Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park arrived in 1997 as the second film in the Jurassic Park franchise. Its tagline promises plenty: “Something has survived.” The story picks up four years after the events of the first film, when the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar ran loose, and asks whether the wonder of that first trip can survive a second one. The answer is uneven. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is bigger, darker and more crowded than its predecessor.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures At Home.
John Hammond Loses InGen to Peter Ludlow
The plot picks up four years after the original film’s events. A British family anchors their yacht off Isla Sorna, and their daughter Cathy Bowman wanders off and is attacked by a pack of Compsognathus. She survives. That incident gives Peter Ludlow, Hammond’s nephew, the leverage to oust his uncle and take control of InGen.
Ludlow’s plan is blunt. The company is on the verge of bankruptcy, and he intends to exploit the dinosaurs of Isla Sorna — the abandoned “Site B” where the animals were cloned before being moved to Nublar — to build a new dinosaur theme park in San Diego. Hammond wants the opposite. He sends a team to the island to document the creatures and push a policy of non-interference.
That team is led by Ian Malcolm, the chaos theorist and mathematician Jeff Goldblum played in the first film. Goldblum is the reason this movie has a pulse. He returns with the same jittery intelligence, and the screenplay by David Koepp gives him the driest lines in the picture.
Ian Malcolm Goes Back for Sarah Harding
Malcolm does not go willingly. His girlfriend, paleontologist Dr. Sarah Harding, is already on Isla Sorna, and he agrees to travel there only to retrieve her. Julianne Moore plays Harding, and she is a genuine asset — a scientist who is competent, curious and largely unbothered by the danger around her.
Malcolm brings two companions. Eddie Carr, played by Richard Schiff, is the equipment specialist and engineer. Nick Van Owen, played by Vince Vaughn, is a video documentarian and activist. They find Sarah. They also discover that Malcolm’s daughter Kelly, played by Vanessa Lee Chester, has stowed away in their research trailer.
That is a lot of setup, and the film spends real time on it. The Lost World: Jurassic Park runs 129 minutes, and the middle stretch sags under the weight of characters moving toward a place the audience already knows is dangerous.
Roland Tembo and the Hunters Arrive
Ludlow does not come alone. He lands on the island with a mercenary team to capture dinosaurs, backed by big-game hunters Roland Tembo and Ajay Sidhu, played by Pete Postlethwaite and Harvey Jason. Postlethwaite is the best addition to the cast. Tembo is a hunter with a code, and the film is more interested in him than in most of the people around him.
The two groups come into conflict, as the synopsis promises. Ian’s team realizes Ludlow intends to ship captured specimens to San Diego for a new Jurassic Park, using a nearly finished amphitheater Hammond abandoned in favor of the Isla Nublar site.
Then Nick and Sarah free the captured dinosaurs. The animals tear through the InGen camp. It is the film’s best sequence, and it works because the chaos has a cause the audience watched happen.
A Tyrannosaurus Infant and Two Angry Parents
On the way back to the trailer, Nick rescues an injured Tyrannosaurus rex infant that Roland used as bait to hunt its father. Knowing the infant’s parents will come looking, Ian takes Kelly to safety. The adult Tyrannosaurus rex pair arrives, and the trailer goes over the edge of a cliff.
This is where The Lost World: Jurassic Park is at its most effective and its most Spielberg. The cliff sequence is a piece of sustained physical suspense, and it does not need a single line of dialogue to work. The film’s darker imagery, which the production notes flag as a deliberate shift from the first movie, pays off here.
It also pays off in the film’s use of CGI. The Lost World makes more extensive use of computer-generated imagery to depict the dinosaurs, alongside life-sized animatronics. The creatures move with more freedom than they did in 1993, and the technology mostly holds up.
The Cast Spielberg Assembled
The casting story behind The Lost World: Jurassic Park is more interesting than parts of the movie. Richard Attenborough said in November 1994 that he would return as Hammond. Goldblum was signed early. Julianne Moore entered discussions in April 1996 for the role of Sarah Harding, a character from Michael Crichton’s novel.
Spielberg had admired Moore’s work in the 1993 film The Fugitive and met with her about a future project. He then encouraged Koepp to write Sarah with Moore in mind. That is how a good role gets built.
Spielberg met Vanessa Lee Chester at the 1995 premiere of A Little Princess. Chester recalled the encounter: “As I was signing an autograph for him, he told me one day he’d put me in a film.” He met with her the following year and cast her as Kelly.
Pete Postlethwaite was cast after Spielberg saw him in the 1993 film In the Name of the Father. Peter Stormare, who plays Dieter Stark, entered final negotiations in June 1996 after Spielberg saw him in Fargo. Vince Vaughn joined after Spielberg watched Swingers, which the director saw when its filmmakers asked permission to use music from Jaws. Vaughn was cast without a screen test.
Not everyone made it. Art Malik turned down a role. Indian actor M. R. Gopakumar was initially cast as Ajay Sidhu in August 1996 but could not participate because of trouble acquiring a work visa in time for filming. He was one of six people considered for the part.
Michael Crichton’s Novel and the Pressure for a Sequel
The Lost World: Jurassic Park is loosely based on Crichton’s 1995 novel The Lost World. After the original novel’s release and the first film’s success, fans pressured Crichton for a sequel. Production on the film began after the book was published.
Filming took place from September to December 1996, primarily in California, with a shoot in Kauai, Hawaii, where the first film was shot. That return to the same locations is part of the problem. The Lost World: Jurassic Park keeps visiting places the first film already made familiar, and familiarity is the enemy of awe.
The film’s cast, in the roles the source lists:
- Goldblum as the chaos theorist Ian Malcolm
- Moore as the paleontologist Sarah Harding
- Postlethwaite as the hunter Roland Tembo
- Arliss Howard as the InGen executive Peter Ludlow
- Attenborough as Hammond, the company’s founder
- Vaughn as the documentarian Nick Van Owen
- Chester as Malcolm’s daughter Kelly Curtis
- Stormare as Dieter Stark
- Schiff as the engineer Eddie Carr
What Works and What Does Not
The Lost World: Jurassic Park has real strengths. Goldblum’s Malcolm is a strong lead. Moore gives Harding a steadiness the movie needs, and Postlethwaite’s Tembo is the most compelling of the new characters.
The problems are structural. The plot splits its time between two groups, and neither gets enough room. Ludlow is a thin villain, and Arliss Howard plays him as a corporate type with no menace. The San Diego plan is stated early and then mostly waits.
The darker tone is also a mixed inheritance. The Lost World’s plot and imagery are substantially darker than Jurassic Park, and that is true to the material. But darkness is not the same as dread, and the film’s larger canvas does not always serve it.
Key facts:
– Release year: 1997
– Runtime: 129 minutes
– Director: Steven Spielberg
– Writer: David Koepp
– Genres: Adventure, Action, Science Fiction
– Tagline: “Something has survived.”
– Filming: September to December 1996
– Score: 5.9 of 10
The Score
The Lost World: Jurassic Park is a sequel that understands its assignment and executes it competently. It has one great set piece, a strong cast and a director who knows how to stage a chase.
The published critical score is 5.9/10, with a Metacritic mark of 59/100. That feels right. The Lost World: Jurassic Park is not a disaster. It is a movie that survives, which is a lower bar than the tagline wants you to believe.
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