The incoherent ramblings of mine about why The Lost World: Jurassic Park was an awful movie.
My biggest Lost World problem was probably the subtlety (or lack of) in the foreshadowing. It couldn't have been more transparent and ill-crafted unless they had a voice-over telling us what would happen later in the movie. It was pretty obvious the second the little girl (Kelly) walked in that she was going to be somehow involved on the island. She wasn't in any trailers but you don't introduce Jeff Goldblum's black daughter for nothing! I really loved how Sarah (Jeff Goldblum's girlfriend) was going on and on about how T. rexes' are the second best smellers AND she knows that they could find their baby, but she persists in walking around in a vest covered in enough baby T. rex blood that it could get brushed off on plant leaves (but not on her arm or anything else).
Also I couldn't figure out how all those dock patrol people in the station with all their great radar equipment that indicated that the boat wasn't stopping didn't think that it might behoove them to get the hell out of there. It was awfully kind to let the two kids from the first epic have those opening cameos, but Ian and Sarah kind of unmercifully let their dad get eaten--he was jerk but no one really seemed to care that they would lose him. He was completely a character doomed to die.
Was it just me or was the trailer over the cliff scene just a little bit too long? I was pretty impressed by their great arm strength. There was a great measure of surprise (but it was apparently indicative of the stupidity of InGen) that the glass window in the front really was glass. You go to "dinosaur island" with regular old fragile glass? I was actually awed by the rather imaginative ability of the writers to figure out every possible thing that could go wrong and have it go wrong. And how could they have thought lots-of-dinosaurs-chasing-people-and-eating-them is a plot. Wasn't it just a little lazy how all the characters were in shades of black and white. The InGen people were all mean--although Pete Postlethwaite's character did show himself to be actually a decent, principled person by the end--and the hunting scenes were indicative of that. Sarah, Eddie, Ian, and Nick and the little girl were all so good and humane; heck Nick was apparently an Earth First guy.
This was gorier than necessary. Did we really need to see Eddie wishboned? It was pretty cool special effectswise but it added little to the film. Didn't we learn anything from Twister? Special effects are cool, but eventually people will notice there isn't a plot. At least Independence Day had a plot. It was right out of a 50s B-movie, but it was there.
I lied above. The thing that annoyed me most was that I kind of felt like this
movie was a big rip on Aliens. I seriously felt that I was watching a
half-assed remake of Aliens. Think about it:
First they're off in some remote place and no one believes the main
character (Ian or Ripley) when they talk about the danger and how people
were killed by the creatures (dinos or aliens). Then the main character gets
put back into a situation where he/she encounters the creatures again, but
not willingly--only when they see that they have no choice if they don't
want others to suffer. There's a cute smart kid (Kelly or Newt) who can
hold her own at times but still really just needs to be protected.
There's the opposite sex lead (Sarah or Hicks) who cares about the
lead and comes to believe him/her. Also there's the somewhat faceless company
(InGen or The Company) that is only interested in the bottom line and wants
to get a creature back to where the people are to study and profit off of
it. There's the company rep. (Hammond Jr. or Burke) who seems largely decent
but is really an overzealous jerk.
The way the mama monster got back and
was trying to wreak havoc was pretty similar although the T rex was
invited and simply broke a few clamps and the alien was just a pretty smart gal.
The Lost World waited longer to do this, but they both got rid of all the shallow "we're just part
of the help and you don't need to learn about us" characters rather cruelly
and in one mass discard. There were other things but I couldn't shake that
"I've seen this movie before" feeling.
And finally, what's up with Kelly doing that gymnastics routine? The kick was fine but what was up with those giants and whatnot that were purely extraneous and I don't know what they wanted us to do with that.
A cool page for stuff about The Lost World is at Everything I Know I Learned From...The Lost World: Jurassic Park. (This is not the original hilarious site, but an able successor.)
Now truth be told, despite all that above, I actually kind of liked the movie. It was at the very least mindless, suspend your disbelief fun. The characters and the dinos were great, but the plot was the only (if I can be so forgiving) thing missing. It started off with a point but I think someone sort of stopped reading the screenplay about a quarter of the way through and approved it then.
I really liked Ian, actually better than in the 1st one. Sarah was good if not a little weird. Eddie was going to die as the least interesting character we cared about. The girl was nice. I really like Vince Vaughn as Nick Van Owen--he had the best name. (I also must note that for some obscene reason, the Nick Van Owen doll--whoops! I mean "action figure" has a gun though he doesn't need or even like them in the film.)
I had some fun. Any movie that's got at least one good scene that makes you
jump gets a little leniency. Everyone gasped when the raptor came in the
shed on the side where they were digging and he just pops his head
in there.
So I liked the mindless summer fun that it provided, but for some reason I
don't really believe that it was a very good movie.
This was a fun little e-mail conversation I had with my friend
Mark:
(>Me, > >>Mark)
> Nobody's perfect!
>Even Steven Spielberg--saw "Lost World" today:
>
> >> You fool! Suckered by the hype!
> >> Should have been called "The Lost StoryLine"...
>
>I would love to discuss some of the movie's flaws and more
interesting acts of mass (and blatantly obvious and avoidable) stupidity by several characters but I don't know if you've seen it (or are even planning to).
>So have you and if not do you plan to see it?
>
> >> Cecilia, Cecilia, Cecilia...
> >> I would NEVER have made such a bold statement like
"Should have been called 'The Lost StoryLine'", had
I not seen the movie. Please!
> >> Apparently the hypocritical twist of my last e-mail
didn't quite carry itself off the way I had hoped.
> >> But yes! I have seen it. Discuss away!
> >> TOPIC 1: The obligatory, out-of-the-blue scene with
raptors, Jeff Goldblum, Jeff Goldblum's wife, and
his gymnast daughter (weren't _we_ all surprised when
that little irrepressible darling STOWED AWAY on the
trip! Who would have EVER THOUGHT?!), which mirrored
identically the culmination of Jurassic Park, except
that the raptors were even more inept. Clue: Everyone's a goner when a raptor jumps on them, except the cute
red-haired girl, who just gets up and dusts herself off.
>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Mark