Jurassic III Mixes Old And New (spoilers)

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Jurassic Park III producer Kathleen Kennedy told SCI FI Wire that the upcoming third installment in the dinosaur franchise will honor the previous two movies without repeating them. "I think the biggest challenge with any movie like this is that you can't ever top the novelty of the first movie, because people now know dinosaurs, and they've now seen documentaries on how every single one of them are made," Kennedy said in an interview.

Kennedy added, "Part of it is respecting and honoring what worked before, and that adage of "don't fix what isn't broken." And then you want to create a new story with new characters that gives people a reason to go back and experience dinosaurs again."

Jurassic Park III brings back Sam Neill in his Jurassic I role of Dr. Alan Grant, and adds William H. Macy and Téa Leoni as a married couple in search of their son. The film also adds a new nemesis: a 24,000-pound spinosaurus.

On a recent visit to Universal Studio's backlot, SCI FI Wire got a glimpse at the creature behind the closed doors of Stage 12, protected beneath a blue tarp. An 11-person crew operated the gigantic animatronic puppet, which was created by master puppeteer Stan Winston, who previously designed the 18,000-pound tyrannosaurus rex seen in the previous films. The spinosaur measures 13 feet from nose to tail, has a side tooth that's as large as a human head and a small arm the size of a 5-foot-tall human. The massive creation was designed to move along a hydraulic track built into the surface of the soundstage.

Kennedy was reluctant to discuss the details of the dinosaurs that will appear in Jurassic III. "The one thing I'm concerned about is that there's an overemphasis on wanting to dissect the logistics on how we create these dinosaurs," she said. "It also was this way on the other two [films]. And this always distresses me, because it strips away the magic that people are going to the movies for." Even so, she conceded, the realism that the first Jurassic Park brought home--and the strides that film made in special-effects wizardry--are core components of what keeps people coming back for the further adventures. Jurassic Park III, directed by Joe Johnston, opens July 20.

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From 'E' online

This trip to the Lost World's chomping grounds of Isla Sorna is better than the last one. But that's about as shocking as saying dinosaurs are big. Overall, the thrills of the JP franchise are all but extinct. Sam Neill returns as paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, who, along with curious couple Téa Leoni and William H. Macy, risks life (and some subsidiary characters' limbs) in search of...well, we don't want to give it away. But it really doesn't matter. There's barely enough story (a few referential gags included) to advance the adventurers from one dino crisis to another--including those chatterbox raptors and some new cast members, the persistent spinosaurus and airborne pteranodons. The monsters still look amazing, even if they are a bit been-there-done-that. But the anticlimactic ending bites harder than a T. rex at suppertime.