THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARKDirector: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Survival/Adventure
THE MOVIE
After the global phenomenon that was Jurassic Park, author Michael Crichton was pressed to write a sequel to his smash novel, on which the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie was loosely based. Crichton's sequel, "The Lost World" introduces us to Isla Sorna, or Site B, where the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were created before being transported to John Hammond's theme park. It turns out that most of the labs and hatcheries on the park were just for show and the real dirty work of cloning dinosaurs was conducted on Site B.
"The Lost World" novel is a sequel to Crichton's book, not the Spielberg movie and and it does have an edgier tone and functions as a dark commentary on science and technology more than an as an awe-inspiring fun ride. That said, it does bring back Ian Malcolm who had been pretty much pronounced dead at the end of the "Jurassic Park" novel (after a long and rambling morphine trip). While the first book was concerned with how chaos theory predicted the collapse of the ambitious system that was Isla Nublar, "The Lost World" is preoccupied with extinction theory and the behavior of these animals which have been allowed to develop on their own for many years.
The movie adaptation is pretty loose and juxtaposes a lot of characters and relationships and even adds in some material from the first book, which was too technically difficult to achieve at the dawn of the digital age. It's a pretty light movie and has even less scientific commentary than its predecessor.
As in the book, the movie focuses on Ian Malcolm's return to the island, although this is the more cuddly Jeff Goldblum version of the character. His motivation for going back in the movie is to rescue his paleontologist girlfriend who has already gone to the island on a secret documentary exposition. He even has an annoying tween daughter who stows away in the equipment. Much like the movie's T-Rex, The Lost World is very much about showing that Ian Malcolm can be a responsible and nurturing parent and mate. Both were sort of unpleasant and roguish in the first movie, and are reformed by the end of this one. That parallel is a nice emotional throughline in the movie.
Malcolm's team is competing with a group from another wing of InGen who are there to capture dinosaurs to display in a scaled-down San Diego version of Jurassic Park. Soon both teams are forced to work together to survive the island and its ferocious inhabitants. Perhaps the most notable addition to the original story is the last act, which features a T-Rex running loose in San Diego. This bit is a nice homage to classic monster movies and even features a group of Japanese business men running for their lives.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
Probably one of the appealing aspects of doing this movie for someone like Spielberg (who had already won an Academy Award by this point) was to play around with his cool toys some more. Jurassic Park pushed special effects technology to the breaking point, and there were still plenty of things that they were unable to do in that movie. The Lost World, no doubt, offered the opportunity to take advantage of the advances that were made in the intervening four years and make a bigger and more spectacular movie with more dinosaurs and set pieces.
The movie features not one, but three T-Rexes. There are two adults and one infant. Sadly, there is very little difference between the adults. It would have been nice to see a little sexual dimorphism, which was alluded to in the book. The infant is mainly seen injured and is realized by an animatronic, and later CGI. The male Rex even gets a scene which was cut from the original novel, in which a Rex attempts to snatch some people from behind a waterfall, complete with dino tongue.
The first dinos we see are a herd of Stegasaurs, including adults and juveniles. It's almost as though someone had a checklist of popular dinosaurs that didn't make it into Jurassic Park. They achieve something you didn't see in the first movie: a good medium shot of a bunch of large CGI dinosaurs. They look really great in this movie. There is even a baby, which seems like a nice nod to the baby Triceratops cut scene from the first movie.
Speaking of Trikes, we get to actually see on in motion in this movie. If you remember, the only Triceratops in Jurassic Park was the big prone one with a tummy ache. Here we get to see one go all Cretaceous on the InGen camp.
There is also a "round up" scene, straight out of The Valley of Gwangi which features lots of sauropods and hadrosaurs. There are even some dome-headed Pachycephalosaurs. There is a wonderful scene during the round up in which we follow a motorcycle as it drives under the belly of sauropod, which is one of my all time favorite dinosaur moments.
The Lost World also introduces us to Compies, which are small chicken-sized dinosaurs which travel in packs, picking off weak animals. Compies were present in Michael Crichton's first novel and even had the privilege of finishing off that version of John Hammond. Here, they have a similar scene in which they gang up on one of the the hunters brought to the island by InGen.
Jurassic Park's most memorable dinos, the Velociraptors are back and get a large action sequence in the movie's third act to themselves. The raptors chase Malcolm, and his girlfriend and daughter into an abandoned InGen facility, which has a cool Life After People vibe. There is even a follow-up to a series of shots in the kitchen scene from the first movie in which Spielberg juxtaposes human hands and raptor claws. Sadly these raptors are vanquished by a combination of their own foul tempers and tween gymnastics.
MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE
The dino round up is a really exciting piece of filmmaking, and probably Spielberg's whole reason for wanting to do the movie.
HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
Widely available in many different DVD configurations. The whole trilogy is rumored to be out on BluRay in the near future.
TRAILER
Patrick Garone
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