Jurassic Park 3 is…a deeply silly movie, to put it mildly. Acting as a sort of redheaded stepchild of the franchise, the movie sees Sam Neill‘s Alan Grant inexplicably heading to the dino-infested island seen in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, called Isla Sorna. It’s the flimsiest of premises and the script is clearly a cobbled-together rush job, but there’s a certain amount of B-movie fun to be had with it. Grant has a nightmare about a talking velociraptor, the new “big bad” Spinosaurus eats someone and their cell phone constantly keeps ringing from inside its stomach, etc.
And thanks to a new podcast celebrating the 20th anniversary of the threequel, we now know the movie could’ve featured even more meme-worthy moments.
Raptors, Roll Out
The Stuck on Sorna podcast had storyboard artist Dave Lowery (not to be confused with The Green Knight director David Lowery) as a guest on a recent episode, in which he spills the details on a series of sequences that never ended up making it any further than the conceptual stage. Apparently, there could’ve been a set piece that involved a pack of raptors chasing someone who’s riding a motorcycle and inadvertently unfurling the parachute in his backpack (likely Alessandro Nivola’s Billy Brennan, who gets a different parachuting moment of his own in the final film). As he floats away, the pursuing raptor jumps atop the driverless bike and…promptly rides off a cliff.
It sounds incredible, honestly. Check out the brief clip of Lowery discussing this below:
Always fun to hear about moments that never made the film. Storyboard Artist Dave Lowery talks about the raptors chasing the kids off a cliff. And then…the raptor rides the dirt bike to its death. #JurassicPark3
Listen here: https://t.co/2shu3BaB0X pic.twitter.com/rYNGZKM7x7— Daniel Stephen (@StuckOnSorna) July 19, 2021
Lowery good-naturedly quips that it didn’t make the final cut “for some reason,” but in my expert opinion, we were undoubtedly worse off with its exclusion. The artist clearly knows his stuff, too, as he has enjoyed a thriving career as a storyboard artist on films like 1988’s Willow, the original Jurassic Park, Batman Forever, Minority Report, Spider-Man 2, Phantom Thread, and the Jurassic World trilogy.
In a way, this sequence would actually live on with the release of Jurassic World in 2015. The plot involves Chris Pratt’s raptor whisperer training the vicious animals and one unintentionally hilarious (I think?) scene features a jungle chase on a motorcycle while his raptor allies flank him on both sides. For my money, this doesn’t really match the absurd glory of a raptor actually riding on top of a motorcycle (plenty of internet memes before the release of Jurassic World soon corrected this egregious mistake), but we’ll take what we can get at this point.
Happy 20th, Jurassic Park 3!
The post ‘Jurassic Park 3’ Could’ve Featured a Scene Where a Raptor Rode a Motorcycle Off a Cliff appeared first on /Film.
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