‘If we could only step aside and trust in nature, life will find a way...’
Some films are so iconic, so unique, that a sequel could never possibly live up to the original. Jaws is one example. Die Hard is another. If not for the genius of James Cameron, Alien would be one too. I would also put Jurassic Park on the list. Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic changed the concept of a summer blockbuster forever. How the hell do you top that? The answer, of course, is that you don’t…
Despite the fact that we’ve already seen what happens when you send a bunch of people to an island populated by dinosaurs, it very much happens again here. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) return from the first movie, while a whole new cast of characters appear for the first time with Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn and Richard Schiff representing the good guys, and Peter Stormare, Pete Postlethwaite and Arliss Howard symbolising corporate America (and, in Postlethwaite’s case, big game hunters).
There are several issues here. One of the great things about Jurassic Park is its simplicity. That film focused primarily on Malcolm, Grant and Sattler, with the other characters working in service of our three main protagonists. The Lost World has too many characters. And, even worse, too many antagonists. Sure, we had Dennis Nedry in the first movie, but the main adversaries were the dinosaurs themselves. While there are some thrilling moments here, mostly involving the ever captivating tyrannosaurs, there is far too much focus on the conflict between the benevolent research team and the evil overlords of InGen. I simply don’t care about this clash of ideals when there are actual dinosaurs roaming around. Give me more dinosaurs.
That being said, Goldblum thrives having been given centre stage, the effects remain jaw-dropping, and the sequence in the third act in which the dinosaurs escape the island to wreak havoc in San Diego is genuinely thrilling. The problem is that we have seen much of this stuff done before and done better four years earlier in Jurassic Park. It doesn’t help that Spielberg was forced to change his director of photography. Dean Cundy, who shot the first movie, was unavailable due to shooting Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves, and so Schindler’s List cinematographer Janusz Kamiński was brought in instead. The result is a film that is too arty and dark to sit well in a franchise that is primarily meant for children to enjoy. Sure, the contrast between light and shadow looks beautiful, but again, this is a film about dinosaurs. I want to be able to see the damn things.
The Lost World is not in any way shape or form a bad movie. There is loads of stuff that is enjoyable about it. The problem is that it is so much less enjoyable than its predecessor that it could be argued that it never really justifies its own existance.
