Jurassic Park in 3D

Since we found out about Tiny Baby almost four weeks ago, Mika and I have been make a concerted effort to spend more time with each other.  This isn’t an easy thing to go through, and the least we can do is shoulder the burden together.  We don’t always do anything exciting when we go out, but we always get to go something together and without the kids.

Today, we went to see Jurassic Park in theaters.  As many of you have heard, this year they have decided to re-do the Jurassic Park in 3D.  At first, I was skeptical.  First, this is one of my favorite movies of all time. Furthermore, movies not originally filmed in 3D have a tendency to look dark, muddy, and confused when studios do a 3D conversion.  Finally, I was concerned that they would try to modernize the computer graphics from the original movie and make it worse.

Jurassic Park is probably my favorite movie of all time.  It is one of the first movies I remember being able to go and see by myself.  There was a theater in our hometown that showed movies for $0.50.  They even had special days when a movie was only $0.25.  They kept Jurassic Park running in that theater for over a year.  As a result, I saw the movie well over 10 times in theater that year.  As a kid, I loved it for the dinosaurs and action.  As an adult, I grew to appreciate the movie for its technical accomplishments and interesting characters.  I appreciated the movie even more after reading the book.  I was worried that in the re-release, the studio would try to add in deleted scenes, or otherwise change the movie (I’m looking at you, George Lucas!).  I am happy to announce that all of the things which make the original movie great are still there!  As far as I can tell, no new scenes were added, and the splendid pacing, character development, and soundtrack of the original remain.  Experiencing the movie in the theater once again was truly enjoyable.

Movies that are converted to 3D seem to fall flat.  Because of the process used to create 3D movies, the movies can often end up looking muddy and dull.  My only previous experiences with movies converted to 3D were Clash of the Titans, and The Last Airbender.  Both films had botched conversions and ended up looking substantially worse as a result.  While there were certainly times when the 3D conversion in Jurassic Park looked more like a pop-out book than an actual 3D movie, by and large, the 3D was quite impressive.  There were no gimmicky tricks added in, and the film did not suffer horribly from the conversion.  There were even several scenes that I felt were enhanced by the addition of the third dimension.  In this end, this is really all I can realistically ask in a 3D movie.

Beyond the addition of 3D, there were no noticeable alterations to the computer graphics from the original.  The computer generated dinosaurs were a monumental achievement at the time of the original release of the movie.  Even now, I often watch the movie and marvel at how much better the graphics were in Jurassic Park than in many modern movies (I’m looking at you, Jack the Giant Slayer).  Part of the charm of the original Jurassic Park is the creative and innovative combination of animatronic dinosaurs and computer generated dinosaurs.  I was very relieved to see that the old graphics remained unaltered.  I honestly still found them to be impressive on the big screen.

Overall, I truly enjoyed the movie!  Whether you are an old enthusiast, or seeing the movie for the first time, I definitely recommend catching Jurassic Park while it is in theaters.