The only reason Crichton wrote a sequel was because Speilberg requested it. Then when he goes to make a film version this is what he makes?! Why did he change soooooo much? If you were writing the screenplay what would you have kept and what would you have changed?
shareI liked the idea of the novel with Dodson's rival genetics company on the island. He would have been a much better character than Arliss Howard and his awful English accent.
shareI read the book before the movie came out and threw it across the room when I was finished! Crichton's worst piece o' crap.
I would have done mostly exactly what Spielberg did. Keep the two competing teams concept. And keep the trailers-on-the-cliff scene. That's about it! Though I would have also kept the camouflaging Carnotaurus scene as well, that was gripping in the book.
They eliminated the stupidity of Levine rushing off to the island just a day before the trailer was ready to go, the ultrasonic anti-dino device, the "grabbing eggs and sticking them in styrofoam coolers" bit, the "bicycling around the island" part, and the non-ending where they just leave the island quietly and promise to watch over it with video cameras.
Filming the book as written would have been a bore, and look about as silly as a SyFy movie.
I think we have a case where both the novel and the movie sucked, but for different reasons.
The novel was full of never-ending monologues/dialogues about scientific theories that no-one would discuss in real life in such situations that the characters were thrown into. The action was minimal and not exciting.
The movie was full of stupid characters and badly written jokes. The "good" guys were actually the bad ones as they were responsible for almost every death on the film.
For within each death there is always a new life, a new beginning - Dillon, Alien 3
They should have followed the book as far as not including the San Diego scenes, but otherwise I like the movie's story better.
share