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Beyond Jurassic Park
This
DVD was a very interesting experience to review. Essentially it's
nothing BUT extras from the three Jurassic Park Movies. As a fan of
those movies, and of behind-the-scenes features, I quite enjoyed it. The
less true that is of you, the less you are likely to agree with me. I'd
drop 2 points off the rating for each of the following that you disagree
with:
1: I enjoyed Jurassic Park
2: I enjoyed The Lost World
3: I enjoyed Jurassic Park III
4: I enjoy behind-the-scenes extras.
Particularly interesting was a pair of interviews with Michael Crichton,
who wrote the books on which the first two movies were based, and the
raw blue screen footage of the kids from the first movie (I am a lot more
impressed by their performance having seen that!)
Equally interesting was noticing what was missing. The sound and score
weren't even mentioned until the Jurassic Park III extras, where it took
the place of any discussion of how they came to make a third movie. That
leaves the window to unflattering speculations about a greedy studio
doing squeezing every last dollar from the public wide open.
If it comes to that, this whole DVD raises interesting questions. Was it
released because the studio decided to try and make a quick buck by
packaging the extras as a separate purchase instead of with the movie?
Was it part of a box set featuring all three movies? Was the Jurassic
Park trilogy released before including extras was expected? Were the
extras originally part of the Jurassic Park DVDs, or are these extra
again to anything included there? How cynical can I get?
Since I didn't review the Jurassic Park series, I had no idea of the
answers to those questions, so I set out to do a little research. Here's
what I found out: This DVD does indeed accompany the box set as a fourth
item in the bundle. Many of the extras that form it have indeed appeared
previously on Jurassic Park DVDs, but not necessarily ALL of them.
So, in conclusion, if you already own the Jurassic Park DVDs, this disk
alone is not a good enough reason to update. But if you are missing
these from your collection, this DVD will do it's job - of providing a
little extra incentive for your purchase - admirably.
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