Movie Review – The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Back in 1993 the audience was blown away with Jurassic Park, a film that brought dinosaurs back to life and placed them in a remote and technologically advanced theme park.

The film was a smash hit and director Steven Spielberg urged author Michael Crichton to write a sequel to Jurassic Park, the book that inspired the film.  Originally Crichton was against the idea of writing a sequel, but the immense popularity of the film helped convince him to continue the story.  Michael Crichton’s The Lost World was published in 1995, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released to the movie theaters in 1997.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park takes place several years after the events in Jurassic Park.  John Hammond has lost control of InGen to the board of directors.  He knows that the board is going to commercialize the dinosaurs, so he sends a small team to the island to document and catalogue the dinosaurs and use public opinion to put pressure against InGen.  Of course, things go wrong, and the last part of the film is more of a classic monster movie as a lone Tyrannosaurus rex terrorizes the city of San Diego.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, The Lost World: Jurassic Park also features the return of Academy Award-winning music composer John Williams.  Jeff Goldblum returns as Dr. Ian Malcolm, and this time he’s the star of the film.  Starring with him is Julianne Moore as Sarah Harding, a paleontologist and Malcolm’s girlfriend.  The film also features Pete Postlethwaite as Roland Tembo, a professional hunter, and Arliss Howard playing the role of Peter Ludlow, Mr. Hammond’s nephew and the new leader of InGen.

Supporting them are Vince Vaughn as documentary producer Nick Van Owen, Peter Stormare as Dieter Stark, Vanessa Lee Chester as Dr. Malcolm’s daughter, Kelly Curtis, and Thomas F. Duffy as Dr. Robert Burke, a paloentologist working with InGen’s team.  Richard Attenborough returns in the role of John Hammond.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

The Lost World: Jurassic Park begins on Isla Sorna, an island 87 miles southwest of Isla Nublar, the island that housed the biological theme park in Jurassic Park.  A wealthy British family has decided to make the isolated tropical beaches of Isla Sorna as their private getaway.  As they prepare to enjoy their lunch, the family’s daughter, Cathy, takes a sandwich and wanders away.  She stumbles upon a lone compsognathus.  The tiny dinosaur isn’t much of a threat and amuses the girl more than frightening her.  This encounter takes a turn for the worse when more compies arrive and quickly swarm the girl.  She screams in terror and her family comes to the rescue.

The film cuts to Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) arriving at the house of John Hammond.  He’s greeted by Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim Murphy (Joseph Mazzello), but they are unaware as to why their grandfather wants to meet with Dr. Malcolm.  Malcolm then meets with Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), the new leader of InGen, the genetics company that cracked the genetic code for bringing dinosaurs back to life.  Ludlow isn’t pleased with seeing Dr. Malcolm as Ian went public after the disaster back on Isla Nublar and published a personal account of what happened on the island.  This lead to much disbelief and destroyed Malcolm’s academic reputation.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Ian Malcolm meets with John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the former leader of InGen.  Mr. Hammond’s health is failing and his company has been passed down to his nephew, Peter Ludlow.  Mr. Hammond informs Malcolm about Isla Sorna, also known as Site B.  Site B was where the real work for bringing dinosaurs back to life took place.  The dinosaurs were born and initially raised on Site B before being transferred into Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar.

After the mess on Isla Nublar four years ago, Site B was abandoned.  The dinosaurs were expected to die within a week (they were bred to require a specific nutrient that was supplied through their special food prepared by InGen technicians; it’s a way of controlling the dinosaurs should any of them escape from either island).  Instead of dying, life found a way to survive.  The dinosaurs were reported to have flourished on Isla Sorna, even forming their own distinctive groups for safety and protection.

Mr. Hammond knows that Peter Ludlow wants to capture the dinosaurs and bring them to a special park that Hammond wanted to open in San Diego.  That was the original version of Jurassic Park until he formed the idea of expanding it and constructing the park on its own private island.  Mr. Hammond is against the idea of removing the dinosaurs, and he knows that if the general public knew about the island, then public opinion would stop Peter and the rest of InGen.  But the dinosaurs have to be photographed and catalogued first.  That’s where Dr. Malcolm comes into play.

Hammond has organized for a small team to be inserted into the island to document the dinosaurs.  The team consists of Dr. Ian Malcolm, an experienced documentary film maker named Nick Van Owen, and Eddie Carr, an experienced field equipment technician.  Also included is Dr. Sarah Harding, a paleontologist and animal behavioral expert.  She also happens to be Ian Malcolm’s girlfriend.

After learning about Sarah Harding already being on the island before the rest of the team, Malcolm is forced to go to Isla Sorna.  Only this time instead of observing and analyzing the island, he’s there to rescue his girlfriend.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Before departing, Malcolm meets with Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) and Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn).  In the maintenance shed is also Kelly Curtis (Vanessa Lee Chester), a girl that Ian Malcolm began raising after her parents abandoned the child.  The two of them have a strong father-daughter relationship despite Malcolm’s personality problems.

Ian tries to talk to Kelly and explain that she cannot go with him on this expedition, but the girl tries to talk her way into it.  Still, Ian refuses.  This time it’ll simply be too dangerous.  Kelly leaves her father and checks out the advanced field equipment for herself.  It’s clear that staying behind and skipping this expedition is the last thing on her mind.

Hammond’s expedition finally departs and arrives at Isla Sorna some time later.  A small ship carries the modified R/V and jeeps to the shore of the tropical island.  The ship’s captain refuses to stay on the island as he’s heard terrible rumors about people vanishing around the island.  He agrees to stay off-shore and return to the island when Malcolm calls him on the satellite phone.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

On Isla Sorna, Ian, Eddie and Nick use a tracking device to home in on Sarah Harding’s satellite phone.  They quickly find the woman’s lucky backpack, but there’s no sign of Sarah.  As they search for the woman they come across a herd of stegosaurus dinosaurs.  When Nick takes his camera and begins photographing the dinosaurs, he’s surprised by Sarah (Julianne Moore), who was just a few feet away photographing the same dinosaurs.

Sarah Harding borrows Nick’s camera and follows the herd of dinosaurs to get some more photographs of them.  While walk she argues with Ian about him trying to rescue her on the island despite never “rescuing” her when she needed his help back home.  She goes ahead and photographs a baby stegosaurus.  Sarah makes friends with the infant dinosaur, but it gets spooked when her camera suddenly makes strange noises.  The baby’s call brings back the adult stegosaurs, and Sarah dodges one and hides from the others.  The dinosaurs eventually leave the area.

As Sarah and Ian get into another heated discussion, Eddie spots smoke by their vehicles.  They quickly return and discover that Kelly had started a small camp fire to cook dinner for everybody.  Ian is furious that his daughter lied to him and stowed away.  Sarah joins Ian and Kelly in the R/V, and they three of them have a heated discussion about parenting and responsibility.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

A strange sound fills the air, and Ian, Sarah and Kelly leave the R/V to investigate it.  It’s a fleet of helicopters inbound to the island.  Using binoculars, Eddie notices that all of the helicopters have InGen markings.  Some of the helicopters carry military-type vehicles while others are carrying specialized hunters and other essential people.  But why would Hammond send two teams?  More importantly, why didn’t anybody on the helicopters see the first team and their vehicles in that wide open space on Isla Sorna, an island that should have been deserted?

It turns out that this was the team of people that John Hammond was fearing.  This team, the InGen team, is there to capture and remove dinosaurs from the island.  We see the hunters and trappers disembark from the helicopters and begin going after the dinosaurs.  Leading the hunters is Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite), an experienced hunter from Kenya.  He organizes the hunters and we see them use non-lethal methods to capture a variety of dinosaurs.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

While leading the hunters, Roland tells Peter Ludlow that he doesn’t want to be paid for this expedition.  Instead, he wants the right to hunt a male Tyrannosaurus rex.  Why he wants to do that is his reason.  Peter agrees and allows Roland to claim his prize.  After a bunch of dinosaurs are captured, Roland finds a massive footprint.  Dinosaur expert Dr. Robert Burke (Thomas F. Duffy) confirms that the footprint was made by a Tyrannosaur.  Roland takes his assistant and begins his ultimate hunt.

Roland and his assistant follow the Tyrannosaurus rex‘s footprints back to its nest.  Sitting alone in the nest is an infant Tyrannosaur.  The baby would make a perfect bait, but they can’t wait by the nest.  They’re upwind and the parents would sniff out the trap.  Instead, they take the infant dinosaur and place it in an ideal location.  The dinosaur’s leg is injured in the process, and it cries out for its parents to help.

That night, the Hammond team sneaks to the InGen team’s camp and observes all of the dinosaurs in cages.  Nick explains that Mr. Hammond had a feeling the team would arrive, so he tells them that he is Hammond’s back-up plan.  Nick pulls out some bolt cutters, and he and Sarah sneak into the camp and begin freeing the dinosaurs.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Peter Ludlow is busy conducting a teleconference meeting with InGen’s board of directors.  He explains that before Jurassic Park was built on Isla Nublar, John Hammond’s original dream was to host the dinosaurs right there in San Diego.  He had already built an amphitheater zoo but abandoned it in favor of a grander vision.  Peter explains that the amphitheater is almost finished.  It can be opened to guests in less than a month.  Now that dinosaurs have been captured and ready for transport, InGen is ready to make a comeback.

Nick and Sarah free the dinosaurs from their containers.  They run through the camp and create chaos, especially when a triceratops causes an explosion.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

While running from the camp, Nick stumbles upon the infant Tyrannosaurus rex being used as bait.  He frees the baby dinosaur and notices that it’s injured.  Nick carries it back to the R/V, and he and Sarah begin analyzing the dinosaur’s injury.  It turns out that the leg has a fracture bone, and Sarah will have to make a cast so it’ll heal properly.

Kelly becomes concerned when she hears the baby dinosaur crying out in pain.  She knows that its parents will hear the cries and come looking for it.  Kelly convinces her dad to hide somewhere up high where the dinosaurs won’t be able to harm them.  Ian complies, and he, Kelly and Eddie use the High Hide, a device that lifts them high into the air and out of harm’s way.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Sure enough, the adult Tyrannosaurs follow the cries of the infant.  Ian tries to use a phone to warn Nick and Sarah, but they’re too busy and can’t answer.  Ian then rappels to the ground and warns them personally.  By then it’s too late and the two adult Tyrannosaurs have arrived.  They want their baby back.  Sarah carefully carries the infant outside and then returns to the R/V.  The Tyrannosaurs then leave the area while carrying their baby.

Just when they think that they’re in the clear, the two Tyrannosaurs return and begin attacking the R/V.  They manage to push the massive vehicle to the edge of a muddy cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  One half of the R/V falls over the side and threatens to pull the rest of it, and its occupants, down to the rocky cliffs.  Sarah, Ian and Nick are trapped in the vertical section and hanging on for dear life when Eddie arrives in one of the jeeps.  Where the Tyrannosaurs went is anybody’s guess.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Eddie ties a rope and drops it down to his friends.  The R/V begins sliding again, so Eddie hooks the jeep’s tow cable to the R/V’s bumper.  It’s raining and muddy, but Eddie manages to use the jeep to prevent the R/V from falling into the sea.  This only works for a moment though as the two adult Tyrannosaurs return and attack Eddie.  They manage to rip open the jeep and finally grab its driver.  Eddie is ripped in half and eaten by the two large dinosaurs.

It’s later discussed that the Tyrannosaurs returned to attack the vehicles simply because that’s where they found their baby.  Allegedly that increased the size of the Tyrannosaurs’ territory and they returned to remove any threats to them or their infant.

The R/V eventually slips and falls over the ledge, but Sarah, Nick and Ian use the rope and survive.  At the top of the cliff aren’t any dinosaurs but rather the InGen team.  Team InGen isn’t pleased with the other team letting the captured dinosaurs loose, but there’s nothing they can do about it now.  The only problem is that Team Hammond’s radio equipment was in the R/V, and Team InGen’s communication equipment was destroyed back at the camp.  Neither team can contact any rescuers.

The solution to their communication problem lies with the abandoned InGen operations building.  The only problem is that the building is near the center of the island, and according to satellite data, that area of the island is swarming with velociraptors.  Despite the dangers lying ahead, the two teams join together and begin heading towards the operations building.

After hiking all night and most of the next day, Roland allows the expedition to stop and rest for a few minutes.  He shows some compassion towards Sarah Harding when he finds blood on her shirt.  She tells him that the blood was actually from the baby Tyrannosaur.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

During the break, Dieter Stark (Peter Stormare) heads off into the woods to take a leak.  A compsognathus appears but he chases it away.  Soon more of them appear and it grows harder and harder for Dieter to chase them.  The little dinosaurs become bolder and quickly being attacking the hunter.  He has wandered away from the expedition and nobody can hear his calls for help.  The compies continue attacking, and they finally kill Dieter after he falls to the ground.

Soon it’s noticed that Dieter is missing.  His equipment is there but nobody has seen the man for at least fifteen minutes.  Roland heads off in search of his missing friend while the rest of the expedition continues towards the operations building.  That night Roland finds and returns to the expedition.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Later that night the Tyrannosaurs also find the expedition.  They’ve been following the scent of blood on Sarah’s clothes.  As one of the dinosaurs pokes its head into Sarah and Kelly’s tent, one of the members of the expedition screams an alert.  Suddenly everybody is up and running from the massive predator dinosaurs.  Ian hides as people around him are stepped on and eaten by the Tyrannosaurs.

Roland uses the chaos as his big chance to finally hunt a Tyrannosaurus rex.  His own rifle fails, so he uses one of the tranquilizer guns to finally bring down the male Tyrannosaur.  Meanwhile, several people of the expedition, including Nick, Sarah and Kelly hide behind a waterfall from the female Tyrannosaurus rex.  It’s a tight fit but it seems to be working.  A snake slithers onto Dr. Robert Burke, and as he’s trying to take it off the Tyrannosaur grabs and kills him.  They hear the dinosaur roar and think that it’s returning to attack again, but instead it’s Ian Malcolm that leaps through the waterfall.

While this is taking place, other members of the expedition are still running in fear and heading towards the operations building.  Their path takes them right through a patch of tall grass, and an aggressive pack of velociraptors attacks and kills them all.  Ian, Nick, Sarah and Kelly also run through the grass and notice the backpacks, but at this point the raptors (and their human meals) are gone.

Ian’s bad leg severely slows his ability to run, so Nick runs ahead to the operations building so he can call for a rescue.  He reaches the building and is able to activate some power.  Nick then uses the communication equipment to contact InGen and request an immediate rescue, citing severe casualties and the survivors of the expedition are in mortal danger.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Ian, Sarah and Kelly also reach the compound, but there’s no sign of Nick.  Suddenly Sarah is attacked from behind by a velociraptor.  Her lucky pack saves her, and she and Kelly run into one building while Ian finds ways to distract the raptor, though he’s also in danger.  He finally makes his way into the building where Sarah and Kelly are hiding only to find that one of the raptors made its way into the building on the opposite side.  Kelly performs a gymnastics routine on a set of bars and kicks the raptor, knocking it out of a window.  The raptor falls onto some debris and is impaled.

Another raptor tries to enter the building, so Ian and Kelly flee while Sarah Harding climbs higher.  She reaches the top of the building as the raptor climbs up after her.  She jumps onto the roof of a neighboring building, but so does the raptor.  As Sarah is hanging from the edge she notices that the tile roofing is very loose.  She pulls the tiles and causes the raptor to slide past her and fall to the ground.  That and another raptor fight with each other as Sarah also falls to the ground.  She sneaks past the two raptors and joins with Ian and Kelly.  The three of them run into the operations building and, guided by Nick, they finally reach the rescue helicopter.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

As their helicopter flies over the island, the group notices that more people from InGen are also arriving.  Down on the ground is Roland Tembo sitting besides a captured Tyrannosaurus rex.  Peter Ludlow intends on salvaging the expedition by not only taking the adult Tyrannosaur but also the infant from the island.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

Everybody arrives in San Diego, and there’s a media event as Peter Ludlow anxiously awaits the arrival of a ship carrying the adult Tyrannosaurus rex from Isla Sorna.  Ian Malcolm and Sarah Harding try to gain access and stop the ship, but a security guard stops them at the gate.  A different guard at another gate finally gives them access to the area.  Peter is giving a speech when one of his aides alerts him to a problem.  The harbor master has been trying to hail the S.S. Venture, but the ship isn’t responding.  Instead, the ship is cruising at full speed right to the dock.

The S.S. Venture crashes into the pier, causing significant damage to the structure and surrounding area.  After the ship stops, Ian, Sarah, Peter and some of the guards make it onto the vessel.  The crew members are dead.  A severed hand is still gripped to the ship’s steering wheel.  The ship was on autopilot for the last phase of the journey.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

One of the dead crew members is still clutching a control pad.  A security guard picks up the control and activates it, unknowingly unlocking the main cargo hold.  The adult Tyrannosaur breaks free of the cargo hold and leaves the Venture.  Nobody can stop the mighty dinosaur as it flees the pier and heads towards the city of San Diego.

Ian and Sarah talk to Peter and learn that the infant Tyrannosaur has already arrived in the U.S.  It’s safe in the nearby Jurassic Park amphitheater.  Ian and Sarah break into the amphitheater and remove the baby dinosaur.  They then cruise the streets and look for the adult Tyrannosaurus rex.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

After snacking on a family’s pet dog, the Tyrannosaur terrorizes other parts of San Diego.  It wrecks a city bus, chases people down streets, and the dinosaur snacks on the occasional person.  Ian and Sarah find the dinosaur, and once the Tyrannosaur realizes that they have the infant, it gives them chase.  This time around Ian is in a sporty car and has no problem staying ahead of the charging dinosaur.  He leads it back towards the pier and the S.S. Venture.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

The two of them race around some warehouses and beat the Tyrannosaurus rex back to the Venture.  They carry the infant T. rex and carefully place it back into the ship’s cargo hold.  Peter Ludlow spots them and heads into the cargo hold himself to recapture the baby dinosaur.  Now the infant is fully awake after being heavily sedated, and the dinosaur is a bit larger and stronger than Peter is aware.  As he’s trying to grab the baby, he’s unaware that the adult T. rex has also entered the cargo hold.  Peter tries to escape but the adult Tyrannosaur grabs him.  Instead of killing him, the T. rex merely injures him.  The adult dinosaur allows the infant to kill and eat the man.

The chaos in San Diego ends when Sarah Harding uses a tranquilizer gun to shoot and sedate the adult Tyrannosaur.  As it falls asleep, Ian Malcolm closes and locks the cargo hold.

The next morning, Ian Malcolm and Sarah Harding are asleep on the couch as Kelly continues watching news coverage of the dinosaur incident.  The news shows footage of a large convoy of ships escorting the S.S. Venture back to Isla Sorna.  Nobody is going to allow another incident like what happened back in San Diego.  The news coverage also includes a recorded interview with Dr. John Hammond.  Hammond informs us that the U.S. and Costa Rican governments have declared the island as a nature preserve, and the best thing would be for humans not to interfere with the animals on the island.  Let them continue living as life finds a way to survive.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – (c) Universal Pictures

The Lost World: Jurassic Park ends with some scenes on Isla Sorna.  In addition to Tyrannosaurs and stegosaurs, we also see a couple of pteranodons.  Why we didn’t see the flying dinosaurs earlier in the film is anybody’s guess.  The same is true as to why those dinosaurs in particular haven’t made homes on the other islands or reached the main land as well.

So is The Lost World: Jurassic Park any good?

The answer is pretty much no.  While parts of this film are fairly interesting, the plot holes and generally questionable and not interesting material brings down this sequel.  This film is nowhere near the greatness of the first Jurassic Park film.

For starters, the star in this film is Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum).  Malcolm was a fantastic secondary character in the original film, but he’s not strong enough to be the main character this time around.  At least Sarah Harding and Nick Van Owen are fairly strong secondary characters, and they help carry the weight of this film.  It’s too bad that we don’t see any more of Nick once the film shifts to San Diego.

Speaking of the main characters, who exactly is is Kelly Curtis?  Is she a biological child of Ian Malcolm, or did he just adopt her when her mom abandoned the girl?  In the first film Malcolm admitted to having several kids.  Why are we seeing Kelly, a girl whose relationship to Malcolm is never established in this film, and not any of Malcolm’s biological children?

In Jurassic Park, one of the most fascinating (to me, at least) dinosaurs was the dilophosaurus.  Unfortunately, this dinosaur is nowhere to be found in The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  Maybe all of them were sent to Isla Nublar before operations were shut down at Site B.

How accurate were the scenes involving a pair of T. rex dinosaurs?

The Tyrannosaurus rex is generally regarded as a solitary predator.  There have been arguments that the T. rex may have been a pack hunter (like the velociraptor), but there’s still much debate regarding that theory.  When you have solitary predators, the father is normally absent from the picture.  The father is mainly there for mating with the female and producing offspring, not raising it.  That’s it.  It’s the mother who protects, raises, and teaches the offspring how to survive.

In the first Jurassic Park film we only saw a single Tyrannosaurus rex, and most of the scenes involving it looked great.  They followed many accepted beliefs regarding the dinosaur.  But in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, all of a sudden we’re seeing a pair of adult Tyrannosaurs working together as a team.  In actuality the female T. rex would have been defending her offspring against both the humans as well as the other adult T. rex.  They most certainly would not have been working together to retrieve the infant, to attack the R/V, and then attack the people in the middle of the night.  There’s a LOT of Hollywood depicting the dinosaurs’ actions in this film.

As Team Hammond is flying away from Isla Sorna they see the captured Tyrannosaurus rex on the ground.  We also see the arrival of a bunch of specialists from InGen.  The main predator was safely captured.  Why didn’t InGen make a second attempt at capturing other dinosaurs for the park in San Diego?  They could have easily made a sweep of the island the next day and re-captured many dinosaurs, salvaging the expedition.

One of the biggest plot holes involved the S.S. Venture, the ship that carried the adult Tyrannosaurus rex to San Diego.  After the ship crashes into the pier we see that all of the crew members are dead, even those in the pilot house.  How in the world did the T. rex get into the small room on top of the ship and kill those people?  At least some of the crew members should have been able to hide in rooms and evade the massive dinosaur.

The whole San Diego sequence in the film is one giant comical but stupid sequence.  What could have still been a mediocre dinosaur film was turned into complete garbage when the adult T. rex began terrorizing the city streets.  Why in the world are people running out from cover and staying on the main street, right in front of the charging T. rex?  The dinosaur seemed awfully slow compared to the people and other vehicles.  Remember that in the first film, it was mentioned that the T. rex was clocked at being able to run over 30 miles per hour.

Is that T. rex in San Diego a male or female?  We know that Roland Tembo shot and tranquilized a male Tyrannosaur on Isla Sorna.  Yet the T. rex in San Diego is showing the parenting skills that you would find in a female solitary dinosaur.  When it comes to solitary animals, you don’t find the males caring for the young or teaching the young how to hunt in the wild.  That’s always the job of the female, its mother.

How about Ian Malcolm and Sarah Harding so easily breaking into the Jurassic Park amphitheater to steal the baby Tyrannosaur?  Shouldn’t there have been at least a little more security concerning the incredible importance of the living dinosaur that was being held there?

There are a lot of issues throughout The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  One or two problems wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you combine them and actually take a look at the completed picture, then it’s a big deal.  A really big deal.

How about those pteranodons that we saw flying around in the final scene of the movie?  Why in the world didn’t we see any evidence of them throughout the film?  We should have at least seen one or two of them soaring in the sky at one point in the film.  It’s as if they were all hiding in a cave and didn’t bother to show themselves until the final scene.  This, my friends, is really sloppy storytelling.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park feels like a film that was thrown together all in the aim of creating a sequel to make a lot of money.  In this case it’s throwing together the best secondary character from the first film as well as the two favorite dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurs and velociraptors.  The film’s plot is okay at best, and in the end you walk away with a feeling of not seeing anything new.  It’s more like a feeling of being cheated as Dr. Malcolm is not anything like himself in the first film.  With the problems involving the dinosaurs and parts of the plot, one has to wonder what Steven Spielberg was thinking when making this awful film.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) – movie trailer

It’s hard to like this film considering the magnitude of the errors and plot holes.  As much as I loved the first Jurassic Park, watching this horrendous sequel is almost a complete waste of time.  If it weren’t for a few cool scenes and some interesting characters, then this film would be a complete failure.

Nick Van Owen – “You seem like you have a shred of common sense.  What the hell are you doing here?”
Roland Tembo – “Somewhere on this island is the greatest predator there ever lived. The second greatest predator must take him down.”

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Dr. Ian Malcolm – “When you try to sound like Hammond, it comes off as a hustle. I mean, it’s not your fault. They say talent skips a generation. So, I’m sure your kids will be sharp as tacks.”
Peter Ludlow – “Hammond’s reach exceeded his grasp. Mine does not.”
Dr. Ian Malcolm – “Taking dinosaurs off this island is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas. And I’m gonna be there when you learn that.”