'The Lost World' Is Steven Spielberg's Most Indulgent Dinosaur Adventure

by Steve DiMatteo

I’d say that 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park - now 25 years old - is the much-maligned sequel to Jurassic Park, but that could be said about really any of the franchise’s sequels depending on who you ask. Each one of them has had a strained relationship with the original film, which is objectively one of the few perfect movies in existence.

That’s a near-impossible feat to follow, but it might never have been harder than for The Lost World, which came out just four years after the release of Jurassic Park, still fresh in the minds of moviegoers who certainly had astronomical expectations for the sequel.

And yet, Spielberg delivered a worthy follow-up that attempted to go in a new direction, which is to not only take us to a completely different island (which Spielberg oddly later regretted), but ultimately provide us with as much dinosaur mayhem as could be packed into a 2.5-hour runtime.

Granted, the film never fully knows what it wants to really do or say, which doesn’t come as much of a surprise given Spielberg’s own disappointment with the movie during the middle of filming. He had this to say about the experience:

"I beat myself up... growing more and more impatient with myself... It made me wistful about doing a talking picture, because sometimes I got the feeling I was just making this big silent-roar movie... I found myself saying, 'Is that all there is? It's not enough for me'"

The lack of focus is evident in a pretty meandering plot and characters often just disappearing for stretches, most notably Nick Van Owen and Roland, the T-Rex hunter who had his own somewhat vague reasons for being on Isla Sorna and being affiliated with InGen in the first place. And the climactic sequence of the T-Rex stampeding around San Diego feels like an entirely different - albeit still very cool - movie, which in reality it was, as Spielberg originally saved the idea for third movie, but opted to put it in The Lost World once he realized he likely wouldn’t do a trilogy. You often get the sense Spielberg was indulging every last one of his dinosaur fantasies in this movie, getting it all out of his system just in case the opportunity never came around again.

Okay, so The Lost World isn’t the masterful blend of genres that the original is. But if you can’t get amped up for the set piece where two T-Rex parents not only come for their injured child, but enact their revenge on our characters by pushing Ian Malcolm, Sarah Harding and Van Owen over the cliff in the trailer and ultimately ripping our dear friend Eddie in half, maybe this franchise just isn’t for you.

And if you haven’t seen this one in a while, I can assure you the effects, just like the original, continue to hold up, looking more impressive than plenty of CGI monstrosities being made today.

We’re lucky that Spielberg and John Williams were willing to give the world of Jurassic Park another go; even the most middling product from the master of blockbuster cinema is worth plenty (yes, I am a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull apologist). And Williams doesn’t phone in a rehashed score, opting for a more action-oriented theme that allows the soundtrack to truly stand on its own.

And best of all, we got more Ian Malcolm, who is transformed into a worthy main character and action hero in the sequel. Jeff Goldblum’s physicality, humor, and singular style of acting is refreshing, evidenced fully in the scene where Malcolm attempts to escape the velociraptors, who just annihilated almost everyone else on the island:

Throwing in a little physical comedy during the most suspenseful scene of the movie? What’s not to like?

Despite all of Spielberg’s misgivings about the movie - “My sequels aren't as good as my originals because I go onto every sequel I've made and I'm too confident” - he was able to make another incredibly fun dinosaur movie that remains as rewatchable today as it was two decades ago.