Monster Movie of the Week: Jurassic Park 3 (2001)

Given the recent passing of actor Sam Neil it seems like an ideal time to pick up our look at the Jurassic series in this column. It’s hard to believe the last movie we looked at in this series was The Lost World and that was back in 2010. Neil returned to headline JPIII in one of the most underrated movies in the series which is a back-to-basics Jurassic movie with a terrific and relentless new dinosaur antagonist and some great set-pieces. Unfortunately, most of the actual human characters are pretty bland and uninteresting and the movie is full of lazy and simplistic interpersonal conflicts with trite resolutions. A couple of extra passes on the screenplay might have made this a much better movie.

This film has the distinction of being both the first in the series not based solely on Michael Crichton’s source material and the first not directed by Steven Spielberg (who produced it). While The Lost World was only very loosely based on its source novel, Jurassic Park III is a wholly original story set on Isla Sorna, the Site B created in The Lost World novel.

This film is directed by Joe Johnston, a talented journeyman director who has a long history with Lucasfilm and especially the Star Wars franchise, mostly as an artist and designer (he designed the Boba Fett character and many other iconic original trilogy elements.) He is also an accomplished director of such notable films as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, and Captain America: The First Avenger. He was a logical choice to step into this movie with his extensive history of VFX and adventure movies and long history with ILM.

JPIII is set an unspecified amount of time after The Lost World and its very public San Diego climax. The island of Isla Sorna is a protected area where the dinosaurs are allowed to live undisturbed and people are expressly forbidden from visiting it although there don’t seem to be a lot of measures in place to keep that from happening. It actually seems super easy to get there.

THE MOVIE

The movie starts with young Eric Kirby paragliding near the island and getting attacked and stranded there. His parents recruit Alan Grant to assist them under the ruse that they are a wealthy couple with special permission to do a flyover of Isla Sorna. They make a similar offer as that of John Hammond in the first movie and promise to fund Grant’s hard-up expedition which is excavating raptors. Apparently they are still digging up that same raptor from 1993. He and his protege Billy accompany the Kirbys but we learn they are not what they had claimed and are actually Eric’s divorced parents who have thrown all of their resources into a last ditch mission to land on the island to find their son.

Their plane is attacked by a previously unseen dinosaur, Spinosaurus which obsessively dogs them throughout the movie. The Spinosaurus tangles with one of T-Rexes, and in one of the movie’s most infamous scenes, quickly dispatches it.

The group makes their way to a previously unseen abandoned InGen lab (remember this is the same island seen in The Lost World). This spooky location is the “factory floor” where Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs are made and grown. While JWIII is narratively very self-contained, the movie does a great job of at least visually telling a lot of the backstory and connecting it to Jurassic lore. This kind of visual storytelling is no surprise from someone who came up through the ranks at Lucasfilm. 

The group is then attacked by velociraptors and separated. Grant is rescued by Eric who has been surviving on the island for two months. Eric is actually the most interesting human character in the movie in that he is smart and resourceful. He is one of those Jurassic legacy characters still on the table that could make an interesting adult protagonist in a future movie. 

Following his father’s satellite phone ringtone, Eric and Grant manage to reunite with Eric’s parents and Billy, the only survivors of the Spino and raptor attacks, only to find out that the phone was last seen in the possession of one of the mercenaries eaten by the Spinosaur. The creature then attacks and the group takes refuge in an abandoned aviary and here is one of the two instances of the movie loosely adapting some unfilmed material from Crichton’s first book. In that novel, Grant and the kids escape from the pursuing T-Rex via raft on a river which takes them into a disused aviary attraction filled with territorial and aggressive pterosaurs. In the book, book the creatures are creepy croc-mouthed Cearodactyls. In JWIII the go with the better known Pteranodons teased at the end of The Lost World.

In the aviary, Grant learns that Billy had stolen a couple of raptor eggs, which is why the raptors have stalked them through out the island. Billy explains he did it because he thought they would be valuable and help them get out of the financial hole that the expedition is in. Oddly, Grant goes out of his way to shame him for it.

When Eric is carried off by a Pteranodon, Billy goes after him in a paraglider. Which is…a choice. Eric is rescued but Billy is last seen being pecked at as he flows down river, bleeding.

The group recovers the satellite phone in some Spino poop and make their way downriver in a boat. As the Spinosaur attacks, Grant is able to make a call to Ellie Sattler, who early scenes in the move established is married to a high ranking State Department official. This is the other scene that seemingly adapts the famous T-Rex river escape scene from the book although that scene is more faithfully adapted in 2025’s Jurassic World Rebirth.

They manage to escape the Spino and are then confronted by the raptor pack. Grant offers them the eggs. Scared off by approaching helicopters, the raptor take the eggs and flee. The group is rescued and reunited with a bandaged Billy who had already been picked up by the forces Ellie had sent.

THE MONSTERS

The Spinosaurus is a fantastic addition to the franchise and is beautifully designed and executed through the same combination of animatronics and CGI used in the first two movies. Interestingly, Spinosaurus was not in any ways present in the books and at the time of JPIII’s production it was a fairly obscure dinosaur known only through a single skeleton which had been destroyed during WWII-era bombings. Literally, all they had of it were sketches and photos of a destroyed specimen. The Jurassic series has certainly done a lot to raise Spino’s profile (as it has done for other lesser known dinosaurs) but we’ve also recovered a lot more material from Spinosaurus and its close relatives in the quarter decade since this movie was released. Earlier this year they announced the discovery of a new species with a damn horn growing out of its head. So Spinosaurus is a “hot” dinosaur with a lot of active debate about its biology and lifestyle.

Was it as awesome and photogenic as the handsome boy in JWIII? No. It probably looked a lot more like its fugly depiction in Rebirth. Could it actually have beat T-Rex in fight? Probably not. While it is technically the longest known theropod dinosaur it was relatively slightly built and T-Rex was a more powerful animal with a stronger bite force. Spinosaurus evolved to eat fish not for gladiatorial combat against apex predators. That said, Spino has some long deadly claws on its arms that, famously, T-Rex does not.

Verdict: T-Rex.

Also, I don’t love the disrespectfully quick Rex kill. And that would have been one of the two adult rexes from The Lost World which, as audience members we were somewhat invested in. No bueno.

The movie is also famous for arguably the best raptor designs in the franchise (although the briefly-seen raptors from Rebirth are close). As the Jurassic Park franchise went on, they got more and more adventurous with the raptors in terms of coloration and plumage. By JPIII, we’ve got some really colorful and exotic designs and even some basic quills. It should be noted, the animals depicted in these movies are not  velociraptors but closer to something like Deinonychus or Utahraptor. In any case, they would have been fully feathered bird-like animals.

Some other appearances here include Ankylosaurus, and even a cameo from one of my favorite theropods, the horned Ceratosaurus. The distinctive crested herbivore Corythosaurus makes its first Jurassic appearance here as well.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

The initial intro of the Spinosaurus and its infamous tangle with the T-Rex.

Also the satellite phone ringtone is forever burned into my brain. 

SEE ALSO

Grant and Sattler appear against in 2019’s Jurassic World: Dominion

A pod of redesigned Spinos are featured in Jurassic Park Rebirth more in keeping with our current understanding of their appearance.

Spinos also appear in small roles in the recent non Jurassic dino movies Primitive War and The End of Oak Street.

This particular Spinosaurus shows up to menace our Nublar Six survivors in one of the later seasons of the fun Netflix animated show set in the Jurassic series, Camp Cretaceous, a show that more than fulfills the requisite child endangerment of this franchise. 

If you are enjoying Monster Movie of the Week, check out my kaiju novel City of the Gods: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.

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Patrick Garone

Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.

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REDUX Monster Movie of the Week: Jurassic Park (1993)

Note this entry was originally published 9/20/2009 and revised, expanded, and republished 9/5/2026

JURASSIC PARK (1993)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Science Fiction/Adventure/Survival

THE MOVIE:

I have a complex relationship with the Jurassic franchise. On one hand, Michael Crichton’s novel is one of my top five favorite books. When I first got my hands on the paperback in the summer of 1991, I ate it up and was obsessed with it. The book was a fun way for me to dive back into my childhood love of dinosaurs and was a great mix of paleontology, then-cutting edge biotech, and real danger and gore. People who only know Jurassic Park from the relatively wholesome movie don’t know the darkness, violence, and fierce social commentary of the book.

I saw the movie on its release day with a couple of friends and couldn’t help but be a little underwhelmed by it. As a dinosaur movie, it’s awesome but it leaves much of the book on the table (for valid reasons of time technology) and, worse, it takes Crichton’s dark cautionary tale about the dangers of biotech in the hands of entitled and irresponsible rich a-holes and turns it into a movie about how awesome dinosaurs are and, yay, nature, or something. That said, it’s still the greatest dinosaur movie ever made.

Where would monster movies be without Jurassic Park? Although, not strictly speaking, a “monster movie” (Spielberg was very conscious of making his dinosaurs animals and not movie monsters,) Jurassic Park helped usher in a new era of creature features and for the first time applied CGI to the task of creating photorealistic creatures. Over the next few years when this technology became cheaper and easier to use it helped usher in a whole wave of CGI-aided monster movies such as Anaconda (1997), The Relic (1997), Mimic (1997), Deep Rising (1998), Deep Blue Sea (1999,) Eight-Legged Freaks (2002) and a whole slew of others. Jurassic Park took a B-movie premise and gave it a respectful presentation, with an A-List director.


Jurassic Park is an adaptation of the late Michael Crichton’s blockbuster novel about an island theme park featuring dinosaurs cloned from amber-preserved DNA. This clever premise skirts actual science just enough to sound plausible. With the unprecedented realism of its visual effects, Jurassic Park has the feel of credible speculative fiction. Although, how cool would it have been if Spielberg had chosen to realize it as a faux documentary, the genre closest to what the book purports to be? If this movie ever gets remade (and there is good reason to do it) this is the route that they should go. The movie also launched Crichton-mania in the mid to late 1990's with (among others) adaptions of Congo, Sphere, and Disclosure rushing into production in Jurassic Park's wake as well as the Crichton-developed TV series E.R..

A small group of scientists are recruited to evaluate the island theme park prior to its public unveiling when a combination of a tropical storm and industrial espionage take out the Jurassic Park’s security systems causing the dinosaurs to escape their enclosures and overrun the island. A grumpy paleontologist must shepherd a pair of kids back to safety through the dino-infested island. As Hammond says in the movie, "Who better to get the children through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert." The heroes must then do everything they can to escape the island.

Jurassic Park was a pop cultural phenomenon when it was released. It was a movie whose sheer size and visuals had to been seen (not to mention heard) in a theater to be done justice. Even people who don’t normally go in for big summer special effects movies wanted to get a glimpse of Spielberg’s dinosaurs. One could actually make the ironic argument that the CGI technology used to bring the dinosaurs to life for the movie was a bit like Hammond’s technology to bring his dinosaurs to life in the story. It was a bit of a circus atmosphere: pay your $6 at the door and get a glimpse of the most realistic dinosaurs you’ll ever see. I vividly remember going to see it with a couple of high school buddies. June 11, 1993. Regardless, until Titanic was released, Jurassic Park enjoyed a four-year reign as the all-time box office champ.


One of the things that I genuinely love about the movie that I don’t think people talk about enough is the iconic production design which captures a kind of 1990’s tropical theme park adventure aesthetic. The movie is so rich in details that bring the nascent theme park to life. Everything from unmistakable red and neon green range rovers, the dinosaur fossil relief panels that decorate the visitors’ center, the painted velociraptor mural in the kitchen is all instantly recognizable. The on-location shooting was done in Hawaii and it gives the park a believable character and a sense of geography. Yes, Jurassic Park is a terrible idea and the product of humanity's overweening hubris, but I really want to go there. And layer the majestic John Williams score on top of that and it’s not hard to understand why many people consider this movie a classic.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The effects have held up nicely over the decades and feature a seamless blend between CGI, animatronics, and even some suitmation. At some points (such as the raptor kitchen chase) the three techniques are so deftly blended together that it is next to impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins.

The filmmakers were pushing technology to its limits when they made this movie so some of the more demanding sequences from the book were probably cut from the movie (such as the T-rex river chase later adapted in both Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World Rebirth) for technical and financial reasons and scenes like the annoying car-in-the-tree sequence were probably added as “filler.” Of course, they more than made up for this in the sequels which featured a veritable orgy of dinosaurs.

While this movie is famous for its ground breaking use of CGI to bring the dinosaurs to life in certain scenes requiring extended mobility and performance this was not the original plan. Jurassic Park went into production with the plan of using stop-motion dinosaurs in the full Ray Harryhousen tradition. The story of how a young ILM employee took it upon himself to bring CGI into the project could be a movie in itself and is told various places including the great Disney Plus documentary Light and Magic.

The sound design must also be given credit. As amazing as the visual effects were, the sound effects and vocalizations created for the dinosaurs are equally impressive. Who can ever forget the earsplitting roar of the T-Rex? The same is true for the more avian and unnerving raptor calls and screeches. Not to mention the distinctive Dilophosaur hiss. I don’t think hissing has ever been done better. Not even by my cat.

BOOK TO MOVIE

So obviously, the story is streamlined from the book.

Here are some of the major differences:

The version of the park in the book is a lot farther from opening than the movie. The guest facilities and most of the attractions are very much under construction in the book. The world of the book is a lot less polished and therefore a little more dangerous.

A major and fascinating subplot is the fact that at the start of the book some of the smaller dinosaurs have already gotten off the island and are disrupting both the ecosystem and the human population of Costa Rica. In fact, the investigation into these events really provides the jumping off point for the rest of the story. This subplot is completely omitted from the movie. It is briefly followed-up on in Crichton’s sequel, The Lost World, but that book was written in the wake of the huge success of the movie and is a strange hybrid of a sequel to both the book and the movie which recons certain elements of the novel, like Malcolm’s death. Crichton seemed disinclined to write sequels as a rule so who knows if he would have ever followed up on Jurassic Park if there had not been pressure from Amblin and Universal to create a sequel. It seems that the novel sets up a book about the escaped dinos spread into the world which would have been awesome. I know a version of this happens in the Jurassic World movies but it happens in Crichton's books in a way that is more dangerous and insidious.

One of the biggest changes is in the characterization of Hammond who is less a kindly grandfather concerned with bringing joy to the world’s children than a rapacious and irresponsible capitalist who is using this powerful and transformative technology for purely frivolous entertainment purposes without a thought to the human or environmental consequences. And that's not even to mention on the dinosaurs themselves. On a related note Elon Musk has recently indicated he wants to clone dinosaurs. So, yeah. Lessons learned.

Grant and Sattler are not a couple here so the in-retrospect uncomfortable age and status gap is not a factor in the book. Grant specifically likes children in the book because they like dinosaurs. The changes they imposed on Grant in the movie are all about giving him some kind of tiresome domestication arc. Malcolm is largely the same character in the book but there is much more of him in the novel to the point where he is very much Crichton’s mouthpiece for the themes of the book and his criticisms of out-of-control scientific progress and, implicitly, to the out-of-control capitalism that enables it.

Also, lest I come off painting Michael Crichton as some kind of woke, leftie figure I don't think that was the case as all. He was actually famous in the later years of his life as a climate change denier. I don't know what all his politics were but I'm sure they were complex. That said, I stand by my reading of this book in that it is implicitly critical of the kind of irresponsible venture capitalism that enabled Jurassic Park. What we are supposed to take away from this book is that Jurassic Park is a terrible idea. This is so much the case that the book ends with the military bombing the island and killing all the dinosaurs.

This also happens off screen in the continuity of the movies but is very much at odds with the tone of the film which is very "aww, dinosaurs are majestic and beautiful." The fact that the movie series for some reason decided to do this also has caused a lot of unnecessary complexity and confusion to the lore such as the need for second and third islands, moving dinosaurs around between the various islands, a second park on the ruins of the first, etc.

“Your kids, Crichton. We’ve got to talk about your kids!”

Tim and Lex are also in the book. They are not a Spielbergian addition. The long and ignoble tradition of Jurassic series child endangerment starts squarely with Crichton’s novel. To Spielberg’s credit, the kids in the movie are far less annoying than in the novel. The ages in the movie have been swapped, so that Lex is now a preteen instead of an eight year old. Look, you are not ready for book Lex who is one of the most aggravating characters in fiction and someone is stubbornly determined to be difficult and unhelpful in a series of high-stakes crisis situations. By contrast, movie Lex has some useful skills and is mostly calm, down-to-earth, and acts like a normal human being.

As with the movie, much of the book is following Grant and the kids attempting to get from the Tyrannosaur paddock back to the visitor center. The journey in the book is a bit more extensive involving run-ins with both Tyrannosaurs (including a juvenile which is scary in a different way than the adult), on a river (a great scene finally recreated in Jurassic World Rebirth) and through a waterfall (a scene repurposed in The Lost World), through an abandoned aviary filled with pterosaurs (Jurassic Park III) and finally evading raptors through the InGen labs in the visitor center. 

Perhaps most striking is the tonal difference between the book and movie. Crichton’s novel recounts the story’s many dinosaur attacks in sometimes graphic, medical detail. Many of the book’s characters are mauled or eaten alive and the book does not spare on the details.

Finally, the book features a different and slightly larger roster of dinosaurs including Compys, Stegasaurs (replaced by Triceratops in the movie),flying Cearadactyls, Microceratops, and Styracasaurus. 

It should be noted the book version of the Dilophosaurus is more accurate to the actual animal in that it is considerably larger and lacking the neck frill, although its being venomous started with Crichton's book.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

Tyrannosaurus Rex
Dilophosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Tricerotops (lying down only)
Velociraptors – Introduced the word velociraptor into common speech.
Parasaur
Gallimimus


MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

There are many amazing sequences in this movie but my personal favorite is a quick shot right after Grant and all land on the island. After you see the first Brachiosaurs there is a beautiful long shot of a herd of dinosaurs bathing in the lake in the golden sunlight. They should make a poster of this:


WHERE TO WATCH:

Widely available on Bluray  and in various combo packs with its sequels. Back in the old days of the VCR, Jurassic Park was the movie with which you showed off your home theater system.

SEQUELS:

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Jurassic Park III (2001), Jurassic World (2015), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Dominion (featuring Malcolm, Grant, and Sattler), Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

MINORITY REPORT:

First casualty: A black Costa Rican worker gets munched on by a caged raptor.

The only black character of consequence is a pre-Pulp Fiction Samuel L. Jackson, who makes a novice minority-character-in-a-horror-movie mistake: He leaves the group to turn the lights on. No! If you are black and in a monster movie, you never leave a group of white people!

Minority Survival Threshold: 26%

Annoying-Ass Kid Survival Threshold: 100%

SEE ALSO:

King Kong (2005)
Primitive War (2024) While this dinosaur war movie has little to do with the Jurassic series it seems to go out of its way to feature many of the same dinosaurs in a more scientifically-accurate presentation and a level of gore and violence that is in keeping with Crichton’s novel.

READ ALSO:

Check out The Science of Jurassic Park by Rob Desalle and David Lindley. And also Crichton's novel.

Not that I condone reading.


THE TRAILER:




TRIVIA:

Actual velociraptors were only the size of a turkey and lived in Asia, so Grant would absolutely not be digging one up in Montana. The raptors in the movie resemble another species, Deinonychus which did live in what was now North America. Interestingly, around the time of the movie's release a related species, Utah Raptor, was discovered that more closely sized to the velociraptors in the movie (a bit larger actually.)

Patrick Garone

Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.

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Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: King Kong (1933)

KING KONG (1933)
Director: Merian C. Cooper
Genre: Monster on the loose/Adventure/Lost World

THE MOVIE

King Kong is probably the most important in influential monster movie of all time. It spawned a whole genre of giant monster movies and a slew of imitators and copycats as well as one direct sequel, two official big-budget remakes and a short lived Japanese series from Toho studios. It was one of the first big “special effects” movies. Kong’s influence even reaches into far-flung and unexpected places. For example, King Kong was an obvious inspiration for the classic video game Donkey Kong which in turn spawned Super Mario Brothers and the whole series of classic video games that followed. In fact, Kong was so popular in Japan that he receives billing over Japan’s own signature monster in King Kong vs. Godzilla, not to mention that he is the ultimate victor at the end of the movie.

Although the story of Kong was created for the movies, its roots go far back to the “Lost World” stories that became popular in the Victorian era. These stories were created as a response to the discoveries of dinosaur fossils that captured the imagination of the world. It featured the requisite distant tropical island that was the last haven for a population of extinct animals such as dinosaurs and giant bugs. King Kong is also a spin on the beauty and the beast theme in which a beautiful woman is kept and grows an attachment to a monstrous male. These elements were mixed together and turned into something fresh for this (at the time) new medium.

King Kong actually started out as something closer to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land that Time Forgot in which a ship is stranded on a prehistoric island. This film was to be called Creation and it was the brain child of special effects director Willis O’Brien. Creation was never finished but the special effects convinced Merian Cooper that this genre could be done well on film. In fact, many elements from Creation (and many of the dinosaur models) were later used for Kong.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

Kong is probably the most famous movie monster of all time and in his first appearance he is realized through stop-motion animation. One of the great successes of the movie is that Willis O’Brien manages to get a genuine performance out of his little articulated doll. Like any truly memorable screen monster, Kong is more than just an animal. In his first incarnation he begins the long trek towards becoming a truly tragic antihero that comes to fruition in Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake. Unfortunately, there is too much going on in the filmmaker’s 1933 point of view that keeps that from really happening here. This has primarily to do with an unpleasant racial subtext and silly ideas about gorilla behavior. This was a time when people still thought that gorillas were carnivorous and that they would kidnap and rape women, hence Kong’s creepy stripping of Anne’s dress in the movie.

The extent and use of effects in this movie are truly revolutionary and may not be apparent at first glance to a Twenty-First Century viewer. They go beyond simply the animation of the many creatures in the movie and many of them are “invisible” effects that serve to cleverly and seamless composite the animation and live action together. Many of the effects serve to expand and deepen the lush jungles on Skull Island. Unlike today, this was all done optically and in camera using matte paintings as backgrounds and several layers of paintings created on glass to give a sense of depth to the jungle environment. Again, we look at it now and don’t notice it because we take it for granted but the special effects in the original King Kong are incredibly sophisticated and the artists who worked on this movie deserve eternal respect for their contributions to movie making.

DVD AVAILABILITY

This movie is widely available in several versions but I strongly suggest getting a copy of the deluxe two-disc edition which is loaded with bonus material befitting this classic movie.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

My most memorable sequence is actually not in the move but in the extras. One of the nice things about the extras is that Peter Jackson is involved in some of the documentaries talking about his love for the original movie as he was in preproduction for his remake at the time. He even shows off some of his collection of Kong memorabilia such as one of the original stop motion models.

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back up. There is an infamous lost sequence from King Kong. When the sailors are shaken off the log the fall into a pit filled with giant spiders and other bugs. This sequence is referred to as the Lost Spider Pit Sequence and is analogous to the scene in Jackson’s remake. The scene was filmed for the original movie but cut at some point prior to the movie’s release either because it was too horrific or perhaps only for pacing reasons. All that exists from this scene are some still photos and the original models (some of which were featured in The Black Scorpion.)


So there is this very intriguing idea that somewhere in the world in some vault there may be a famous lost scene from King Kong. Or maybe it was tossed in the incinerator. Re-enter Peter Jackson, who has been semi-obsessed with this scene since he was a young man. What Jackson and his people at WETA did for this Kong DVD was to take all of the original designs that exist from the Spider Pit sequence and rebuild them, animate them and film them using 1933 technology to recreate what this lost sequence would have looked like to the best of their ability. It is not edited into the movie but is available as part of a documentary in the extras. This is just cool on so many levels.

SEQUELS

Son of Kong (1934)

MINORITY REPORT

Where to begin with what’s messed up with King Kong? A bunch of white Americans come on a boat to some island in the Pacific inexplicably filled with African “savages” who worship a giant horny gorilla that is obsessed with a blond white woman. This may be the origin of the term “jungle fever.” I guess the main thing is that the movie propagates a generic and Eurocentric idea about “primitive” people. What’s even worse is that most people who have seen the movie are so accustomed to these jungle stereotypes that they will not stop to think about how condescending and offensive they are. Africa (and other naturally rich but underdeveloped places) were often depicted in old movies as an exotic and dangerous background for an adventure story whose people happened to be servants or adversaries of the white protagonists. King Kong is a great movie but it is definitely a product of early Twentieth Century American thoughts and attitudes.

THE TRAILER:



SEE ALSO:

The remakes from 1976 and 2005.