CINEMA: I WANTED TO SEE A T. REX STOMPING DOWN A STREET

The thrust of a Jurassic Park sequel seems simple enough: get the dinosaurs off the island to run rampant in a big city, a la King Kong and Godzilla. But Michael Crichton's follow-up to his best-selling novel was less a continuation of the original than a rewrite. It provided just two notions that excited Spielberg: the existence of a secret island where the DNA dinos had been created, and a set piece where a T. rex tries pushing a trailer off a cliff after its babies are threatened by scientists.

So Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp fashioned a new story. Says...