Sam Neill has been defending the often-maligned Jurassic Park III – well, apart from its last ten minutes.
Lots of us are looking forward to Sam Neill reprising the role of Dr Alan Grant in Jurassic World: Dominion when it releases next summer. After Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's cheeky use of Jeff Goldblum’s (equally beloved) Ian Malco;m throughout the promotional materials for the film, many fans were left a little nonplussed when he made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the final movie.
However, next time out we’ve been promised a more robust return from the franchise’s legacy characters, and that means more Sam Neill, which can only ever be a good thing. As audiences prepare for the return of Dr Grant, Neill has been reflecting on his previous return to the franchise in 2001’s Jurassic Park III, after sitting out its predecessor, Jurassic Park: The Lost World.
Neill believes that the franchise’s third entry doesn’t always get the acclaim it deserves, and (thanks to Movieweb) ha been talking about how much he enjoys the film’s thrilling raptor sequence particularly
“I thought ‘that’s pretty cool!’ I was just talking to someone earlier in the day who said ‘I really like Jurassic Park III and it gets an unfair [treatment].’ .. And I said ‘Thank you very much!’ I agree that the last ten minutes are way too easy and way too hurried, but I think up to that point, it’s pretty damn good.”
Neill also spoke about how he felt more comfortable in the role by Jurassic Park III, as taking on the skillset of an action-oriented character felt very unfamiliar to him during the making of the 1993 original.
“For me, by the time I got to 3, probably a bit late in the day, I’d sort of worked out how to play that character, which I hadn’t really quite gotten around to in the first one. I was still trying to work out, how do you play that guy in the hat? And you have to think how to do that. It’s a special skill. You’re not just playing a character. You need a whole skillset. You need a whole armoury to play an action hero and I wish I had known what those skills were when we did the first one, but there we are!”
We’re certainly looking forward to seeing Neill return as Dr Grant in Dominion, when it releases next summer. Of course there’s also the small matter of another famous explorer in a hat, also making a belated return only a month later in 2022, so next summer could definitely signal an interesting battle between Dr Grant and Dr Jones. Now that should be fun…
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