we'd love to

"You never can tell about other people, can you?"..."Ain't that the truth."

Now, obviously, the above quote is in reference to the Kirbys posing as a rich married couple, who claim to have done everything under the sun from climbing K2 to having seats booked on the first commercial flight to the moon, and Mr Kirby presents himself as some big shot business man. However, it turns out it was all a lie to find their missing son, they're not rich at all, Mr and Mrs Kirby are actually divorced and Mr Kirby runs a kitchen and bathroom store. Similarly, Udesky is posing as a mercenary when he's actually just a booking agent filling in for someone else who pulled out of the job at the last minute.

Arguably, you could also add Eric Kirby into the mix because he was expected to be dead by the time the search party arrives, but against all odds, he has been surviving (thriving, even) alone on the island for the past 8 weeks.

Meanwhile, the film starts off with a bait and switch where it makes it look like Alan and Ellie are married with kids only for it to turn out she's had a family with someone else and Alan is actually still unmarried and childfree.

We're also introduced to Billy in a scene where he is flirtatiously teaching a female student how to tell the difference between bone and rock, complete with intimate hand touches, which make it look like he is going to be some sort of ladies' man or that at least there'll be a romantic storyline of some kind with a female character, only for her never to be seen again and for Billy to spend the rest of the film making heart eyes at Alan (never mind the two of them exchanging intimate hand touches of their own) and ultimately sacrificing his own life in an act of redemption because he can't deal with the disappointment Alan regards him with in the immediate aftermath of discovering the stolen raptor eggs.

So, like...WHAT WAS THE REASON for these choices with Alan and Billy? Why did they want us to think they were romantically involved with/interested in women that played no such role in the events of the film, then had the two of them basically go from married to divorced to reconciled complete with all the accompanying angst, betrayal, guilt, grief and redemption in the space of 90 minutes instead, when a running theme with most of the characters was them hoodwinking others into thinking something was true about them that wasn't? And on a related note, why was Billy repeatedly paralleled with both Ellie and Sarah (i.e. Alan's and Ian's romantic partners in the previous films)? WHAT DID THEY MEAN BY ALL OF THIS?

Having established the above re: Alan and Billy, we then see Billy answering for the both of them when Mr Kirby invites Alan to dinner, Alan pulling the classic 'arm round the back' move to put his hat behind Billy in a bar with country music playing whilst they sit huddled in a booth as though they're on a double date. What in the actual Brokeback Montana even was this?!

Objects of significance: Billy's lucky bag strap/Alan's hat/the replica resonating chamber

Firstly, this is some excellent foreshadowing:

On a related note, as is this:

Secondly, at the start of the film, Billy has his lucky strap (I see you, Sarah Harding parallel) and Alan has his trademark hat, but by the end of the film, each man has the other's object of significance. And we see at different points of the film, they each make the effort to retrieve it for the other (as an aside: oh the symbolism of them being on opposite sides of the fence in the top two screencaps given what the next scene is):

Unlike Billy's experience in New Zealand, by the time he is hanging from the cliff on Isla Sorna, he doesn't have his lucky bag; Alan does.

On the face of it, the bag doesn't seem so lucky anymore...at least not to Billy, anyway. But it does, of course, come in handy for Alan and the Kirbys later on when they return the eggs to the raptors. As Alan recognises, it would have been more dangerous for them to be caught by the raptors without the eggs than with them, and that's why he decides to hold onto Billy's bag. The bag that also contains the replica resonating chamber made by Billy, which Alan uses to attempt to communicate with the raptors. Therefore, arguably, it becomes Alan's lucky bag as much as Billy's.

Meanwhile, despite everything that Billy must have gone through after the Pteranodon attack, he still manages to retrieve Alan's hat. He obviously doesn't know he's going to survive when he's being swept down the river, or slashed and sliced by relentless talons and beaks from above. So he holds onto the only piece of Alan he has left in that moment.

As for the replica resonating chamber...the scene where Billy proposes to presents Alan with it kind of feels like a combination of their philosophy and approach to their work; they used cranial scans from the recently discovered fossilised raptor skull to make the replica with state-of-the-art technology and then Alan subsequently tries it out on the raptors on Isla Sorna. A team effort by the astronomer and the astronaut.

Alan spends most of the film telling Mrs Kirby to stop shouting her son's name in case it draws unwanted attention towards them, but when Alan gets separated from the rest of the group during the first raptor attack, Billy decides to repeatedly yell Alan's name across the jungle:

The contrast of Mr and Mrs Kirby's personalities sounds kind of familiar to me, but what do I know?

Never mind the fact that by the time Alan has found out about the eggs, he and Billy behave more like a divorced couple than the actual divorced couple on the island. The actual divorced couple, who appear to reconcile by the end of the film when they realise their differences are actually their strengths as a couple, which once again, sounds awfully familiar...

Upon starting to experience traumatic flashbacks from Isla Nublar when he hears the resonating chamber in use for the first time, focusing on Billy blowing on it helps Alan shrug off the bad memories:

Influential husband behaviour:

Context? What context? (Although I will come back to a running metaphor later on)

Oh, I'll bet:

Husband behaviour once again:

So, in the film we see Billy yelling Alan's name across the jungle despite it being dangerous to make a lot of noise. And now we have Alan defying his own advice because he's panicking about not knowing where Billy is:

The grumpy x sunshine vibes are immaculate:

A different take on their divorce era (I kind of like how few words are spoken in the film and it's more about the facial expressions, especially from Billy, but the below is also interesting because he would rather be yelled at than face Alan's quiet yet palpable and inescapable disappointment):

Also actually like that the novelisation makes Billy's motivation for stealing the eggs more multi-faceted than the film and brings it back to wanting to research dinosaurs in a more tangible way than digging up bones:

"Alan was overjoyed to see Billy swimming toward him, safe and sound." What in the actual fan fic is that sentence?! And then THE ANGST because Alan thought he was okay and then suddenly, he wasn't:

Right, so, you'll have to bear with me on the below, because I do get what was actually happening here (Alan was looking at the Pteranodon, who was about to break free from the aviary), but firstly...the "Good-bye, Billy"...wtf? OUCH 😭 Secondly, I had to re-read this section multiple times: "Eric saw Alan looking his way, his eyes wide as if something were only now occurring to him. Then the scientist quickly turned away". Because, given that sentence's close proximity to Alan saying goodbye to Billy and realising he's gone, it reads as him having some sort of feelings realisation 👀

Then, right, we have the grief conversation between Alan and Eric and once again, I had to re-read this part more than once: "Eric knew Alan was still thinking about Billy. And maybe something else..." WHY OH WHY does this read like Eric is reading between the lines re: the Alan/Billy of it all? HELP! Like, don't get me wrong, I do know that wasn't the authorial intent here lolol, but still.

THEN, we have this that's even more insane than the equivalent film conversation in my eyes:

Eric literally calling out Alan's self-denial is FASCINATING in a conversation that directly parallels Alan's and Billy's philosophies to life and work. The film sets out the dichotomies of thought between the two men, but it doesn't really explicitly call into question how honest with himself Alan is being about only ever wanting to be an astronomer and never the astronaut. But look at the facts. This is now the second time he's ended up on an island full of dinosaurs (and we know from the later events of Dominion, he goes back for more again). Yes, obviously, he was brought to Isla Sorna under false pretences, but he still agreed to do the fly-over tour to show the Kirbys the dinosaurs in the first place (he tells himself it's because he wanted their money to fund the dig site, but it does come across rather 'he doth protest too much' at the same time). He still was fascinated by observing the raptors' social structure and studying the way they communicate with each other, even when he was in mortal danger and should have been running far, far away. He still took steps to communicate with them, despite saying how Hammond's creations were just theme park monsters and not the real deal, unlike the discoveries he makes in the ground.

And then if you go a step further and make Billy the metaphor for something that Alan is clearly drawn to and fascinated by yet deeply fearful of getting too close to, of touching............

It also adds another dimension to the harsh words Alan throws at Billy about the raptor eggs; because he sees more of himself in Billy than he would like to admit and it's altogether safer for them both if they just stick to being astronomers.

BUT THEN, it's almost like Alan finally gives in and stops being in denial:

Which is super handy, because GUESS WHO'S BACK and totally unfazed by the, er, physicality of his hands-on experience in the field:

And then finally, Ellie is on hand to allow Alan to bask in the glow of his newfound queer awakening evolution:

Like I said above somewhere:

i'm still alive (i'm waiting) //  a billyalan playlist

20 YEARS since Billy and Alan showed the world how much they love each other

Jurassic Park III has been out for 22 beautiful gay years

just like Alan and Billy ;)

🌈JP3iversary my beloved 💖 Happy 24th Jurassic Park III !!! 🌈

Jurassic Park III you will always be a star, as beautiful as the ones Alan points out to Billy in the clear Montana skies.

so probably expect a sedate JP3iversary, given the circumstances of course. I'll reblog a few things, and I'm doing a rewatch

REST IN PEACE, SAM NEILL (1947-2026)

movie what are you saying? some theme about people on that Island not being quite what they say they are, or what/all they appear to be? If we apply that to Alan and Billy as well, obviously they're more honest than the rest and were tricked there under false pretenses, but even so, clearly there is more going on to them than is voiced. While it's shown that Alan is facilitating Billy's higher education and involved with his employment, their actions and behavior demonstrate there is far, far more going on there