Jurassic Park 3 Cut An Awesome Scene Where A Raptor Rode A Dirt Bike

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Jurassic Park III storyboard artist says the movie had an awesome scene cut that saw a raptor ride on a dirt bike over a cliff to its death.

Jurassic Park III had an awesome scene cut from the final film where a raptor rode a dirt bike. The third film in Steven Spielberg's original Jurassic Park franchise deviated from the established winning formula of the previous two movies, which resulted in the lowest-grossing film of the series. Released in 2001, the flick saw Sam Neill reprise his role as Dr. Alan Grant, who is tricked back onto the island of dinosaurs (though this time on Isla Sorna) and made to help find the son of a businessman who has been stranded on the island for 8 weeks after a parasailing accident.

From the start, Jurassic Park III faced numerous production difficulties. Perhaps the most famous of the production troubles was the fact that the planned script was tossed out just before filming began. This meant that much of the movie was put together on the fly with entire sequences and concepts not entirely known how they would fit into the overall story. In fact, two other ideas for the film were scrapped in the months prior to production, which included a story centered around teenagers trapped on Isla Sorna. Since the cast and crew were literally only shooting the pages they had on the day of filming, the running joke on the set was that a completed screenplay would be presented as wrap gift for everyone involved. This lack of pre-planning meant many storyboarded sequences had to be cut from the final film.

In a tweet from his podcast, Stuck on SornaDaniel Stephen sat down with storyboard artist for Jurassic Park III, Dave Lowery, who explained one of the awesome scenes cut from the final script. The scene sees Eric Kirby (the kid stuck on the island) being chased by velociraptors while he races through the jungle on a dirt bike towards a cliff. As Lowery explains, his storyboards then saw one of the raptors bounce after Kirby, who quickly pulls the parachute on his back, resulting in the raptor landing on the dirt bike and riding it off a cliff to the creature's death. Listen to Lowery explain the entire sequence below:

While the scene never saw the light of day, what's interesting is that a similar sequence with a dirt bike and raptors did make into the fourth installment in the franchise, Jurassic World. The scene in question saw Chris Pratt racing on a motorcycle alongside his trained raptor pack. Though no raptors jumped on his bike to ride it off a cliff, it still incorporates all the themes of the cut JP III storyboard, including a dirt bike, raptors, and racing through the jungle. It's unclear if the Jurassic World scene is a throwback to the cut sequence.

Yes, the entire scene Lowery describes above is ridiculous and over-the-top; however, in a movie that was trying to live up to the hype of its predecessors, a scene as wild as that may have helped it stand out. Based on Jurassic Park III's lackluster reviews, many of which decried the film's creative decline, such an imaginative sequence could have helped win over more audience members. Ultimately, it's a shame that such a high profile film had to suffer the production difficulties that resulted in interesting scenes being cut from the final film.

Source: Daniel Stephen / https://screenrant.com/