We continue our countdown to Jurassic World, with a look at the second film in the Jurassic series: The Lost World. This was a sequel that was pretty much demanded, but there was no story for it. Michael Crichton wrote the novel as a kind of quasi-screenplay for Spielberg to operate from, but in doing so had to make a lot of retcon changes to his first novel (for example, Jeff Goldblum’s character dies in the first novel….which was awkwardly remedied). It borrowed sequences from the first novel, like the opening with the girl finding the compys, but it was more a muddled journey than a cohesive film. Then you had the dinos eating San Diego and it became a 1950’s monster movie. Plus, let’s just say Jeff Goldblum is great in small doses, not as a leading man.
There are cool parts to the film, several exciting set pieces, but the most visually striking thing about the film to me was when they’ve escaped the T-Rexes and run pell mell into this field of tall grass and you see an overhead shot of the raptors closing in on them as a pack from all these angles, but all you see are increasingly speedy furrows forming in the brush. It’s a brilliantly directed scene and had the whole movie been this good, maybe we’d have ended up with something as memorable as the original.
San Diego? I remembered New York. I guess the movie didn’t stick in my brain like the first one. The Creighton novel didn’t stick in my brain either, but I remember it having very little to do with the movie. And I remember that neither the novel or the movie had much of a plot.
The main thing I remember about the experience was wondering how the T-Rex killed all those people on top of the boat if it was locked underneath. If you have an answer please let me know.
I thought Speilberg was on the top of his game though. If I wasn’t so fanatical about the first installment I might be tempted to say that Steve should have been in his Lost World mindset when he directed JP.
But any way you look at it JP is a masterpiece.
LikeLike