The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
The premise: Four years have passed since the events of Jurassic Park, and John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has lost control of InGen, and is laid low by ill health. His loathsome nephew, Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), is now at the helm of the corporation, and has a dastardly plan to bring dinosaurs to the mainland to boost the corporation’s financial status. We learn that the dinosaurs have been allowed to roam free on a secret second island – Isla Sorna – where they were all engineered in the first place. Hammond asks Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to assist a team heading to the island to document the creatures, but he declines – still traumatised by his last adventure.
He changes his mind, however, when he learns that Hammond already sent palaeontologist Dr Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) – also known as Dr Malcolm’s girlfriend – to the island. Unfortunately, it is discovered soon after Malcolm’s arrival that, not only has his teenage daughter (Vanessa Lee Chester) stowed away and secretly accompanied him to the dinosaur-infested locale, but they are also competing against InGen and its bad guys, who are already there to hunt.
The groundbreaking stuff: With Steven Spielberg back in the director’s chair, The Lost World continued to build upon the vast technological advances made by its predecessor, Jurassic Park. The script was written by David Koepp, based upon a sequel novel written by Michael Crichton – who wrote the book after being pressured into doing so by fans of the first film, and Spielberg. As such, it is unique in the sense that, without the adaptation of the first book – which itself had been written while under consideration by filmmakers – the sequel would never have existed anyway.
The film also continues to build upon the themes of family that featured in the first story – except here, more alternatives to the traditional family unit are explored. Ian Malcolm is no longer in a relationship with his daughter’s mother, and so their relationship is unconventional. Malcolm’s relationship with Dr Harding also subverts traditional cinematic stereotypes – with her being an accomplished scientist in her own right, making her own professional choices that do not centre on him or their relationship. Further, while there are still only two significant female roles in the movie, the two spend time together, bond, and fight to survive together.
Highlights: There are a number of effective sequences in The Lost World, including the group being stalked through long grass, the T rex infiltrating the sleeping camp, an InGen operator getting lost and picked apart by tiny Compys, and of course, the final set-piece featuring a T rex loose on the mainland. There is one sequence that stands out as the highlight of the entire movie, however, and that is when a convoy of trailers is attacked and pushed over a cliff by a T rex, with Dr Harding (Julianne Moore), Dr Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and environmentalist documentarian Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) inside.
With this scene, Spielberg basically takes us to school. It is a flawlessly executed step-by-step guide to creating the perfect tension-filled action film sequence. Dr Harding and Nick Van Owen have rescued an injured T rex infant, and are trying to set its broken leg. Dr Malcolm races to the scene from the safety of a ‘high-hide’ to warn them of approaching adult Tyrannosaurs. As the giant creatures stalk around outside the trailers in response to the cries of their infant, Dr Harding opens the door and returns their offspring to them.
There is momentary relief, before the three realise the Tyrannosaurs have not left, and are, instead, going to push the line of trailers over the cliff – down to the rocks and crashing waves below. As the trailer goes over, Dr Harding is knocked free by a jolt and lands face-first on the window at the end of the trailer. The glass begins to crack, painfully slowly, as her face fills with horror. Only a sheet of failing glass separates her from certain death. What follows is a brilliant set-up in which Dr Harding, Dr Malcolm, Nick Van Owen and, up top, equipment specialist Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) work together to save each other from a situation that seems hopeless, only to be faced with a different, altogether more human obstacle afterward.
The lowlights: After an initial, brief action sequence, the film opens with a lengthy and unwieldy scene of exposition. It could be argued that this is intended to help build anticipation – feeling that those initial moments of reveal in Jurassic Park can never be recaptured, so tension must be created from somewhere else. It is unfortunate that this would be the choice made by such experienced filmmakers, however – not least since The Lost World arrived a number of years after Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which contains the best execution of exposition ever put on film, summarising a complex time-travelling concept in 12 sentences.
A further disappointment is the ‘bad guy’ characters. In Jurassic Park, the villains are essentially the T rex and the Velociraptors. John Hammond is clearly responsible for the disaster, but is portrayed sympathetically – as an ambitious old man, caught up in his own desperation for notoriety. In The Lost World, the villain is the InGen corporation which wishes to exploit the animals for its own financial gain. The leader of that movement – Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) – is essentially a cartoon villain. The result is that the very clear morality tale of the first film seems to be almost a parody of itself by the second. This becomes more of an issue in the third act, when the two leads – Dr Harding and Dr Malcolm – must deal with a Tyrannosaur rampage on the mainland, with Spielberg cramming in a few more action-packed scenes before returning to the earlier theme of the giant creature simply needing to protect its young.