Jurassic Park 3 (2007) is directed by Joe Johnston and is the second sequel to the Jurassic Park franchise. It features the beautiful soundtrack by John Williams from the past films, and its iconic sound effects such as the dinosaur roars. The movie features a new cast of characters trying to survive the dinosaur infested island while trying to find a divorced couple’s lost son. Although the plot on its own is just okay, Jurassic Park 3 is, by far, the worst Jurassic Park film in the entire franchise. 

In an enjoyable movie one of the key things to have is a story that is compelling to the viewer, the characters should have meaningful characteristics that make them appealing to the viewer and the story should be clear. The characters in this movie have very generic personalities, and the one trait that sticks out from them the most is the fact that they scream at anything that seems wrong to them, and will scream sporadically at anything even resembling a dinosaur. Part of the new cast of characters is Paul and Amanda Kirby, the main characters, and both of them fall victim to these generic characteristics, Paul being scared all the time and Amanda being scared and annoyed. Furthermore, Alan Grant, in comparison was a paleontologist with a professional personality and sought to take care of himself and the ones close to him in the first movie. He was quiet, serious, and courageous. But Alan Grant, in this movie, has his character is diminished to greedy, confused, and angry. This change completely destroys his character arc and tries to force us into liking the poorly written new cast and the movie is left to struggle with these faulty characters and weak script. 

Jurassic Park 3 also has a problem balancing multiple plot points, from saving Paul and Amanda Kirby’s son, to taking the raptor eggs back to the raptors, and focusing on past events and trying to make them relevant. This unbalanced plotline diminishes the quality of the movie and makes it look like just people running around with dinosaurs for an hour. 

The use of computer generated graphics, or CGI also plays a major part in the disaster of this film. Since it was the year 2007; most of the CGI at the time was not as refined and photorealistic as it is today. With that being said, the movie fails to create believable dinosaurs and backgrounds for the viewer to care about. If anything, the terrible use of CGI makes the viewer focus more on it, making it a larger problem. Compared to the stunning and believable effects of the past Jurassic Park films, where there was minimal CGI and practical effects that made the dinosaurs realistic, this film fails to do that entirely. Moreover, the use of practical effects, in the case of the dinosaurs, is subpar. The main dinosaur in this film is the Spinosaurus, and this dinosaur has many close up scenes where the dinosaur is moving around, and in almost all those scenes the animatronic movements are extremely noticeable, and the same could be said for all the closeup raptor scenes as well. 

To summarize, Jurassic Park 3fell flat trying to create a new captivating story in the Jurassic Park franchise. It posed many problems in the character development and the development of the plot. Identically, it failed to create a real immersive world with its noticeably animatronic dinosaurs and terrible backgrounds. Although the soundtrack was great and the iconic sound effects from the past movies were featured, Jurassic Park 3 was a great disappointment compared to the other films in the Jurassic Park trilogy.