Released four years after its predecessor, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park is possibly an even more bizarre sequel than it was originally given credit for. Of course, a sequel to the most successful film at the box office at that point in time was all but guaranteed, but it received mixed reviews and a significantly lower worldwide box office total ($618.6 million, approximately $300 million less than its predecessor). Even in 1997, The Lost World was known for being the kind of “less-than” follow-up to Jurassic Park that, as we discussed in the first part of this series, failed to materialize from any competitors.
Yet what makes The Lost World weirdly fascinating even all this time later is that, despite arguably being a misfire, it isn’t an outright disaster. No, what makes it such an outlier is that it’s merely “okay,” which is exactly the sort of movie that truly great directors rarely make.
Join us for the second part in our retrospective of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films!
The Lost World being willed into existence purely by the first film’s runaway success isn’t just true of the movie; it’s also true of the novel the sequel is (loosely) based on. Michael Crichton made no secret that he had little interest in writing a follow-up at first, saying the 1995 book “was really something that came from the readers,” but that it also came together because “eventually there did seem to be the likelihood there would be another film and Steven seemed to have some interest in that.” Between an adamant fanbase and looming specter of Hollywood, it looks from the outside like Crichton was essentially pressured into writing the novel. Only making things more odd is that The Lost World would end up being the lone sequel in Crichton’s entire bibliography.
This confluence of events that led to the novel and thus the film’s creation is readily apparent in the first 15 minutes of the movie. The sequel’s setup is slapdash at best: Oh, there’s another (never before mentioned) island with dinosaurs? Oh, John Hammond has an (extremely ill-advised) plan to send a team there despite allegedly learning his lesson the first time around? Oh, Ian Malcolm’s (never before seen) girlfriend just so happens to have already left so he can be basically blackmailed into going on the mission? You can feel the creatives involved straining under the weight of obligation to manufacture a scenario to facilitate the dinosaur action that audiences (and executives) craved. It brings to mind one of Malcolm’s most famous lines from the first movie: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”
However, while the premise is flimsy by any reasonable measure, that doesn’t mean you can’t wring something worthwhile out of it. A sequel to Jurassic Park isn’t an inherently doomed concept, like some hyperbolic fans would claim. Yet that persistent sense of “obligation” is what jeopardizes the whole enterprise, because it affects way more than just the first act.
The Lost World is not without its high points. The set-piece design is still classic Spielberg, with the cliff sequence in particular standing out as perhaps one of the best such scenes of his entire career. Seeing the Stegosaurus for the first time in this series was a long-awaited delight for dinosaur fans. Pete Postlethwaite classes things up as Roland Tembo, delivering lines (“The one with the big red horn! The Pompadour!”) that probably no other actor working in the ’90s could deliver with such dignity. The velociraptors getting into Looney Tunes style physical comedy while chasing the heroes is hilarious, and as tacked on as it feels, there is a surface-level pleasure to watching Spielberg throw caution to the wind and ending his Jurassic Park sequel on a T-Rex going Godzilla Mode on San Diego.
Yet while the movie undoubtedly feels big in ways you want a blockbuster to be, it also feels stitched together in ways Spielberg movies typically are not. Contrasting the thrilling or intriguing elements are just as often counterintuitive ones, sometimes even within the same scene. Much has been made of Malcolm’s daughter Kelly’s ridiculous Chekhov’s skill of gymnastics being used to kick a raptor through a window, but that’s not even necessarily what we’re talking about here. There isn’t a great sense of what the audience is supposed to be taking away from the experience aside from the fairly routine message of non-interference Hammond outlines at the end, one that doesn’t exactly make sense when he himself sent a team to the island.
You end up with a handful of really great scenes that lose a lot of their impact when you actually include them in the movie.
There is little coherent narrative or thematic connective tissue holding any of the movie’s sequences together, with long stretches between the good parts that feel largely aimless. Therefore, you end up with a film with a handful of really great scenes that lose a lot of their impact when you actually include them in the movie. The best parts of The Lost World play better as isolated segments on YouTube than as pieces of a complete whole, and that’s not even getting into the movie’s meaner streak (RIP Eddie Carr) or how multiple important characters just flat-out disappear in the city-set finale.
What makes The Lost World’s shakiness worse is that there are multiple elements introduced throughout the narrative that seem to indicate where this movie could have had a stronger thematic core, but which aren’t taken advantage of. Tembo is a big game hunter who captures the male T-Rex but develops something of a conscience after doing so, so why doesn’t he factor into the finale where said T-Rex is immediately on the loose again? What about Nick Van Owen, who is introduced as a literal eco-anarchist (he’s specified to be a member of Earth First!) who puts numerous lives at InGen’s camp in danger by silently releasing the captured dinosaurs? The movie could have taken a stance on the morality of this act, but it’s something that just sort of happens without much in the way of commentary and is promptly moved on from.
Also take into account chunks of the movie that feel entirely unmotivated. Peter Stormare’s character Dieter, Tembo’s second-in-command, takes almost five minutes of screentime to get killed by a pack of Compsognathus, with him escaping from them in one scene and then Spielberg cutting back to him getting ambushed again. Why? That he gets such an elaborate death isn’t in itself a problem, it’s that as part of the finished product it slows the entire movie down to a halt for no real reason, especially since we already know he’s exactly the sort of character who’s going to bite it. Meanwhile poor Ajay, the merc Tembo actually seems to care about and whose death is part of the reason why he decides to break ties with Ludlow, is killed offscreen. By the time Sarah Harding, a scientist and photographer who studies animal behavior and has shown no predilection towards weaponry is the one who delivers the action hero tranquilizer shot to the T-Rex at the end, it feels like the screenplay has totally lost the thread.
The Lost World is a movie in so much of a hurry to get to wherever it needs to get to that it rarely stops to wonder why it needs to get there. In Spielberg’s hands, the results can still be entertaining, but whether from disinterest or outside influence, the heart and soul inherent to so many of his films is lacking. Sometimes, a great director puts so much passion into a misguided project that it turns into a catastrophe. Less frequent but perhaps more disappointing is the movie where a great director feels like they’re on autopilot.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
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Yet what makes The Lost World weirdly fascinating even all this time later is that, despite arguably being a misfire, it isn’t an outright disaster. No, what makes it such an outlier is that it’s merely “okay,” which is exactly the sort of movie that truly great directors rarely make.
Join us for the second part in our retrospective of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films!
Sparing No Expense But Interest
The Lost World being willed into existence purely by the first film’s runaway success isn’t just true of the movie; it’s also true of the novel the sequel is (loosely) based on. Michael Crichton made no secret that he had little interest in writing a follow-up at first, saying the 1995 book “was really something that came from the readers,” but that it also came together because “eventually there did seem to be the likelihood there would be another film and Steven seemed to have some interest in that.” Between an adamant fanbase and looming specter of Hollywood, it looks from the outside like Crichton was essentially pressured into writing the novel. Only making things more odd is that The Lost World would end up being the lone sequel in Crichton’s entire bibliography.
More on the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World Series
This confluence of events that led to the novel and thus the film’s creation is readily apparent in the first 15 minutes of the movie. The sequel’s setup is slapdash at best: Oh, there’s another (never before mentioned) island with dinosaurs? Oh, John Hammond has an (extremely ill-advised) plan to send a team there despite allegedly learning his lesson the first time around? Oh, Ian Malcolm’s (never before seen) girlfriend just so happens to have already left so he can be basically blackmailed into going on the mission? You can feel the creatives involved straining under the weight of obligation to manufacture a scenario to facilitate the dinosaur action that audiences (and executives) craved. It brings to mind one of Malcolm’s most famous lines from the first movie: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”
However, while the premise is flimsy by any reasonable measure, that doesn’t mean you can’t wring something worthwhile out of it. A sequel to Jurassic Park isn’t an inherently doomed concept, like some hyperbolic fans would claim. Yet that persistent sense of “obligation” is what jeopardizes the whole enterprise, because it affects way more than just the first act.
Highlands and Lowlands
The Lost World is not without its high points. The set-piece design is still classic Spielberg, with the cliff sequence in particular standing out as perhaps one of the best such scenes of his entire career. Seeing the Stegosaurus for the first time in this series was a long-awaited delight for dinosaur fans. Pete Postlethwaite classes things up as Roland Tembo, delivering lines (“The one with the big red horn! The Pompadour!”) that probably no other actor working in the ’90s could deliver with such dignity. The velociraptors getting into Looney Tunes style physical comedy while chasing the heroes is hilarious, and as tacked on as it feels, there is a surface-level pleasure to watching Spielberg throw caution to the wind and ending his Jurassic Park sequel on a T-Rex going Godzilla Mode on San Diego.
Yet while the movie undoubtedly feels big in ways you want a blockbuster to be, it also feels stitched together in ways Spielberg movies typically are not. Contrasting the thrilling or intriguing elements are just as often counterintuitive ones, sometimes even within the same scene. Much has been made of Malcolm’s daughter Kelly’s ridiculous Chekhov’s skill of gymnastics being used to kick a raptor through a window, but that’s not even necessarily what we’re talking about here. There isn’t a great sense of what the audience is supposed to be taking away from the experience aside from the fairly routine message of non-interference Hammond outlines at the end, one that doesn’t exactly make sense when he himself sent a team to the island.
You end up with a handful of really great scenes that lose a lot of their impact when you actually include them in the movie.
There is little coherent narrative or thematic connective tissue holding any of the movie’s sequences together, with long stretches between the good parts that feel largely aimless. Therefore, you end up with a film with a handful of really great scenes that lose a lot of their impact when you actually include them in the movie. The best parts of The Lost World play better as isolated segments on YouTube than as pieces of a complete whole, and that’s not even getting into the movie’s meaner streak (RIP Eddie Carr) or how multiple important characters just flat-out disappear in the city-set finale.
Running and Screaming
What makes The Lost World’s shakiness worse is that there are multiple elements introduced throughout the narrative that seem to indicate where this movie could have had a stronger thematic core, but which aren’t taken advantage of. Tembo is a big game hunter who captures the male T-Rex but develops something of a conscience after doing so, so why doesn’t he factor into the finale where said T-Rex is immediately on the loose again? What about Nick Van Owen, who is introduced as a literal eco-anarchist (he’s specified to be a member of Earth First!) who puts numerous lives at InGen’s camp in danger by silently releasing the captured dinosaurs? The movie could have taken a stance on the morality of this act, but it’s something that just sort of happens without much in the way of commentary and is promptly moved on from.
Also take into account chunks of the movie that feel entirely unmotivated. Peter Stormare’s character Dieter, Tembo’s second-in-command, takes almost five minutes of screentime to get killed by a pack of Compsognathus, with him escaping from them in one scene and then Spielberg cutting back to him getting ambushed again. Why? That he gets such an elaborate death isn’t in itself a problem, it’s that as part of the finished product it slows the entire movie down to a halt for no real reason, especially since we already know he’s exactly the sort of character who’s going to bite it. Meanwhile poor Ajay, the merc Tembo actually seems to care about and whose death is part of the reason why he decides to break ties with Ludlow, is killed offscreen. By the time Sarah Harding, a scientist and photographer who studies animal behavior and has shown no predilection towards weaponry is the one who delivers the action hero tranquilizer shot to the T-Rex at the end, it feels like the screenplay has totally lost the thread.
The Lost World is a movie in so much of a hurry to get to wherever it needs to get to that it rarely stops to wonder why it needs to get there. In Spielberg’s hands, the results can still be entertaining, but whether from disinterest or outside influence, the heart and soul inherent to so many of his films is lacking. Sometimes, a great director puts so much passion into a misguided project that it turns into a catastrophe. Less frequent but perhaps more disappointing is the movie where a great director feels like they’re on autopilot.
Carlos Morales writes novels, articles and Mass Effect essays. You can follow his fixations on Twitter.
Continue reading...