The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

When Jurassic Park landed in cinemas in 1993, it changed the visual language of blockbuster filmmaking almost overnight. The combination of Stan Winston's animatronics and pioneering CGI work produced dinosaurs that felt genuinely alive, and audiences responded in kind, making it one of the highest-grossing films ever released at that point. A sequel was always going to happen. The question was whether Steven Spielberg, working again with Universal Pictures and his own Amblin Entertainment banner, could bottle that particular lightning a second time. Four years later, The Lost World: Jurassic Park arrived with the weight of enormous expectations and a tagline that promised something had, indeed, survived. The film is based on Michael Crichton's 1995 follow-up novel of the same name, though the screenplay, written by David Koepp who also adapted the first film, takes considerable liberties with the source material. The setup involves the revelation that a second island was used as a kind of staging ground during the original Jurassic Park's development, and that the dinosaurs there have been left entirely to their own devices in the years since.

Spielberg by this point had long since cemented his reputation as the defining popular filmmaker of his generation. The years between the first and second Jurassic Park films saw him produce some of his most serious and celebrated work, but returning to blockbuster spectacle here was hardly a step backwards for him professionally. He had, after all, been doing this longer than almost anyone, with his career stretching back to lean, tightly wound early work like Duel and through beloved crowd-pleasers such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The production had a substantial budget to match its ambitions, and the effects work again pushed what was technically possible. John Williams returned to compose the score, giving the film a sense of continuity even when the tone shifts between sequences.

Jeff Goldblum steps up from supporting player to lead this time around, reprising his role as chaos theorist Ian Malcolm. It is a slightly awkward fit, given that Malcolm was always written as a sidelined commentator rather than a man of action, and Goldblum brings his customary nervous energy to a character who sometimes seems unsure what kind of film he is in. Julianne Moore joins him as palaeontologist Sarah Harding, a practical and capable presence who grounds many of the film's more chaotic sequences. Pete Postlethwaite is a notable addition as Roland Tembo, a big-game hunter whose motivations give the film one of its more interesting human threads. Richard Attenborough returns briefly as Hammond, and Arliss Howard rounds out the principal cast as a rather less sympathetic corporate representative. Goldblum had shown the previous year in Independence Day that he could carry a large-scale genre film, though the material here asks something slightly different of him.

Honestly? Not that bad. Sure, it’s nowhere near the original in terms of magic or tension, but it has its moments. The idea of dinosaurs making it to the mainland especially that T-Rex stomping around suburban LA felt wild and fresh at the time, even if it went a bit Godzilla-lite. The cast’s a bit weaker, and it definitely drags in parts, but there’s a decent enough adventure buried in here. I actually preferred Jurassic Park III, but Lost World still has a bit of that Spielberg flair. Solid, if unspectacular.

That San Diego sequence genuinely sticks with you, doesn't it, and I think that is where the film earns whatever goodwill it manages to accumulate. There is a gonzo ambition to it that the safer, more mechanical middle section completely lacks. For me, the pacing is the real culprit: too much of the island feels like a holding pattern between the genuinely inventive set-pieces, and the supporting cast never quite get enough to do. Still, a polished but unremarkable blockbuster from one of the all-time greats is still watchable, and I would sit through it on a rainy Saturday without too much complaint. Sometimes that is enough.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1997  | Watched: 2025-04-14

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Steven Spielberg: Duel (1971) · Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) · E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) · Jurassic Park (1993)
More with Jeff Goldblum: Independence Day (1996) · Jurassic Park (1993)
More from the 1990s: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · Blue (1993) · Cemetery Man (1994)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More action: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · The General (1926) · Hand of Death (1976) · Daredevil (2003)