Jurassic Park 4 script review

Oski2005 · Aug 17, 2004

I remember I mentioned that Spielberg wanted to do this picture and here we have the first script review. The movie isn't actually slated to be made. It's still in the early stages, so there's a chance this will never see the screen. It's very different script from the previous movies. Some will think this is awesome, others will think it stupid. Here you go.

*SPOILERS*

So... now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about JURASSIC PARK 4 by William Monahan and John Sayles. We’ve been hearing vague rumors about this one for a while now, and I mean vague. There’s not a solid piece of information out there so far, based on the Google search I ran earlier tonight. I can tell you that a few of the rumors I read are close to right, but nothing had the details nailed down.
Steven Spielberg has been quoted as saying that they had the “mother of all ideas” for this sequel, and that if they’d come up with it earlier, this would have been the third film. He claims this will completely reinvigorate the franchise, and Kathleen Kennedy promises that it’s nothing like the other films so far. Normally, those sorts of comments could be dismissed as hype... but in this case, they’re not kidding around. Bill Monahan wrote the first draft based on a story by Spielberg. Monahan’s a busy guy, but most of his stuff hasn’t hit the screen yet, so don’t feel bad if you don’t recognize his name. Ridley Scott’s wrapping up work on his KINGDOM OF HEAVEN right now, and wants to make TRIPOLI at some point, while Martin Scorsese is just gearing up to make THE DEPARTED, which Monahan adapted from the Hong Kong thriller INFERNAL AFFAIRS. As a result of all these other obligations, Monahan moved on after that first draft, and none other than John Sayles was brought on to bat clean-up. I know that most people think of John Sayles as Mr. Indie Cinema if they know his name at all, but he’s also a big-time script doctor and, more importantly, he came from an exploitation background. ALLIGATOR, PIRANHA, and THE HOWLING are all great early genre scripts that he wrote, smart and funny and very aware of what they’re supposed to do.
I’m pleased to report that this second Sayles draft of JURASSIC PARK 4 sees him working in full exploitation mode. I’ve talked to a number of people about this draft, and it seems to radically divide them in terms of reaction. Some people adore the premise and get excited as soon as they hear it. Some people (including the person who gave it to me) are convinced it’s the worst thing they’ve ever read and a signpost on the road to Hollywood Hell. Personally, I think it’s well-written and certainly inventive, but I also think it just might be the single most bug**** crazy franchise sequel I’ve ever read, and I’m not sure we’re ever going to see this thing onscreen. It just doesn’t seem possible that Universal would make something this vigorously whacked out.
I spent the entire first act of the script thinking I had it figured out. I knew where it was going. Problem was, every time I thought I had it figured out, something happened that seemed to change the entire premise of the movie.
The script starts at a Little League game somewhere in America, an idyllic scene that quickly goes bad when pterosaurs attack the kids and their parents. It’s a cool scene, and I couldn’t help but immediately anticipate what might lay ahead. Dinosaurs in America. All-out warfare on home soil. This should be fun. In a series of television clips, we learn that this is the first attack on North American ground following months of this sort of thing in Central America and Mexico. The UN has created a task force to exterminate the dinosaurs. Awesome, I thought. A bad-ass heavily-armed United Nations task force versus the dinosaurs. Bring it on! But then the script throws its first major curve ball, introducing Nick Harris, an unemployed soldier of fortune. Nick’s the lead in the movie. Not Alan Grant. Not Ian Malcolm. Despite all the rumors to the contrary, those characters are not back for this film. Instead, we meet Nick as he watches those same reports on TV that we are. He’s approached by an ex-commander of his and offered a meeting about a job. He’s warned that the guy he’d be working for is a little bit strange...
... which brings us to John Hammond. It’s a great cameo role for Richard Attenborough, and he’s said several times that he is looking forward to it. In the script’s single wittiest scene, we catch up with the eccentric ex-billionaire who is now the most-sued man in history according to the Guiness Book Of World Records. He’s been declared incompetent by his heirs and his company has been taken over by other corporations. Technically, Jurassic Park isn’t even his problem anymore, but he still feels responsible for the dinosaurs and the damage they do. Hammond’s got a big idea: breed some new dinosaurs that can’t reproduce and introduce them into the wild population. A Judas strain that will kill off the dinosaurs within one generation. Easy enough, except the UN has outlawed any breeding of new dinosaurs by anyone and they’ve prohibited the sale, mining, or possession of amber worldwide. Hammond’s got scientists ready and waiting to go, but he needs genetic material to work with. As soon as Hammond mentions where that material might come from, I thought for sure that I was ahead of the script again. Oh, of course! The shaving cream can that Nedry stole. He’s going to hire this guy to put together a team of mercenaries, and they’re going to spend the whole film on Isla Nublar getting picked off one-by-one while trying to find the samples.
After all, the first three films are all pretty much carbon copies of each other, excuses to turn people loose on the island. I almost set the script down at that point, disappointed that they’d do something so predictable again after all this talk about how they were going to turn things upside down. Page sixteen, and I was sure I knew the rest of the script without even reading it.
But I was wrong... again.
Nick Harris does indeed got to Isla Nublar, but he goes alone. He does indeed track down the shaving cream can that Nedry stole, but that’s a mere five pages later. And as soon as he finds it, he’s attacked not only by excavaraptors (think trapdoor spiders), but also by security rangers who work for Grendel Corporation, the mysterious Swiss holding company that took over Jurassic Park from Hammond. Seems they want those genetic samples for their own purposes... whatever those may be. Nick has to get off the island, evading his pursuers, human or otherwise. He manages to make it back to the mainland just long enough to hide the shaving cream can before the security team catches up with him and gasses him into unconsciousness.
All of that happens by page 39, at which point I realized I had no idea where this thing was going, and I quit trying to guess. It kept confounding my expectations. It certainly didn’t feel like it was just another rehash of the same formula. When Nick wakes up, he’s in the tower of a medieval castle in the Alps. Seriously. That’s the precise moment when the entire enterprise goes so over-the-top loony that you’ll either go along with it for the entire insane ride or reject it roundly as a big bag of ludicrous. Nick is introduced to Adrien Joyce, the major domo henchman of Baron von Drax, CEO of the Grendel Corporation. Joyce isn’t a moustache-twirling bad guy bent on torturing Nick into revealing where he hid the shaving cream can. Instead, he offers Nick a job, and in order to explain the job to him, he has to take him on a tour of the entire castle, which turns out to be a fairly sophisticated genetics lab where Grendel Corporation has been breeding some dinosaurs of their own design, cross-breeds that never existed in any era of nature with all sorts of custom modifications.
I want to tread lightly on what happens over the course of the rest of the film on the off chance that Mary Parent or someone at Universal is seriously going to make this thing. There’s the eight-year-old-boy side of me that thinks that a DIRTY DOZEN-style mercenary team of hyper-smart dinosaurs in body armor killing drug dealers and rescuing kidnapped children will be impossible to resist. And then there’s the side of me that says... WHAT THE **** ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! Nick is put in charge of training these five dinosaurs, X1 through X5, and the first thing he does is name them. “Any soldier worth his pay has a name to answer to, not a number,” he says. So we are introduced to Achilles, Hector, Perseus, Orestes, and Spartacus, each of them a specially created deinonychus, which is sort of like a miniature T-rex. They have super-sensitive smell and hearing, incredible strength and speed and pack-hunting instincts, and they have modified forelegs, lengthened and topped with more dextrous fingers, as well as dog DNA for increased obedience and human DNA so they can solve problems well. All of this is topped off with a drug-regulating implant that can dose them with adrenaline or serotonin as the situation demands.
And go ahead. Look at the calendar. We’re a long, long way from April 1st right now.
By the end of the film, there are set pieces that are much, much bigger than anything we’ve seen in the other films, and much crazier. They’re all well-written, and there’s a glee to the bloodletting that you have to admire. There’s also a blatant set-up for a JURASSIC PARK 5 that is just too good for the studio to pass up. That is, of course, if they actually decide to make this one.
In the end, this represents an enormous gamble for Universal and Amblin’, and I admire them for at least exploring this as a possibility. They’ve thrown some damn good writers at it so far. If they make it, it’s anyone’s guess how fans of the series so far are going to react. This is no-holds-barred SF/horror/action with none of the staring-up-at-a-special-effect-in-awe tone of the first three films. This is a drive-in movie, slightly unhinged from page one, with some truly hissable human villains and some outrageous monster characters. Will it work? Will we ever see it onscreen to find out?
Only time will tell. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
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http://aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=18166

AstroRocket · Aug 17, 2004

Now THAT"S a popcorn flick. Sounds crazy and fun. Plus, it's enough of a departure from the Crighton novels that that I probably won't feel overwhelmed by how badly they're disrespecting the source material anymore.

outlaw · Aug 17, 2004

has there ever been a good part 4 of a franchise? (Phantom Menace being film #4 not #1)

HotRocket · Aug 17, 2004

Smart Dino's? I know they kinda looked at that idea in the first one with the raptors, but it would be very difficult to make them believable characters that might talk or at least interact with the guy(Only LOTR and I Robot have made good CGI characters).

Lets see... the first one was good, the second one was bad, and the thirst one was worse... anyone notice a trend here?

Preston27 · Aug 17, 2004

Originally posted by outlaw
has there ever been a good part 4 of a franchise? (Phantom Menace being film #4 not #1)
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I liked Rocky 4.

bnb · Aug 17, 2004

Thunderball was pretty good.

But I liked any Bond film with Connery.

mateo · Aug 17, 2004

"Goblet of Fire" was the best Harry Potter book by far, so hopefully its the best #4 movie ever.

Preston27 · Aug 17, 2004

By the way, is anyone else reminded of Dino-Riders from that?

outlaw · Aug 17, 2004

In a series of television clips, we learn that this is the first attack on North American ground following months of this sort of thing in Central America and Mexico.
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is Mexico no longer part of North America?

IROC it · Aug 17, 2004

Originally posted by outlaw
is Mexico no longer part of North America?
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Speilberg is a movie maker, not a geography major.

outlaw · Aug 17, 2004

Originally posted by GriffinFan
By the way, is anyone else reminded of Dino-Riders from that?
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or the Dinobots.

Grimlock kick butt

SmeggySmeg · Aug 17, 2004

didn't read the script but any chance it involves Dinosaurs breaking free after being brought back by science

AntiSonic · Aug 17, 2004

Interesting, but it's going to be hard to sell dinosaurs as a major threat to the mainland - WE HAVE GUNS.

Even without going into how out there the Dr. Doom and Teenage Mutant Ninja Raptors ideas are, it sounds like a fake.

But hey, as long as T-Rex gets his throne back from the Spinosaurus, I'm down.

Lil Pun · Aug 17, 2004

Originally posted by GriffinFan
By the way, is anyone else reminded of Dino-Riders from that?
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I haven't seen that cartoon in ages!

MadMax · Aug 18, 2004

i won't see this movie unless they somehow incorporate:

getsmartnow · Aug 18, 2004

Ummm.....okay. Wasn't the can of shaving cream only able to hold the embryo's for a few days?? I seem to remember that in JP1.
The idea is there, but I won't believe it until I see it.
BTW, my idea for a JP4 is much much better.

JeeberD · Aug 18, 2004

So they want to create dinosaurs that can't reproduce that will wipe out the population that's invading North America?

Ummm...weren't the original dinos in the first book supposed to not be able to reproduce? Didn't they mutate, allowing themselves to be able to procreate? Hello, is anyone home?

Of course, the rest of the crap following that is even more unbelievable...

MadMax · Aug 18, 2004

i'm enjoying the whole return to big scary creature vs. big scary creature ideas. real creative, fellas.

freddy vs. jason

predator vs. alien

i'm reminded of godzilla vs. mothra

seriously, have we run out of ideas? is this really what we're left with? any move that has the word "vs." in the title, is one i'm likely to avoid.

Tenchi · Aug 18, 2004

You left out Ash vs Freddy.

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