Quartile rating: 5.5/10 · 1 rating
A multi-part documentary about the making of the Jurassic Park trilogy. Each part walks through the making of part of one of the films, including the hurricane during the shooting of the first film, and how advances in CGI for Jurassic Park helped change the world of special effects forever. All interviews for these retrospective documentaries come with comments from Spielberg, Johnston, Neill, Dern, Goldblum, the effects crews, the child actors, and Peter Stormare. This documentary is broken into six parts: Dawn of a New Era (25 min), Making Prehistory (20 min), The Next Step in Evolution (15 min), Finding the Lost World (28 min), Something Survived (16 min), and The Third Adventure (25 min).
A competent retrospective documentary covering the making of the Jurassic Park trilogy, featuring solid talking-head interviews from Spielberg, Neill, Goldblum, Dern, and key effects crew. The segments on the groundbreaking CGI work and the hurricane incident during filming offer genuinely interesting behind-the-scenes material, giving it above-average novelty for a making-of doc. However, the structure is fairly formulaic — episodic, chronological, and reliant on standard documentary conventions. The cinematography is unremarkable, consisting largely of archival footage and standard interview setups. The ending offers little climax or reflection, closing out the third film's segment without a meaningful capstone to the trilogy retrospective. Overall, a serviceable companion piece for Jurassic Park enthusiasts but not a landmark documentary.