My friend and I did end up seeing Jurassic Park 3D, as if that's any surprise. I was still undecided while writing my previous post on the three-dimensional re-release, but by the time I was done writing, I had convinced myself I wanted to see it. I'm pretty convincing.
Taking a nostalgic approach, we decided to get candy we liked to get when we were kids, just to add to the whole experience. I picked Twizzlers. A comically massive bag of Twizzlers.
As I expected, seeing Jurassic Park in the theater again was a hell of a lot of fun. As much as I enjoy watching it on my relatively tiny television at home, this movie was definitely made for the big screen. I was struck by how amazing the special effects still look. I'm guessing they touched up the CGI a little bit, at least the lighting and color matching, because it looked flawless. My knowledge about how the movie was made and the limitations of practical effects was the only thing that tipped me off when a shot employed CGI. If I didn't have that knowledge, I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. No matter what kind of effect was used in each shot, to me it just looked like there was a real life dinosaur being filmed.
My motivation for seeing this re-release had almost nothing to do with the 3D, but I felt that the extra dimension might at least make the experience an interesting one. I considered it a potential bonus. I ended up enjoying it quite a bit though. It seems like a lot of people who dislike 3D movies especially dislike when a movie that wasn't made specifically to be in 3D is post-converted into 3D. But to me, I think a huge part of what made Jurassic Park 3D so enjoyable was the fact that the movie wasn't originally made to be in 3D, simply because it didn't have any of those gimmicky shots I notice all the time in 3D movies. Where something happens like a character swings an axe right in front of the camera, which I'm guessing is supposed to make the audience feel like they're about to get hit. Or where something in the composition of the shot is only there to take advantage of the 3D. The audience is supposed to be focusing on something in a wide shot, but then a character runs right by in the foreground, distracting you from what you're actually supposed to be looking at, simply to add depth to the shot. I feel like I see these kinds of shots in 3D movies over and over again. I thought 3D was to make the movies more immersive, but these kinds of shots just make me aware I'm watching a movie and take me out of it. Doesn't that defeat the purpose? So it was refreshing to see a 3D movie that had absolutely none of that going on.
One thing that really stuck out to me in the whole experience had nothing to do with the movie itself, but with the behavior of other people in the theater. There seems to be an alarming amount of people that have forgotten how to just sit down and watch a movie. I'm not even talking about the small boy with child-size 3D glasses sitting next to me who spent about 75% of the running time looking everywhere but at the screen, and also kept ogling my monstrous, seemingly endless supply of Twizzlers. He was just a young kid, so I suppose he had an excuse. I'm more talking about the numerous adults I saw pulling out their cellphones and texting during the movie, which distracts other people who are actually trying to watch it. A fantastic 20 year old movie, which was probably one of the cinematic highlights of your childhood is re-released, you pay a small fortune to see it in the theater in 3D, and you text people instead of paying attention to the movie? I don't understand you at all.
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