Birdemic: Shock and Terror - the worst movie ever

“What did you do last Friday night?”

            “Went to a party. It was awesome. You?”

            What did I do last Friday night? How could I possibly put it to words? I did indeed participate in the most meaningless hour and thirty-three minutes of my life. Doing so, I most likely took a few years off of my own life. I laughed. I cried. I tore my hair out. I screamed but not out of fear.

            There are very few movies that I can honestly say have changed my life. These are films that could either change the way we view life or perhaps even just the way we view cinema, if it’s ground-breaking enough. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Citizen Kane, and Pulp Fiction come to mind, but then there’s this little 2008 cult film, largely unknown to the populace. I am talking of course of the film that is Birdemic: Shock and Terror.

            The first thing you notice is the title. Birdemic. Has there ever been a sillier word written in the history of mankind? And as for the subtitle…well…it’s simply both shocking and terrifying that this film was made.

            The plot is like Hitchcock’s The Birds. But the movie sucks. It’s horrible beyond words. The acting is cringe-inducing as well as the dialogue, the directing is troubled to say the least, and the sound and editing appear to have been handled by a kindergartner. And the special effects are beyond awful. Now special effects don’t make a movie and I don’t often complain about special effects. I can accept dated special effects and enjoy movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Birds. But both those movies look like Avatar when compared to Birdemic. When your entire movie revolves around birds attacking people and they appear to have come from Microsoft ClipArt, it’s never a good sign.

            Seriously the visual effects are just hilarious, but they might not even be the worst thing about this movie. Everything is just unnatural—the acting, the dialogue, the film’s soundtrack which appears to have just been taken from your generic computer program.

            So it’s a movie about birds attacking, right? Yes. Yes it is.

            But it’s not. Nothing like that happens until almost an hour into the movie. Instead we have to watch the main character drive around for like ten minutes, with some of the most awkward cinematography ever. While he’s driving his Mustang, the camera is looking out the windshield while the credits role. But the camera is at the weirdest angle and overall it’s just very unpleasant to the eyes. And then the main character eventually gets out of his car and has the most unnatural walk that I can’t even describe. It’s like he’s walking less than a mile an hour. And then he enters the restaurant and this is the first indication that the film has a major problem in its audio (other than the painfully annoying credit music). The film jumps from incredibly loud background noise—to a point in which the waitress’s words are hardly identifiable—to dead silence and then back to incredibly loud. And this happens frequently throughout the movie—like more times than I can count.

            So the main character stares at this one attractive woman while she eats and then she leaves and he follows without paying for whatever the hell it is that he bought. He catches up with her and he finds out that he went to high school with her. And then he asks her where she’s from. And he says where he’s from and it isn’t where she’s from so how did they go to high school together? Anyways apparently she’s a fashion model, he’s like a salesman or something for something and they exchange business cards. So he’s Rod and she’s Nathalie or whatever.

            This movie has obnoxious environmental overtones. It’s clear that writer/director/producer James Nguyen does not know the meaning of the word “subtle”. People complain about global warming throughout the entire movie, there’s a bunch of random stuff about solar panels and things like that, the camera zooms in on the prices of a gas station in one shot, so it’s no surprise that eventually it’s revealed that the reason the birds are attacking is because of global warming and stuff. But there’s plenty to talk about for before we even get to the birdemic scenes.

            So eventually this “relationship” progresses between the two characters. They go on a date, they meet her mother, and then they recap all of what’s happened like multiple times or whatever. And none of the dialogue sounds remotely realistic. They don’t sound like real people talking and every line of dialogue is awkward, usually explains more than is necessary, and the people who are friends don’t seem to know each other at all based on their dialogue.

            Then we’re introduced to two random characters having sex in a bedroom with clothes on and an “Imaginepeace.com” poster up for no reason. The woman is Nathalie’s best friend and the guy is Rod’s best friend, apparently. So they eventually have a double date. But the strangest part about this scene—along with the distracting poster—is that there’s an instrumental 32-bit cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” playing. Why? And this apparently like becomes a motif or whatever for whenever we see this woman. When they go on a double date, she’s wearing an Imagine Peace t-shirt and later on when they run into them during the birdemic, that stupid song is playing again.

            So on their double-date they go and see The Inconvenient Truth and then they spell it out for the audience that this is a movie about the environment because the characters say they are going to get green cars and stuff. Then Nathalie and Rod continue to go on dates or whatever. When’s the birdemic going to come? Even as like a b-monster movie this is incredibly weak because nothing happens for like forever. They walk on the beach and it’s so windy that you can hardly hear what they’re saying. Then they see a dead bird and act like it’s an incredibly huge deal. Why? It’s a dead bird; it’s something to point out but not like dwell on. But they go by it and it’s clearly fake; it looks like ClipArt. And so that happens. It doesn’t really pertain to the future plot because although there is indeed a bird, the birdemic isn’t that birds die. They attack people.

            So then Rod and Nathalie go to like this bar where they’re the only people there and there’s this one dude who sings an R&B song that’s surprisingly catchy and they dance emphatically to it. But they’re the only ones there…so it’s strange. Then they go have sex in a hotel room for some reason except they’re clothed. It’s just strange.

            Then the birds finally attack. Except it’s like the next day or whatever and you never see the start of the attack, you just see a bunch of ClipArt birds who have seemingly been attacking the city for hours already. How do I know this? Because there’s already fires all over the city (again, ClipArt fires). And the birds make plane noises for whatever reason and just crash into stuff, causing explosions. It’s unclear if the birds themselves are exploding or they’re crashing into stuff that explodes. And if you care at this point then there’s something wrong with you.

            So Nathalie and Rod wake up and see that the birds are trying to come inside, so they escape to another hotel room where they run into an ex-Marine and his girlfriend. Then they run to the Marine’s car, defending themselves with wire hangers. When they’re in the car the dude apparently has a bunch of guns or whatever, including a machine gun. Why? Wouldn’t that be a major felony for him to have those in his car if he were to be pulled over for any reason? And besides, he was just in a hotel with his girlfriend, most likely on vacation. Why would he bring guns while he’s just with his girlfriend? And the guns, by the way, look like guns you might use in a game of laser tag.

            So they drive away and pick up two bratty kids who have no enthusiasm whatsoever for the dialogue they have to deliver. So they’re driving around, stealing food and water from a deli, and then driving around more, and then they have a picnic by the beach for no reason. They run into this scientist dude who—in my favorite scene in the film—flawlessly switches the subject from birds attacking to global warming causing viruses that affect all the birds and kill them. So at this point you’re aware that global warming is causing the birds to attack, according to the movie.

            Then the Marine’s girlfriend is killed while going to the bathroom in the field. Why did she think that was a good idea? So they drive around more and shoot more birds and come across a double-decker bus with three people in it pressed up against the windows, with some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen. I don’t care if they’re extras, that’s just inexcusable. The Marine runs in and brings them out, insisting that they’ll be safe after they have shot the birds with their toy guns. So they come out and more birds come. They shoot a bird and it like explodes or something and a bunch of yellow acid(?) drops all over them ala Alien. They scream and wail in pain (or it could have been over why they were in that movie but if that’s the case, good heads-up by the cameraman to catch that) and then they’re attacked by birds. Their faces are bloody and stuff even though if you look at where the birds are placed they are actually nowhere near their faces. So anyways all four of them die and now it’s just Rod, Nathalie, and those two stupid kids.

            They drive around again. They need to get gas so they go to this one gas station and the door is opened and the place is evidently unaffected by the birds but the attendant mentions the birds. I don’t get it. And he charges them $100 a gallon. And for reasons that I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully explain, this is just the strangest scene I’ve ever witnessed in a movie. There’s this weird, blurred-out feel to the entire thing. It’s like they’re not even in a gas station and they just projected a gas station in post-production. But there’s no way this movie had the money for that. I think it’s just that every product name is blurred out so they don’t get sued, but there are so many products that it’s disorienting actually. The kids grab some candy bars. The boy seems to enjoy his SDHFPKHWP bar and the girl enjoys her FOIWEIEU bar as well.

            They drive again and pull over to help this one cowboy who needs gas. They said they can’t help him but they offer him a ride. And then he pulls out a gun and says they need to sell him gas. Why sell? If you have a gun you might as well just take the damn gas. So they give him the gas and he backs away, going in the opposite direction of his car, and then a bird swoops by and slits his throat, killing him. Rod then gets in the car and drives away. Now it’s basically a cliché in horror movies to do stupid things. People drop things and leave them, don’t close doors—things like that. But usually there’s at least some kind of an excuse, like they’re on the run and in a hurry or whatever. Here they have all the time in the world. The bird that killed the cowboy flew away and there are no other birds present. There is virtually NO excuse for him not to take the extra gas or gun.

So they drive again. They come to a lighthouse. Nathalie says that’s where her friend is. Why? Does she work at a lighthouse? Does she live in a lighthouse? Why else would she be at a lighthouse? I think she like recognized the car or whatever but she clearly points at the lighthouse instead of the car on the side of the road. So they go to the car which has open windows and the friends are dead, 32-bit “Imagine” playing again.

At some point they go in the woods for some reason and come across this really creepy looking guy who is hilarious in his lack of subtlety. He lives in a tree and says he’s safe from the birds because they only attack people in cars and gas stations. How does he know that if he just lives in a tree in the middle of the woods? It’s established that his treehouse isn’t even high up in the tree so it’s not like he has a good view of anything that isn’t ten feet away from him. And he lectures about how the birds don’t scare him at all but forest fires do. So the group of people go back to their car and kind of encounter a forest fire except not really.

 Then they go to catch some fish to eat at a beach. And this is another one of my favorite moments in the film. Rod opens the trunk to see what he can get to get food. “Oh, look, a fishing pole,” he says. “I can catch some fish with it. Oh, look, a stove. I can cook it.” The horrible writing combined with the lackadaisical tone of the actor playing Rod just make this such a joy to watch. It’s the little things in life.

            So they cook seaweed and a fish—not skinned by the way. Then the kids don’t want to eat. Then more birds come. Then they run back to the car and run out of ammo. A bird goes kamikaze and cracks the windshield a little bit, dying. Are these birds organized? Did that bird think it could survive that collision, or did it have like a needs-of-the-many-outweigh-the-needs-of-the-few attitude? I don’t get it.

            Then the birds leave because other smaller birds come. Doves? I’m not sure. So apparently all is well even though the birds have left plenty of times during the movie, but I guess the eighth time is the charm or whatever. So they all go to the beach and look the sea. And you honestly can’t hear the last line of the movie because the sound is so messed up. And then it ends.

            So what are the themes of Birdemic? Clearly it’s a cautionary tale about human beings’ harmful carbon emissions or whatever. But I think it goes much deeper than that. It’s an allegory, really, of how pre-marital sex contributes to the downfall of contemporary society. The movie has nothing to do with birds until after the two main characters have sex and their friends who constantly talk about sex are killed. It’s like a slasher movie in this sense, I guess. I don’t really know.

            This is an extremely entertaining movie in the sense that you never will not be laughing. You may pull out some hair and you will definitely lose brain cells, but you will have plenty of laughs. And it’s on Netflix: Watch Now or Instantly or whatever, so check it out.

Jurassic Park III or: How my childhood was ruined in 94 minutes

Jurassic Park III was and always will be the most disappointing film I’ve ever seen. It’s really amazing how horrible and truly awful it is.

            To look back on the series, Jurassic Park is my favorite film for both sentimental and practical reasons. Yes, I grew up on it, but it also tells the fascinating story of what happens when you play God, a sort of genetics-age Frankenstein. To me this is one of the most interesting stories that can be written or filmed, for whatever reason. But on top of that, Jurassic Park had state-of-the-art Academy-award-winning visual effects, which still look wonderful today. And of course, some fantastic and terrifying action scenes that will not leave you disappointed. Basically, it’s a dinosaur-lover’s dream. And even though I’ve grown out of my dinosaur phase, I still love watching this movie. It does almost everything right. It perfectly blends CG-effects with animatronic dinosaurs to make them seem truly real. The filming locations in Hawaii truly give a prehistoric feel. And of course, the sets, score, and directing are all flawless.

            The Lost World: Jurassic Park was certainly a step-down in quality. Though its predecessor did not follow the Michael Crichton novel too faithfully, The Lost World follows its novel about as well as Robert Zemeckis’s adaptation of Beowulf. It tries to outdo its predecessor a little too hard. Instead of dinosaurs initially caged, they are initially amuck. Instead of one tyrannosaurus, we now have two. Instead of two annoying kids, we now have one. The plot is a somewhat lame excuse to get people to come into contact with dinosaurs, and of all people, Ian Malcolm, the strongest voice against the park to begin with. Despite all this and an utterly pointless and implausible scene in which a t-rex runs amuck in San Diego, this is still a decent movie. I will not defend it as great, as I have already listed its flaws, but it’s still an exciting adventure movie with good special effects, action, and lots of new dinosaurs. The visual effects are not quite as good as the first, it seems, but they still are very good. The acting is also quite mediocre, but who really watches a movie with killer dinosaurs for the acting?

            Jurassic Park III is one giant leap off a cliff from The Lost World. Everything it does is wrong. Its plot cannot be described as any less than pathetic, the visual effects are that much worse, the acting is laughable, and the pacing is just sad. I suppose I’ll start at the beginning.

1.      The Plot

I take back everything I said about the plot to The Lost World, it’s so much more believable than this piece of shit. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neill, is asked to give a tour of Isla Sorna, essentially telling the Kirby family about the dinosaurs he sees. He’s against it at first but is convinced because he needs money for his paleological team. And thus we get three new characters introduced, each one more forgettable than the rest. The Kirby family, made up of William H. Macy and Tea Leoni, and Billy Brennan, one of Grant’s partners.

      Naturally, they end up landing on the island, to Grant’s protests. The way it’s done literally has me laughing. A cartoony point-of-view shot from Grant while he gets hit from behind, causing an even more cartoony expression to appear on William H. Macy’s face. Oh but that’s not even the worst part of the airplane scene. Earlier, Grant wakes up and sees that nobody is flying the plane ala Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Then he turns and sees what the audience can assume is a velociraptor (though it looks nothing like the original raptors in its colors and FEATHERS), and the raptor speaks to him, calling his name. Of course, Grant wakes up, and it was all a dream. A DREAM SEQUENCE WITH A TALKING VELOCIRAPTOR. Even Jaws the Revenge didn’t make the shark talk in its dream sequence! I can’t believe how stupid that is.

2.      Stupid Decisions

Of course, the Kirbys had intended all along to land on Isla Sorna. Their son, Eric, played by the actor kid from The Sixth Sense, had apparently gone missing while parasailing right by the most dangerous islands on earth. This is shown in a mess of a scene that I’ll explain later. Anyways, the Kirbys know his son is alive because he is a fighter, and a survivor, and couldn’t possibly die. I’m pretty sure Robert Muldoon was a fighter, too, he was a fucking big game hunter, and the raptors had no problem with him.

What doesn’t make sense to me is the Kirbys’ sense of morals here. I understand that they want their son back and that they wouldn’t be able to convince Grant to join them if they told him the truth, but why lie to him, thus endangering more and more lives? By going to Isla Sorna, the Kirbys endanger not only their own lives, but also the lives of Alan Grant, the two pilots/mercenaries, Cooper, and even Billy. Not to mention all the dinosaurs they planned on killing with the ridiculous amount of weapons they were able to bring. And on top of all this, they picked the wrong fucking person. Alan Grant has never been to Isla Sorna, though Ian Malcolm, Sarah Harding, Roland Tembo, Nick Van Owen, and even Kelly Malcolm have. This is explained in one of those “oh shit” moments.

3.      Discrepancies

One of the biggest problems with this movie is that it goes against just about everything in the first two films. Okay, not everything, but there are plenty of things that are just stupid. For instance, the velociraptors. Their color was a little different in The Lost World it appeared, though you could never be quite sure because they were never shown in daylight. But in this film, the raptors are very different. First off, their coloring is completely different. They’re gray and blue with kinda black spots and stuff, I don’t know. And their eyes are red as opposed to yellow. Their eye color literally changes! And of course, the feathers. It is an accepted scientific fact that some dinosaurs had feathers, and probably even some in the raptor family. But if you’re making the third movie in the series, too late now. That’s like if Peter Jackson decided to give Samwise Gamgee a mustache in The Return of the King but not in the first two films after a more careful reading revealed to him that Sam was to have a mustache. We’re used to seeing the raptors without feathers, with yellow eyes, and without all those funky psychedelic colors. Just stick to the original raptors, dammit.

This is a minor point but a slightly annoying one to such a fan of the original film as me. You may notice something different about Isla Sorna. No? Oh yeah, when they’re on the island, it looks nothing like it did in The Lost World. In The Lost World we saw a lush and beautifully tropical island that could be described as paradise if it weren’t for all the blood spilt on it. In the third film, Isla Sorna is a dark and depressing place, and not just because the movie sucks. The rainforest is noticeably more dense and darker looking, looking less tropical and more northern California with a great deal of overgrowth.

4.      The raptors and how everything to do with them in this movie is wrong

The velociraptors in Jurassic Park ironically cause the characters the most trouble. Despite the size and power of the tyrannosaurus, it’s ultimately the raptors’ speed and intelligence that proves to be most menacing. While a dinosaur as famous as a tyrannosaurus rex needs no introduction, not everybody in the audience knows what a velociraptor is. Thus, the scene in which we meet Dr. Grant and Sattler also is where we first hear about the danger of velociraptors. The film defied scientific fact by having a Mongolian dinosaur being dug up in America, but it did so successfully, getting us the audience excited to see our first glimpses of the pack-hunting raptors. Likewise, when the group goes to their cage to see them feed, the audience is left in suspense, unable to see the dinosaurs, left only to the terrifying noises, terrified faces on the characters, and the horribly wrecked crane thing that carried the cow or whatever. It’s a tactic that Steven Spielberg perfected in Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to build suspense and terror by not showing us what we want to see, or what we are afraid to see. But the velociraptors in the time we do see them and based on what Grant and Muldoon have to say about them, are extremely intelligent and ferocious hunters.

By the time The Lost World comes around, we’ve already seen the raptors. We know their capabilities and we need no introduction to them. Still, Spielberg keeps them out of the film, rarely even mentioning them until towards the end. To this point the t-rexes have been the primary villains and when we finally run into the raptors we’re like “Oh my God, I forgot.” But once again the film does a good job of building suspense by withholding what we want to see and by having Malcolm say, “Run. As fast as you can.” And when the raptors come, they don’t disappoint. Plenty of jumping, lots of running, plenty of killing, some digging, lots of clawing, there’s gotta be some biting in there. Lots of death. And that’s what we want to see in killer dinosaur movies.

And then come the raptors in Jurassic Park III. The previous two films have worked remarkably well by keeping the raptors out of the film until the second half. Here, we see ‘em almost right away. And yes, they’re stupid looking, but I can’t spend all day talking about that. Well at least I don’t want to. Again we have to build up to the raptors by advertising them as incredibly intelligent and dangerous hunters. As if the point hasn’t been made already. Dr. Grant had some kind of lecture or something at the beginning of the film about how raptors were more intelligent than dolphins and primates and that had it not been for the extinction, raptors would have become the dominant species. No, that’s seriously what he’s saying. Even though he himself witnessed one tyrannosaurus easily kill two velociraptors. And this is also wrong on two other levels. First off, you can’t say “if it wasn’t for the extinction” about any animal when saying it could have become the dominant species. The fact that there was an extinction shows that they weren’t meant to be the dominant species. This notion that Grant expresses completely disregards what Dr. Malcolm had to say about nature selecting the dinosaurs for extinction. What, did nature select velociraptors to be extinct because it was afraid of how powerful they would become? And it’s shown in the first film that the raptors are intelligent. As Muldoon said, they have problem-solving intelligence, and they know how to open doors. But this by no means shows that they could be the dominant species. Though they may be able to open doors and escape from cages, I highly doubt any velociraptor would be able to build an ark when a great flood was on its way. Therefore, they would easily become extinct.

Also what’s wrong with this expository speech is that Dr. Grant believes dinosaurs evolved into birds. This is a common scientific theory that dinosaurs were never really extinct, but rather evolved over years and years. This is what Grant believes and even wrote a book about. The term “evolve” implies changing, advancing. If velociraptors evolved into birds and humans still became the dominant species, what does that show you? While some birds are some of the smartest animals on the planet, they are nowhere near as smart as humans. They don’t know how to open doors, or drive cars, though they could probably write a better script than this. So if Dr. Grant believes that velociraptors evolved into birds, what is his explanation to why birds don’t rule the earth?

More on the velociraptors’ exaggerated intelligence. When we first see a velociraptor in this film it is hiding behind a glass thing, looking as if it were contained. While animals hiding is a common hunting tactic—whether it be alligators lying still like logs or praying mantises disguising themselves as grass—I see no reason why a velociraptor should try to blend in to a surrounding that it certainly does not blend in to. Its hiding fools Tia Leoni but it just has always bothered me for some reason. I just can’t picture a dinosaur that’s keen on killing its prey immediately just hiding out in some factory. What was it doing before the humans got there? Was it just hanging around the building until it heard the humans and decided to get into the perfect hiding spot? Or had it been there for hours, maybe even days? And why wasn’t it out looking for all the prey that totally wouldn’t outsmart it, like all the herbivores on the island?

One of the most troubling scene in the film comes after a rather unexciting confrontation in the factory thing with the raptors. They run into the jungle and the raptors follow them. A raptor kills Michael Jeter while the others hide in the trees. Then the dumbest thing happens. Jeter’s arm moves while he’s on the ground, clearly dead. Tea Leoni then tries to go get him but is nearly killed by a raptor. I have so many problems with this scene. First off, how did they do that? Not how as in the sense that they’re animals and can’t do that sort of thing, but HOW DID THEY DO THAT? You never see. Like I could understand if it was yanked on like a string, but his arm moves both to the side and up. What, is he like a puppet? Are there two raptors pulling strings on different elevations? Did one raptor burrow its way underground so as to be able to push the arm up? Secondly, if an animal is smart enough to set up its recent prey as not only a trap but a fully functioning marionette, how could it not be smart enough to climb trees? Climbing trees doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence, you say. Wrong. Velociraptors have already shown that they have claws powerful enough to impale a man’s back with little to no effort. I have no doubt that these claws would also be able to go in and out of wood, enabling the raptors to climb. So if this is a possibility, why then would they go to such elaborate efforts to set up a trap? These things are like the James Bond villains of the dinosaur kingdom!

5.      The Spinosaurus and everything stupid surrounding it

I understand what the filmmakers were thinking here. They thought that we’ve already seen plenty of t-rexes and raptors in the past two movies so it’s about time we see something different. It’s why the t-rex attacked San Diego in The Lost World, to spice things up. So they write in a spinosaurus but it ends up taking over almost the entire movie.

I hate the spinosaurus in this movie. First of all, my biggest complaint about the spinosaurus is how truly dominant it is. It contradicts the previous film The Lost World. If they were on an island that had no fences and never even saw a spinosaurus chances are there wasn’t one. The film tries to cover up this obvious flaw by having Alan Grant point out that it wasn’t “on InGen’s list” as if that’s supposed to explain everything. Doesn’t matter if it’s on the list or not, idiots, if it was bred, IT WOULD BE THERE.

My biggest complaint though about the spinosaurus is how it takes out the t-rex so early in the film. The idea of a spinosaurus-tyrannosaurus showdown is a pretty cool idea, but the problem is that it should have come at the end of the film. Instead it comes almost right after they arrive on the island. The spinosaurus kills the t-rex in a pretty unexciting scene. And after that there is no t-rex. Why? The t-rex is the most recognizable dinosaur in the world and it was the star of the first two films!

6.      The completely idiot pterodactyl scene

Okay, here we go. It’s revealed in The Lost World that there are pterodactyls on Isla Sorna. That’s cool, just as long as they don’t have to become villains…Then Jurassic Park III happened and there’s a scene where the group has to walk high up in a birdcage while pterodactyls attack the kid. The pterodactyl is somehow able to pick him up, and tries to feed him to its children for some reason. Even though they ate fish and there’s water directly below them. Nothing in this movie makes sense.

The dumbest part of this scene, though, comes with Billy’s actions. He goes to save the kid by taking the parasail thing that he picked up from when the kid crashed on the island. He goes sailing across the place and saves the kid from death by pecking. It’s a really good thing there were no rips in that, considering that they crashed into trees and there are hundreds of dinosaurs with razor sharp teeth around them, including whatever the hell killed the guy who went parasailing with the kid. It’s a good thing they were accurate on their biting and scratching. What bothers me most about this scene is the whole concept of the “lucky pack”. It was used in The Lost World already. I understand if the series wants to have a motif or whatever, but do we really have to repeat THAT?! Though you assume Billy dies, he is found alive later on. How? I don’t know.

7.      What’s not in the film

Well this movie totally sucks, but at least it’s short. It feels so long though because the pacing sucks so much. It’s almost 100% dinosaur attacks and when there actually is a dialogue scene, it’s written so poorly that you keep praying for it to end.

So it’s 94 minutes, about ½ hour shorter than the other two movies. Let’s talk about what was not included that should have been.

There is no dilophosaurus in this movie. The dilophosaurus was really cool in the first movie. It looked awesome, had awesome sound effects, and killed Newman in a really neat way. For whatever reason, this was kept out of the second movie. I kept waiting for it to appear in the third movie but it never did. My suspicion is that it was unrealistic because dilophosauruses didn’t actually spit venom, so they didn’t want to have that. But it’s not like raptors could use people as puppets, come on! We don’t mind some fantasy as long as it’s done in a neat way. And not only that, but they could have made the dilophosaurus even cooler because they were actually like twice the size as they were in the first movie. Golden opportunity missed right there.

Part of what makes Jurassic Park such a great film is the sense of wonder and awe it fills the viewer. The first scene where you actually see a dinosaur is done so well that you basically forget that this theme park is doomed for disaster. You see the brachiasaurus and all the other herbivores and it’s the first time a realistic-looking dinosaur has been on film, so you believe it. No living person has ever seen a dinosaur; people and dinosaurs have been separated by 65 million years. Dinosaurs are things of folklore and legends, they’ve become fantasy because no one has ever seen one. But here, on the screen, they have become reality. It’s fascinating and I credit all the actors for giving the reactions that I would expect people to give who were seeing dinosaurs for the first time. The Lost World didn’t quite capture the wonder and awe of the original, but that’s mostly because we as an audience have seen it before. It does do it a little bit with the stegosauruses in the beginning, and even a little when InGen is capturing all the herbivores; it allows the size of the animals to wow the audience, and again, the special effects are great. Here there’s nothing. You see a few herbivores from out of the plane and it’s underwhelming. The next time you see a dinosaur after that, it’s a spinosaurus eating Cooper. Then later they try and fail miserably to capture some wonder after the pterodactyl scene by having the brachiosaurus (whose appearance has also changed completely) look at them while they’re on the river. Sorry. Not working.

8.      The most disappointing climax in cinematic history

Okay, so now we’ve come to the climax. What’s it going to be this time? In the first it was the group of people trapped in the visitors center by two velociraptors. In the second, it’s a t-rex terrorizing the streets of San Diego. Stupid, but exciting. Here, it’s raptors wanting their eggs back. Buckle your seatbelts, folks.

So Billy takes some eggs or something because he wants to take them back and study them. There’s a speech by Grant about how it’s stupid and stuff and I actually find that part to be like the best non-action part of the movie because it’s the only thing it has in common with the first movie (with the moral). They almost throw the eggs away but then they realize the raptors know they have the eggs, so they need to hold onto them. So the raptors have the group surrounded in what could be an exciting, suspenseful scene. Instead, they give the eggs back and then Grant finds this thing that he made that makes raptor noises so he breathes into it to imitate the sound that the raptors make to make them think another raptor is calling to them, except that the sound is coming from right there. Yeah, world’s most intelligent animal: can’t even realize when a noise is being made five feet in front of it. So William H. Macy tells Grant to call for help and he somehow knows exactly how the raptors breathe into that thingy in order to call for help. Then the raptors run away and it turns out there’s a bunch of helicopters, so it’s unclear if they’re scared away or fall for the dumb trick.

9.      In conclusion

In conclusion, there will never be a more disappointing movie I will see. It ruined everything. It’s stupid, poorly written, poorly paced, poorly directed, and poorly acted. This is a classic case of an unnecessary sequel, something that’s thrown out without much effort just to cash in on the previous films’ successes. And as a result, it sucks.