Jurassic Park 3D: Ready for another bite

Let’s try and set aside, for now, the history behind the movie — its success, its nerd fandom, its sequels and my undying love for dinosaurs.

“Jurassic Park” is a film that rings in our ears as the liberty bell of sci-fi thriller films. The story follows Michael Crichton’s book of equal merit. Two scientists (Neil, Dern) are propositioned by billionaire entrepreneur John Hammond (Attenborough) to come and endorse his park that features cloned versions of dinosaurs from the extracted DNA of fossilized mosquitoes.

In order to convince them as best he can, he invites them to his island for the weekend, in addition to a chaos theorist/doctor/stock-asshole character, a lawyer and, of course, his grandchildren. Can you guess which of these characters is eaten first?

Having lost control of the dinosaurs and with the 10,000-volt electric fence out of commission, what ensues are dino chases, lots of screaming, the perfect amount of gore and a heavy theme about what happens when man plays God.

Setting camp aside, the movie is every adventurer’s perfect film. But in 3-D, a movie I’d watched time and time again was as visceral and scary as when I saw the movie at age 9: I peed my pans at my grandmother’s house and checked the backseat of our car for velociraptors long afterward.

In an entertainment industry full of 3-D tycoons, many are taking full advantage of techno-happy viewers like flies on a glowing porch light bulb. Things are being rendered 3-D without rhyme or reason: “The Great Gatsby,” “Finding Nemo,” “Titanic,” the Katy Perry movie and, slowly but surely, every golden-age animated Disney classic.

Movie-makers are binge-producing 3-D films like hot bagels without estimating the demand for it. But “Jurassic Park” was finally, finally a film worth adapting.

Save a few out-of-focus shots, the effects of the 3-D were perfectly executed and absolutely necessary. As if T-Rex heads were supposed to pop out of the screen at you when the movie was made in 1993.

This is Spielberg at the apex of what he does best, and I hope you go and see this old classic told a new way.

9/10