With JP3, it's almost as though someone wrote a decent 30-45 minute short, and then someone else decided they needed to make it 90 minutes.
I never really though Jurassic World was significantly better than 2 or 3. They just took the story of the first film, which was good, and rewrote it for a "superhero movie" audience.
The thing about JP3 is that even at they never could seem to get a script together that everyone liked. Even at the beginning of filming the script had not been finished. So Joe Johnston is out there calling action while behind a curtain somewhere the script is still being feverishly written from day-to-day.
Here's a bit of info on the whole convoluted saga of the JP3 script:
Universal Pictures announced the film on June 29, 1998, with Spielberg acting as a producer.
Michael Crichton was reportedly going to collaborate with Spielberg to create a storyline and write a script. The film was set for release in summer 2000. Spielberg initially devised a story idea that involved Dr. Alan Grant, who was discovered to have been living on one of
InGen's islands. According to Johnston, "He'd snuck in, after not being allowed in to research the dinosaurs, and was living in a tree like
Robinson Crusoe. But I couldn't imagine this guy wanting to get back on any island that had dinosaurs in it after the first movie."
In June 1999, Craig Rosenberg began writing the first draft of the script, which involved teenagers who get marooned on Isla Sorna. Johnston was announced as the film's director in August 1999, with Rosenberg still attached. Production was expected to begin in early 2000. Rosenberg's draft about teenagers on Isla Sorna was rejected in September 1999. Although Johnston felt that it was "not a badly written script," he also said, "It read like a bad episode of
Friends". By December 1999, new writers had been hired to devise a better story for the film.
The film's second script involved
Pteranodon escaping from Isla Sorna and causing a spate of mysterious killings on the mainland, which was to be investigated by Alan Grant and a number of other characters including Billy Brennan, a naturalist named Simone, a tough
military attaché, wealthy Paul Roby, and Roby's teenage son Miles. Grant's group crash-lands on the island, while a parallel investigation is being carried out on the mainland. The aviary sequence and laboratory set piece were initially much longer and more complex, including
Velociraptor stealthily entering the hatchery as the team spends the night there. Sets, costumes, and props were built for this version.
In February 2000, filming was reportedly set to begin in
Fiordland, New Zealand around the end of the month. Scenes were originally planned to be filmed there for
The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In March 2000,
Maui, Hawaii was reportedly chosen instead of New Zealand. Sam Neill signed on to the project in June 2000, with 18 weeks of filming expected to begin by August 2000, for a release in July 2001. Macy originally turned down his role due to scheduling conflicts. Trevor Morgan and Téa Leoni were cast in August 2000, with Utah's
Dinosaur National Monument and an
Oahu military base being considered as possible filming locations. During the pre-production phase, concept artists created advertising for the film using a number of working titles including
Jurassic Park: Extinction and
Jurassic Park: Breakout.
Five weeks before filming began, Johnston and Spielberg rejected the entire script as they were dissatisfied with it; $18 million had already been spent on the film at that time. Johnston felt that the script's story was too complicated. The simpler "rescue mission" plot, which had been suggested by
David Koepp, was used for the film instead. Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor began rewriting the script in July 2000.
Johnston said that the script was never finished during production: "We shot pages that eventually went into the final script but we didn't have a document". Principal photography began on August 30, 2000, at
Dillingham Airfield in
Mokulēia, Hawaii. Macy, commenting on the slow pace of filming the script, said "we would do a quarter-page--some days, an eighth of a page. And that would be a full 12-hour day."
