Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: David Koepp
Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Vince Vaughn, Richard Schiff, Vanessa Lee Chester, Richard Attenborough
Runtime: 129 mins.
1997
Other reviews in this series:
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park III
Jurassic World
It was as if Spielberg threw up his arms and yelled, "Alright, you want more dinosaurs? YOU'RE GETTING MORE GODDAMNED DINOSAURS."
I called Jurassic Park a metapromotional movie, and if that is the case, then The Lost World is certainly a self-reflexive sequel about sequels. The movie begins with John Hammond (an increasingly feeble Richard Attenborough) explaining to a cynical cranky Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) that Isla Nublar is not the only island with dinosaurs on it. There's another one called Isla Sorna, and the dinos there are flourishing in the wild. Having given up on his capitalist aspirations, Hammond simply wants Malcolm for a team intended to observe and document the animals in the wild: a team that includes photojournalist Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), weapons expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff), and paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), who happens to be Malcolm's girlfriend... and also happens to be on the island already, without his knowledge. So he is strongarmed into returning to his worst nightmare.
Once the team arrives on the island, they find they are not alone. Nefarious corporation InGen has sent an enormous squad--led by big game hunter Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) and prissy businessman Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard)--to pillage the island, capture dinosaurs, and transport them to San Diego. This plays out as an extended action sequence that involves many jeeps, many fancy guns, and many species of dinosaur being brutalized as our heroes watch through binoculars from an outcropping. The heroes function as an audience stand-in for the scene, watching the perverse spectacle play out in front of them with stricken looks on their faces. In this moment, Spielberg's metacommentary couldn't be clearer: You wanted a sequel because you loved the wonder and majesty of Jurassic Park, but the serialization of a self-contained story can only violate the wonder of the original. The spectacle is captured and caged by greedy capitalists, all for the benefit of a viewing audience.
You thought the stampede of gallimimus was breathtaking? How about a stampede of like five kinds of dinosaurs!
You thought the raptors were menacing? How about encountering a bunch more raptors out in the open!
You thought the T-Rex attack on the jeeps was harrowing? How about TWO T-Rexes attacking a WHOLE TRAILER!
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| That's a lot of action. |
The structural similarities aren't even this movie's death knell. They would be fine, really, if the movie weren't so inescapably dour. The dank dark muddy cinematography that dominates The Lost World is only outmooded by Ian Malcolm's gloomy disposition. Everything likable about Malcolm has been strip mined in this attempt to bring the fan favorite character back. He's no longer the jocular rock star physicist of the first film. He doesn't even say anything remotely scientific, mathematical, or academic. He has been reduced to conjuring up grim portents of doom with every single line of dialogue he is given, only to be bizarrely nonchalant when the real danger happens. Just because these portents take the vague form of jokes doesn't make him the same Malcolm we know and love. It just makes him one-note and excessively dull. He doesn't change one bit over the course of the entire film. If his arc in Jurassic Park is about realizing the existential bitterness of getting to say, "I told you so," that lesson is totally undercut by his parting barb to Peter Ludlow ("Now you're John Hammond."), which is as close as his character can get to sneering "I told you so!" and rubbing dirt all over Ludlow's face. Then he drives off in his red muscle car to save the day.
Jurassic Park wasn't about saving the day at all. It was about escaping the fury of nature by your shoestrings. Although The Lost World purports to show its creatures in their "natural environment," it actually de-animalizes them in all sorts of ways. Sure, the dinosaurs are more plentiful, and technically look "better," but they all seem as if they are pre-packaged for a Happy Meal. The bizarre combination of lowered stakes and raised violence does not serve The Lost World well.
Of course, there are exceptions. The moment of Ludlow's final comeuppance feels like what the movie should have been doing the entire time, with the T-Rex father tenderly teaching its baby to hunt. In that moment, the T-Rex is an animal again, not the dumb plot mechanism that pushes a trailer halfway off a cliff, only to leave for a while, and then return for no particular reason. Or stick its head into Sarah Harding's tent after somehow sneaking into a camp of dozens of trained mercenaries. Sure, these sequences display Spielberg's skill for ratcheting up tension by juggling several balls in the air simultaneously, but in the greater context of the film they are absurd.
Since the plot feels more like a cobbled together excuse than a driving force, all sorts of scenes are out of place and arbitrary--not to mention the entire character of Kelly, Malcolm's daughter. She is there for one reason and one reason only: there needs to be a kid in every iteration of this franchise. She's also annoying as hell. Top that off with her flub of a heroic moment, one of the more ridiculous sequences Spielberg has ever set to celluloid. I don't even want to talk about it.
The rest of the characters aren't much better; they are the definition of stock. The MVP is certainly the big game hunter, Roland. Postlethwaite imbues the character with a surprising pathos and a clear goal. He's the only one who actually seems to regard the gravity of his situation.
Put simply, The Lost World is sloppy. There's even a sequence towards the end where the boat carrying the adult T-Rex in the cargo bay crashes inexplicably into the dock (which, I admit, is preceded by a really great moment of suspense involving Ludlow waiting for it to emerge from the fog). The entire crew has been killed, even the captain, whose severed hand is still attached to the boat's wheel. But the T-Rex is still in the cargo bay. So... what killed them all? It turns out a scene was originally planned that involved velociraptors stowing away on the ship and killing everybody, but that scene was cut. Spielberg went ahead and left the part where the entire crew are dead, for no reason at all. Clearly he couldn't give less of a shit.
Here is the closing monologue that John Hammond gives on television, transcribed in full.
It is absolutely imperative that we work with the Costa Rican Department of Biological Preserves to establish a set of rules for the preservation and isolation of that island. These creatures require our absence to survive, not our help, and if we could only step aside and trust in nature... life will find a way.Thus the film ends with a beautiful indictment of our need to stick our grubby little fingers all over something that should be left as is. I honestly believe Spielberg is telling us here that Jurassic Park should have been preserved and isolated (this scene was not in Koepp's screenplay, which had a different ending entirely--meaning Spielberg probably appended this ending sometime soon before or during the filming process). Some pieces of art require our absence. If we could only step aside...
Too bad The Lost World made over $600,000,000 at the box office. Eighteen years later and we have a fresh sequel on the way.
2 / 5 BLOBS
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