That was Spielberg being Spielberg. And I hated it.
Yes. A long time ago.
I actually bought a Folio Society edition of Jurassic Park as a birthday present for myself last year. Shamefully I haven’t read it yet.
4 Likes
Yeah - they probably should not have even made it into a movie.
While I watch the movie, I keep wondering how anybody who hasn’t read the book can even tell what’s going on, because they skipped so much
And they made a mess out of the elves. But I am pulling away from dinosaurs. Sorry OP.
1 Like
I should listen to it!
1 Like
My main recollection of it is that the annoying girl is way more annoying in the book.
I’ve read most (?) of Michael Crichton’s books.
Big fan of the Westworld movies. Couldn’t get into the tv series.
2 Likes
Did you watch the theatrical versions, or the special extended? We ONLY watch the extended versions, which have almost an hour more for each of the three parts. They parts they left out really were fine to leave out. A book purist won’t be happy, but truth is, for example, Tom Bombadil was really unnecessary to the greater story. Leaving him out was fine, even if he is beloved from the books.
Some changes people don’t like I felt served the movies well.
1 Like
extended versions. And I am still not even through them all. They combined elves, so to speak. And yes, Tom Bombadil. But the audio book was 60 hours read. A lot is left out.
I just loved the books and the movies seem hurried.
Is that the way for HP?
Definitely!
There’s a lot left out. It’s understandable (thought not necessarily forgivable) why certain bits were left out though - not entirely essential to the overall plot.
1 Like
A movie will rarely match a book. But as movies go, what they did with LOTR took a good story (but boringly written) and turned it into something we love dearly. The entire family comes over and watches the entire series at least once a year with us. We were just talking about the next time we watch it. We are due!
So, you can’t watch it expecting to see the book. You have to watch it as standalone. In that, it is great. I actually like it way more than the books. The music score is arguably the best musical score ever written. (We watched a documentary about it, and it was far more brilliant than even I realized.)
Yes…the HP movies also cut a lot out from the books. But for the most part, it was prudent cuts to make the movies reasonable length. I certainly wish more of the books were in the movies…but they did a great job with making judicious cuts (other than perhaps Half Blood Prince).
This I agree with. I loved it long before I’d listened to the book.
Same with Star Wars. I loved the music long before I’d watched the movies.
I’m not sure I can say this about any movie/book. I love stories so much I hate to see them truncated.
I for sure loved the LOTR books and I can barely sit through the movies.
With the exception of LOTR, I agree whole heatedly.
But what is NOT worth watching are the movies Peter Jackson made from The Hobbit. Those are quite bad!
Not enough.
The prudent cuts would have been to the original bloated source material. Rowling desperately needed an editor willing to stand up to her after the third book.
1 Like
For the movie, they swapped that brother and sister from the books. That is, they made the sister be the computer nerd instead of the annoying little sister. The computer nerd in the book was the brother. I think the change was fine, although perhaps a tad ahead of its time.
The girl in the movie was plenty annoying. Just not as annoying as the one in the book.
She, for example, is the one who attracts the T Rex by waving the torch all over the place.
I read it many, many years ago. Great book! I loved the movie, but the book is better.
1 Like
I read it YEARS ago. Like, when the original movie came out. I remember liking it. I think I still have the paperback on my bookshelf.
1 Like
I could have written any of this:
I generally agree with your rankings, but I like The Lost World enough that I put it above JP3 and all the Jurassic World movies. I saw a documentary with Spielberg and he talked about why he took the film to San Diego at the end, and they weren’t originally going to, but he decided the film needed a King Kong moment, and the Hollywood nature of it won over plausibility. I kind of like it, TBH. There are some cool / hilarious moments during that sequence.
Sorry…and I know you love everything…but the moment the dinos showed up in San Diego, the movie stopped being serious and was a big joke/parody. For example, the “Godzilla” moment with the Japanese tourists fleeing Trex was borderline racist and definitely bad taste. It wasn’t funny at all.
Even when still on the island, I had trouble suspending my disbelief at times. How the kid managed to survive alone was one of them, with the explanation as to how he knew to collect dino urine as protection, with no actual explanation as to how he managed to collect it another problem.
There were some cool moments in the movie…and overall I enjoy every one of the movies to some degree…but JP2 was definitely the worst of the bunch.
1 Like