The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Starring: Jeff Goldblum, Julian Moore, and Pete Postlethwaite.
Plot: Four years after the events of the first movie, all of the survivors have kept quit about the disaster in the park. All of them except Ian Malcolm, who tried to tell the world, but with little success. But John Hammond wants to have a team travel to Isla Sorna, a.k.a. Site B, where the dinosaurs were raised after being born, so they can photograph the recently released dinosaurs and show that it must be kept as a biological preserve. This includes Malcolm and his girlfriend, Dr. Sarah Harding, who already traveled to the island before him. Desperate to get is girlfriend out of the dinosaur infested island, he joins the team, but soon encounters a second group who want to bring the dinosaurs to the mainland in a second Jurassic Park zoo. Can Ian find his girlfriend while also preventing another dinosaurs disaster?
Good: After playing a supporting role in the first movie, Jeff Goldblum has been upgraded to the hero of this film, and for the most part, he does a good job. He stays faithful to his original role, but has obviously matured between the two films, dealing his children and relationships more seriously. Goldblum does a good job at portraying this growth in character and making it look believable. Vanessa Lee Chester, who plays Malcolm's daughter Kelly, does a good job as the obligatory child character, and isn't as annoying as the kids in the previous movie. Julian Moore does a good job of as Sarah Harding, and is a good foil to Ian Malcolm's cynicism. The rest of the the cast is fine as well, with standouts such as Pete Postlethwaite as the adventure seeking big game hunter who ends up stealing the show from the protagonists. John Williams's score, while not as iconic or bombastic as the one in the previous film, is quite good and fits the jungle setting very well. The dinosaurs still look great, with a great mix of practical and computer effects. This is especially impressive when the two Tyrannosauruses are on screen together and during the raptor attacks. The action is also very well done, with a great variety of settings and dinosaurs attacking. The best action scene would have to be the Tyrannosaur rampage in San Diego. It adds another level of terror to the attack by having there be more people for the dinosaur to potentially eat, while also being very entertaining to see a dinosaur rampage in a city. It also works as a nice homage to the silent film The Lost World, where a Brontosaurus rampages through London.
Bad: While the protagonists may be well acted, they're written very poorly. They constantly make stupid and dangerous decisions that get many people killed. This includes leaving food in a tent (which attracts the T. Rexes), taking the bullets from a gun (which endangers people's lives during an attack), and bringing a baby Tyrannosaurs to their trailer (which provokes the parents to attack). Dumb decisions such as these make the audience more sympathetic towards the antagonists, who are either only doing their jobs or are much more interesting characters. There's also a very strong environmental message to the film, and while I'm all for protecting the environment, the protagonists take it too far and endanger lives in order to save a small handful of animals from captivity, especially Vince Vaughn's character. Additionally, the film lacks the sense of wonder that the previous film had in spades, and feels more like a generic action/adventure movie that has dinosaurs stomping about, as cool as that can be at times. Finally, there's the nitpicking of inaccurate dinosaur representations, but they were accurate for the time, so I won't go too deep into it.
Trivia:
Next time, we'll go to the 1830s, and look into the courtroom drama about a slave ship mutiny in Amistad.
Good: After playing a supporting role in the first movie, Jeff Goldblum has been upgraded to the hero of this film, and for the most part, he does a good job. He stays faithful to his original role, but has obviously matured between the two films, dealing his children and relationships more seriously. Goldblum does a good job at portraying this growth in character and making it look believable. Vanessa Lee Chester, who plays Malcolm's daughter Kelly, does a good job as the obligatory child character, and isn't as annoying as the kids in the previous movie. Julian Moore does a good job of as Sarah Harding, and is a good foil to Ian Malcolm's cynicism. The rest of the the cast is fine as well, with standouts such as Pete Postlethwaite as the adventure seeking big game hunter who ends up stealing the show from the protagonists. John Williams's score, while not as iconic or bombastic as the one in the previous film, is quite good and fits the jungle setting very well. The dinosaurs still look great, with a great mix of practical and computer effects. This is especially impressive when the two Tyrannosauruses are on screen together and during the raptor attacks. The action is also very well done, with a great variety of settings and dinosaurs attacking. The best action scene would have to be the Tyrannosaur rampage in San Diego. It adds another level of terror to the attack by having there be more people for the dinosaur to potentially eat, while also being very entertaining to see a dinosaur rampage in a city. It also works as a nice homage to the silent film The Lost World, where a Brontosaurus rampages through London.
Bad: While the protagonists may be well acted, they're written very poorly. They constantly make stupid and dangerous decisions that get many people killed. This includes leaving food in a tent (which attracts the T. Rexes), taking the bullets from a gun (which endangers people's lives during an attack), and bringing a baby Tyrannosaurs to their trailer (which provokes the parents to attack). Dumb decisions such as these make the audience more sympathetic towards the antagonists, who are either only doing their jobs or are much more interesting characters. There's also a very strong environmental message to the film, and while I'm all for protecting the environment, the protagonists take it too far and endanger lives in order to save a small handful of animals from captivity, especially Vince Vaughn's character. Additionally, the film lacks the sense of wonder that the previous film had in spades, and feels more like a generic action/adventure movie that has dinosaurs stomping about, as cool as that can be at times. Finally, there's the nitpicking of inaccurate dinosaur representations, but they were accurate for the time, so I won't go too deep into it.
Trivia:
- The paleontologist who gets eaten by the T. Rex is based on Robert T. Bakker, who has a friendly feud with Jack Horner (who consulted the movies while also being the inspiration for Alan Grant) over whether Tyrannosaurus was a predator (Bakker) or a scavenger (Horner). After he saw the film, Bakker wrote to Horner, saying "I told you Rex was a predator!"
- The man who gets eaten by the video store was played by David Koepp, the writer, and was credited as "Unlucky Bastard".
- One of the movie posters in the video store has Arnold Schwarzenegger as King Lear.
- During production, Spielberg became increasingly more disenfranchised with the film, wondering if making the movie was worth it.
Next time, we'll go to the 1830s, and look into the courtroom drama about a slave ship mutiny in Amistad.
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