThe point of Jurassic Park isn't the human characters, it's the dinosaurs. The characters are as developed as they needed to be so the film could focus on what we really want to see, the dinosaurs.
As for them being spineless idiots, I can see you saying that about the parent characters, (and maybe the disposable mercenary characters, but really, what are you supposed to do against dinosaurs that want to eat you?) especially the mom, but that makes sense for those characters. They're normal folks in a dangerous and completely unfamiliar environment who are only there to find their son.
Alan Grant and the kid however were very competent, and the college guy was alright. I didn't see him stealing the eggs as a flaw of the film so much as a result of the guy himself being a flawed person. His motivation for it was fairly believable and the film addressed it.
The raptors have always been able to make vocalizations, it's just explored more in this movie. And it was never said how many there were, so for all we know the group that was hunting them could have been a part of a larger group. I agree the new design doesn't make sense in continuity, but for what it's worth they added the little head crest because they wanted to acknowledge the then new discovery that raptors had feathers. And the changes weren't so big to me that it was distracting, and I don't care so it didn't bother me, but that's just personal preference.
I loved Sam Neil as Alan Grant, I enjoyed his presence in the film more than Ian Malcolm in Lost World. I'm not implying you have to because I do, just want to present what I got out of it. He's meant to be the guide for the audience on this adventure, and I thought he was likeable and did a pretty good job.
I disagree that he/the actor's performance doesn't count as a character from the previous films. He's the exact same character he was in the first Jurassic Park, so was Ellie in her brief appearances, so I don't know what you expected different from his character. It did make a difference that they brought him back. He carried the experience he and the audience had with JP and gave it a sense of continuity and familiarity.
Ellie's contribution to the conclusion to the film is a total deux ex machina, but again as a personal preference, it didn't bother me. I would have preferred it if they could have thought up something better, but the movie was still a thrilling enough ride that to conveniently end it there was a nice relief compared to the movie going on longer for them to find another way off the island, which would have been exhausting. I can understand that irritating people, but for me it didn’t spoil the experience. Speaking of endings, one of the things about Lost World that irked me was the ending shot of the island where they showed pterodactyls, functioning wings and all, lose on the island, and it’s NEVER addressed. There’s nothing keeping them from flying off the island, but I guess they don’t because they never made an issue out of it, but I digress.
As for why this movie was made, audiences, including me, wanted more. And I was happy with what they gave us, so even if they did this for the cash it was money well earned. And they used it as an opportunity to film scenes from the book that didn’t make it in the other movies and I’m happy to be able to see it on screen, so it’s not completely pointless.