![]() This garnered the respect of some sci-fi fans and critics, but little else. As its own movie, Jurassic Park III was a passable monster movie that had no ambitions beyond entertaining audiences. It also played things safely because it was more concerned about pleasing fans and maintaining Jurassic Park's legacy than doing anything interesting. Jurassic Park III fell short in almost every regard. It was a perfectly fine if forgettable follow-up to a genre-defining trailblazer that's rightly heralded as a classic by many. Jurassic Park III was the kind of blockbuster sequel that was commonplace between the '90s and '00s. It's impossible to deny that Jurassic Park III became the most beloved dinosaur movie of the early 2000s by being the only one general audiences even saw or heard of. While this further solidified just how extraordinary of an artist Spielberg is, it also exposed how ironclad Jurassic Park's grip on pop culture was. Except for direct-to-video fodder, there were no other mainstream dinosaur movies made after Jurassic Park. Helping Jurassic Park III's case was the severe lack of mainstream dinosaur movies released between 2001 and Jurassic World's opening in 2015. By default, Jurassic Park III was the most entertaining (if not best) of the original Jurassic Park's questionable successors. Jurassic Park III's cute references to the previous movies felt quaint compared to Jurassic World's nostalgic contempt. Characters' snide remarks or the overabundance of locusts in Jurassic World Dominion barely masked the trilogy's disdain for even the notion of escaping Jurassic Park's shadow. The Jurassic World trilogy infamously relished nostalgia and opposed any attempts to do anything new. ![]() It's hard not to see why Jurassic Park III effectively killed the Jurassic Park franchise and whatever relevance it had in the popular consciousness for nearly 15 years. Audience and critical reception of the time hammered in this waning interest. Although it earned an impressive $368.8 million worldwide, Jurassic Park III was the lowest-earning movie of the Jurassic Park trilogy. Jurassic Park III was decent, but it signaled that Jurassic Park was running on fumes and stuck in a creative corner. For example, the hefty subplot dedicated to the now-iconic Velociraptors took time away from original sequences like the Pteranadon cage. It was also guilty of being too self-involved at times, making too many callbacks and references to the previous movies' iconography instead of making its own. The worst that could be said about Jurassic Park III was that it tried too hard to replicate the unique magic that director Steven Spielberg brought to the first two movies rather than surprising audiences with something wholly new and unexpected. The surprisingly small cast of characters was easy to like, and they at least gave the bare minimum when it came to acknowledging the franchise's signature thematic conflict between humanity's scientific hubris and nature's law. It didn't waste any time when it came to showing dinosaur chases and rampages, and it had a brisk pace. Both movies were also more focused on survival horror and thrills, as opposed to the original Jurassic Park's masterful balance of dinosaur mayhem and ruminations about the ethics (or lack thereof) of a dinosaur zoo.Īt its best, Jurassic Park III was a fun B-monster movie with a blockbuster budget. Both movies were set on the abandoned Isla Sorna (aka Site B) that's since been overtaken by the dinosaurs and nature. ![]() Much like Ian, Alan reluctantly agreed to return to the dinosaur island under his employer's false pretenses. The main difference was that it starred Dr. Jurassic Park III fell short of expectations because it was a glorified retread of The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Contrary to what fans claimed during its release, Jurassic Park III's mediocrity wasn't the fault of the Spinosaurus unceremoniously replacing the series' flagship dinosaur, the T-Rex, or that of the Velociraptors' odd redesign. Jurassic Park III isn't the worst sequel of its kind, but it's easily the weakest installment of the original Jurassic Park trilogy.
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