That said, I can overlook all these things when the movie still manages to get so much else right. There are so many great sequences and moments present in the sequel that hold up to this day, from the moment Malcolm first hears the roar of a T-Rex in the distance to the attack on the trailer to the entire game trail scene to the image of Dieter being swarmed upon by compies.
And while the raptors really take a back seat in this film compared to how much their big reveal was built up to in the first movie, they manage to still steal the show when they do finally show up, with the tall grass sequence standing as one of The Lost World‘s defining moments, with the image of a group cutting a path through the grass unaware that raptors are closing in from every angle giving The Lost World one of its most powerfully memorable scenes.
And, of course, there’s the entire sequence in San Diego, which always seems to be a major sticking point for detractors of the film. In a way, this is the closest we’d ever get to Steven Spielberg remaking King Kong – the boat that brings the rex is called the S. S. Venture, after all – and personally, it’s fun. It’s the type of wish fulfillment that satisfies the daydreams of a child (or even some imaginative adults) bored in a car one day: What would happen if a dinosaur suddenly showed up on the street? Like the rest of the movie, it’s such a wildly different final act than Jurassic Park had, and in-universe it was a good way to immediately vindicate Ian Malcolm in the public eye while introducing the world to and capturing their interest in the fact that dinosaurs are back in a way that set the stage for the sequels (though I’ll leave you to decide whether that paid off or not).
Some of the humor inherent in the situation is at odds with the tone of the rest of the film though, like a gag involving the 76 gas station ball, but there’s something that just works about it anyway, the whole thing never blowing up into some special effects showdown or dragging on too long, and it also helps bring the narrative full circle, finally giving the showman John Hammond we met in Jurassic Park the chance to wow the world and the reformed naturalist he became by The Lost World the opportunity to save and preserve these animals.
What also helps these sequences work so well is the stellar effects work, which has only served to help the film hold up here in 2017. Some of the CGI is notably dated, like in the initial Stegosaurus sequence, but Spielberg’s decision once again to have much of the movie take place in the dark to help cover up the obviousness of digital creations paid off, as the CGI work at play in sequences like the trailer attack or the raptor showdown or the San Diego sequence still look great. Of course, the animatronics look and feel incredible, too, and the blending of them both captures a certain magic that modern day CGI overload can’t. The Lost World brings to life all sorts of new dinosaurs, from Pachycephalosaurus to Compsognathus to Pteranodon, and they all end up being memorable additions to the franchise as a whole simply because of the clear care in which they were created.