The Lost World: Jurassic Park, (also known as Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World), is a 1997 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and the second of the Jurassic Park franchise. The film was produced by Gerald R. Molen and Colin Wilson. The screenplay was written by David Koepp, loosely based on Michael Crichton's 1995 novel The Lost World. The film stars Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlethwaite, Richard Schiff, Arliss Howard, Thomas F. Duffy, Vanessa Lee Chester and Richard Attenborough.
Four years after the events of Jurassic Park, dinosaurs have secretly survived and been allowed to roam free on a deserted island. In the time between the two films, John Hammond loses control of his company, InGen, to his nephew, Peter Ludlow. Ludlow assembles a team to bring the animals back to the mainland to bring in revenue and restore the company. Hammond sees a chance to redeem himself for his past mistakes and sends an expedition led by Dr. Ian Malcolm to reach the island before InGen's team can get there. The two groups confront each other in the face of extreme danger and must team up for their own survival.
After the original book's release and the first film's success, Crichton was pressured not only by fans, but Spielberg himself, for a sequel novel. After the book was published in 1995, production began on a film sequel. The Lost World's plot and imagery is substantially darker than the previous film. Despite mixed reviews, it was a box office success, grossing $618 million worldwide.
Plot[]
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) publicized the incident at Jurassic Park, but disbelief has destroyed his academic reputation. Four years later, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), having lost control of InGen to his unscrupulous nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), summons Ian to his home and tells him about Isla Sorna.
Isla Sorna is the island where the dinosaurs were engineered and nurtured for a few months, before being moved to the Jurassic Park's main location, Isla Nublar. He explains that after the park was shut down, a hurricane destroyed the containment facilities on Isla Sorna, and the dinosaurs have been living free in the wild ever since.
Hammond asks Malcolm to join a team that will travel to Isla Sorna to document the dinosaurs in their natural habitat as a way of rallying public support to prevent Ludlow from exploiting the site for InGen and encourage him to leave it as a nature preserve. Ian initially refuses, but after learning that his girlfriend paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is part of the team and is already on the island, agrees to go.
Ian meets the other two members of the team: equipment specialist and engineer Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff), and documentary producer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn). Shortly after arriving on the island, they find Sarah and discover that Ian's daughter Kelly has stowed away on the trailer that the group is using as a mobile base.
Ian tries to get Kelly home, but they're interrupted by the arrival of an InGen team of mercenaries, hunters, and paleontologists led by Ludlow, which they spot chasing and capturing several dinosaur species such as Parasaurolophus, Pachycephalosaurus, Gallimimus and Triceratops, for another park Ludlow plans to build in San Diego. Tracker Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) wishes to hunt and kill a male Tyrannosaurus by luring it to the cries of its injured offspring. That night, Nick and Sarah sneak into the InGen camp to free the dinosaurs, which causes a huge commotion as one of the Triceratops destroys the camp and the dinosaurs escape.
During the commotion, Nick frees an infant Tyrannosaur and takes it to the trailer so Sarah can set its broken leg. Ian takes Kelly to the "high hide", a lift Eddie built to keep them safe above the trees. Ian, after trying and failing to contact the trailer via phone, returns on foot.
Shortly after he arrives, two adult Tyrannosaurs - parents of the infant - find the trailer. The team gives the infant back, but the two adults become angry about their wounded infant and begin pushing the trailer over the edge of a nearby cliff with the team inside. Eddie leaves Kelly in the "high hide" and returns to the trailer in an SUV.
With the adults temporarily gone, Eddie is able to tie a rope to a tree trunk and send it down to Ian, Sarah, and Nick to grab onto. He then ties a cable to the trailer and tries to use the SUV to pull it back over the edge. He partially succeeds, but is attacked and eaten when the Tyrannosaurus return. The trailer and SUV fall off the cliff, but Ian, Sarah, and Nick are rescued by the InGen team. With both groups' communications equipment destroyed in the attacks, they team up to reach the old InGen compound's radio station.
The next night, the pair of T.Rexes come across the group's camp, having followed the scent of the infant's blood on Sarah's jacket. One of the hunters notices them and screams, causing everyone to awaken and run away, except Ian, who hides. The female T.Rex chases the group, while Roland stays behind and manages to tranquilize the male. The hunters disband into the thick trees while Sarah, Kelly and Nick hide in a crevice behind a waterfall. The hunters exit the thick trees into a field of tall grass, and are devoured by a large pack of Velociraptors. Ian reunites with Nick, Sarah, and Kelly, and they continue on toward the compound.
Upon reaching it, Nick breaks off to find the communications room where he can call for rescue. After barely escaping a trio of Velociraptors, Ian, Sarah, and Kelly reunite with Nick and fly away in a rescue helicopter. From the air, they spot the unconscious male T.Rex being prepared for transport.
A freighter carries the T.Rex back to the mainland, but upon reaching San Diego, crashes into the dock. Ludlow and several guards investigate the boat and find that the crew have all been devoured.
A guard opens the cargo hold, accidentally releasing the T.Rex, which escapes into the city and goes on a rampage. During its rampage, the dinosaur enters a suburban backyard, drains the pool for water and disturbs the family dog tied to its kennel in the yard. The dog barks, but the Tyrannosaurus eats it and leaves yet remarkably leaves the parents and their son unharmed.
Realizing the T.Rex is likely searching for its infant, Ian and Sarah learn from Ludlow that the infant was captured and is in a secure InGen building somewhere in the city. They rush to retrieve the infantand use it to lure the adult back to the boat.
The pair leave the infant in the boat's cargo hold, prompting Ludlow to go and retrieve it. The adult arrives, trapping him in the cargo hold and injuring him when he tries to escape. The infant pins him to the floor and eats him. Sarah finds a tranquilizer gun and sedates the adult while Ian seals the cargo hold doors.
The next morning, Ian, Sarah and Kelly watch television reports of the cargo ship on its way back to Isla Sorna, surrounded by a convoy of naval vessels. During the program, they see an interview with Hammond, who explains that the American and Costa Rican governments have agreed to declare the island a nature preserve so the dinosaurs can live free of human interference. He ends the interview by saying "life will find a way", paraphrasing something Malcolm told him in the first film.
Cast[]
- Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm: a mathematician and chaos theorist.
- Julianne Moore as Dr. Sarah Harding: a behavioral paleontologist who is said to be at the top of her profession.
- Pete Postlethwaite as Roland Tembo: a big-game hunter from England.
- Arliss Howard as Peter Ludlow: Hammond's conniving nephew; a greedy and manipulative businessman, and the main antagonist of the film.
- Richard Attenborough as John Hammond: former CEO of InGen, a repentant Hammond takes steps to redeem himself and preserve Isla Sorna.
- Vince Vaughn as Nick Van Owen: a well-traveled and experienced documentarian and environmentalist.
- Vanessa Lee Chester as Kelly Curtis Malcolm: Malcolm's teenage daughter from a failed marriage, Kelly often feels estranged and alienated from her father.
- Peter Stormare as Dieter Stark: The Second-in-Command of the InGen team under Roland Tembo who isn't very nice to his comrades and the secondary antagonist.
- Harvey Jason as Ajay Sidhu: Roland's immensely loyal and long-time hunting partner from India.
- Richard Schiff as Eddie Carr: a timid and sardonic "Field Equipment Expert."
- Thomas F. Duffy as Dr. Robert Burke: a paleontologist.
- Thomas Rosales Jr. as Carter: Dieter's only friend.
- Ariana Richards as Lex Murphy: Hammond's granddaughter and a survivor of the Isla Nublar fiasco.
- Joseph Mazzello as Tim Murphy: Lex's younger brother, who also survived the events on Isla Nublar.
- Camilla Belle as Cathy Bowman: A young girl who is attacked, when her family stumbles upon Site B during a yacht cruise.
- Cyd Strittmatter as Deirdre Bowman: Cathy's mother, a constant worrier who fears for her daughter's safety.
- Robin Sachs as Paul Bowman: The patriarch of the Bowman family.
- Geno Silva as Carlos: Captain of the Costa Rican barge Mar del Plata.
- Colton James as Benjamin: Citizen of San Diego.
- Bernard Shaw as Himself: a news anchor for CNN.
Production[]
After the release of the novel Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton was pressured by fans for a sequel novel. Having never written a sequel, he initially refused to do it.
Discussions about a sequel film began after the successful release of Jurassic Park in 1993. Steven Spielberg held discussions with David Koepp and Crichton to discuss possible ideas for a sequel film and requested Crichton to write a sequel novel.
Joe Johnston offered to direct the film, but the job ultimately went to Spielberg. However, he later directed the next film, Jurassic Park III.
A production team was assembled in the spring of 1995 as Crichton was finishing the novel, while Spielberg and Koepp were developing ideas for the screenplay.
Spielberg and Koepp discarded much of the novel's scenes and ideas, choosing to devise a new story instead while including two ideas from the novel: a second island populated with dinosaurs, and a scene in which a trailer dangles from a cliff after being attacked by T. rexes. Koepp said the plot of the 1962 film Hatari! (about African animals being captured for zoos) had "a big influence" on The Lost World's script.
Production designer Rick Carter traveled to the Caribbean, Central America and New Zealand to scout possible locations for filming, before settling on the redwood forests of Eureka, California. The location was picked because research indicated dinosaurs did not inhabit tropical habitats, but forests like the ones in Eureka.
Inspired by how Jurassic Park featured the Ford Explorer, Mercedes-Benz signed an endorsement deal to introduce in the film its first sports utility vehicle, the M320.
Filming began on September 5, 1996, at Fern Canyon, a part of California's Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Filming continued for two weeks in other state parks and on private land in northern California.
The film's opening scenes were shot in Kauai, Hawaii. Throughout the fall of 1996, filming continued on stages at Universal Studios Hollywood. The Site B workers village was constructed there and left intact after filming to become a part of the theme park tour.
For the scene where a trailer dangles from a cliff, a whole mountainside was built over the structure of Universal's multi-storey car park. Scenes involving Hammond's residence were shot during the final week of filming, at Mayfield Senior School in Pasadena, California.
Filming concluded ahead of schedule on December 11, 1996. Filming at New Zealand's Fiordland National Park was originally planned to take place over five days in December, but was cancelled because of high costs.
Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński (who had worked with Spielberg on Schindler's List) was brought to give a darker, more artistic look to the film, leading to a "more elegant and rich" approach focused on contrast and shadow.
Originally, the film would end with an aerial battle where Pteranodons attack the helicopter trying to escape Isla Sorna. Spielberg suggested to instead have the T. rex's attack through San Diego, as he was interested in seeing dinosaurs attacking the mainland.
Spielberg had initially wanted such a scene to be saved for a third film, but later decided to add it into the second film after realizing that he would probably not direct another film in the series.
The sequence was inspired by a similar attack scene of a Brontosaurus in London in the 1925 film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World. Although the sequence takes place in San Diego, only one sequence is actually shot there, where the InGen helicopter flies over the wharf and banks towards the city. The other sequences were all shot in Burbank, California.
Various members of the film crew were featured running from the Tyrannosaurus with screenwriter David Koepp playing the "Unlucky Bastard" who gets eaten.
Many elements from the original novel that were not ultimately used in the first film were instead used in The Lost World. The opening sequence of a vacationing family's young daughter being attacked by a group of Compsognathus was very similar to the novel's opening scene, and Dieter Stark's death is also analogous to John Hammond's compy-related death in the novel.
Also, Nick, Sarah, Kelly, and Burke being trapped behind a waterfall by one of the T. rexes was ultimately taken from the novel where Tim and Lex are trapped behind a man-made waterfall with the T. rex attempting to eat them and Roland Tembo shoots the T. rex with tranquilizer in the same way that Robert Muldoon did in the novel.
According to Jack Horner, part of the waterfall scene was written in as a favor for him by Spielberg. Burke greatly resembles Horner's rival Robert Bakker.
In real life, Bakker argues for a predatory T. rex while Horner views it as primarily a scavenger. Spielberg wrote Burke into this part to have him killed by the T. rex as a favor for Horner. After the film came out, Bakker, who recognized himself in Burke and loved it, actually sent Horner a message saying, "See, I told you T. rex was a hunter!"
Koepp named the characters of Roland Tembo and Nick Van Owen as a reference to one of his favorite songs, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner", by Warren Zevon. Koepp said "since Roland is a mercenary in the song, that seemed like a good name for the hunter-for-hire in our movie. While I was at it, I thought it would be fun to make his nemesis' last name Van Owen, like in the song."
Release[]
The Lost World: Jurassic Park was theatrically released on May 23, 1997.
The marketing campaign was even more extensive than with Jurassic Park at the cost of $250 million with 70 promotional partners.
The leading partners were Burger King (whose promotion was concurrent with one for another Universal dinosaur-based franchise, The Land Before Time) JVC and Mercedes-Benz, whose products are featured in the movie; and Timberland Co., making its first film tie-in.
Another partner was a then-sister company of Universal under Seagram, Tropicana Products.
Derivative works included various video games, including both a pinball machine and an arcade game by Sega and a four-part comic series released by Topps Comics.
Fox Network paid $80 million for the broadcasting rights of The Lost World which debuted on November 1, 1998. The television version was expanded with deleted scenes that included John Hammond's ouster by InGen executives.
Box Office[]
The Lost World: Jurassic Park broke many box office records upon its release.
It took in $72,132,785 on its opening weekend ($92.6 million for the four-day Memorial Day holiday) in the U.S. which was the biggest opening weekend at the time, surpassing the previous record-holder Batman Forever at $52.8 million.
It held onto this record for four and a half years until the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in November 2001.
The Lost World took the record for highest single-day box office take of $26,083,950 on May 25, a record held until the release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. It also became the fastest film to pass the $100 million mark, achieving the feat in just six days. However, despite these records, its total box office gross fell below the total of the original film.
With grossing $229,086,679 domestically and $389,552,320 internationally, the film ended up grossing $618,638,999 worldwide, becoming the second highest grossing film of 1997 behind Titanic. The film sold an estimated 49,910,000 tickets in North America.
Critical Reception[]
The Lost World: Jurassic Park received mixed reviews from critics.
Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 51% with 35 out of 68 reviewers giving it a positive review with the consensus summary: "The Lost World demonstrates how far CG effects have come in the four years since Jurassic Park; unfortunately, it also proves how difficult it can be to put together a truly compelling sequel."
Another aggregator, Metacritic, gives the film a weighted average rating of 59/100 based on reviews from 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews."
Roger Ebert, who gave the first film three stars, gave The Lost World only two, writing that "It can be said that the creatures in this film transcend any visible signs of special effects and seem to walk the earth, but the same realism isn't brought to the human characters, who are bound by plot conventions and action formulas."
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also gave the film two stars and said, "I was disappointed as much as I was thrilled because The Lost World lacks a staple of Steven Spielberg's adventure films: exciting characters. [...] Even in the original Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs – not to mention the human beings – had more distinct personalities than they have here. Save for superior special effects, The Lost World comes off as recycled material."
Conversely, Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times saw improved character development over the original, saying, "It seemed such a mistake in Jurassic Park to sideline early on its most interesting character, the brilliant, free-thinking and outspoken theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) with a broken leg, but in its most inspired stroke, The Lost World brings back Malcolm and places him front and center," calling it "a pleasure to watch such wily pros as Goldblum and Attenborough spar with each other with wit and assurance."
The dinosaurs were even more developed as characters, with Stephen Holden of the New York Times saying, "The Lost World, unlike Jurassic Park, humanizes its monsters in a way that E.T. would understand."
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B grade; he remarked, "Mr. T-Rex was cool in the first Spielberg flick, sure, but it wasn't until [it was in] San Diego that things got crazy-cool. It's the old 'tree falling in the woods' conundrum: Unless your giant monster is causing massive property damage, can you really call it a giant monster?"
Spielberg confessed that during production he became increasingly disenchanted with the film, admitting, "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.""
Accolades[]
| Award | Subject | Nominee | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards | Best Visual Effects | Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Randal Dutra and Michael Lantieri | Nominated |
| Saturn Awards | Best Special Effects | Nominated | |
| Best Supporting Actor | Pete Postlethwaite | Nominated | |
| Best Young Actress | Vanessa Lee Chester | Nominated | |
| Best Fantasy Film | Nominated | ||
| Best DVD Collection | Nominated | ||
| Best Director | Steven Spielberg | Nominated | |
| Rembrandt Awards | Won | ||
| MTV Movie Awards | Best Action Sequence | Nominated | |
| Satellite Awards | Best Motion Picture – Animated or Mixed Media | Nominated | |
| Image Awards | Outstanding Youth Actor/Actress | Vanessa Lee Chester | Nominated |
| Grammy Awards | Best Instrumental Composition | John Williams | Nominated |
| Blockbuster Entertainment Awards | Favorite Actor – Sci-Fi | Jeff Goldblum | Nominated |
| Favorite Actress – Sci-Fi | Julianne Moore | Nominated | |
| Golden Raspberry Awards | Worst Remake or Sequel | Nominated | |
| Worst Reckless Disregard for Human Life and Public Property | Nominated | ||
| Worst Screenplay | David Koepp, based on the book by Michael Crichton | Nominated | |
| Stinkers Bad Movie Awards | Worst Screenplay for a Film Grossing More Than $100 Million Worldwide Using Hollywood Math | Nominated | |
| Worst Sequel | Nominated |
Trailer[]
The Lost World Jurassic Park Official Trailer 1 - Jeff Goldblum Movie (1997) HD
[[Category:Films on VHS]|Lost World: Jurassic Park, The]