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