by Chris Newsom
Contributing Writer
Unless you've spent the last four years on Mir, I don't have to tell you anything about Jurassic Park that you don't probably already know.
Well, the dinosaur days of summer are upon us, with the opening of the highly anticipated sequel to that blockbuster of all blockbusters, The Lost World . That's right folks, in case you didn't expect it, the box-office receipts from the original ensured that SOMETHING HAS SURVIVED, and that, my friends, makes for dubious filmmaking.
In the opening scenes of The Lost World, we discover that Isla Nublar wasn't the only habitat created by Ingen Enterprises. Actually, the real breeding of dinosaurs occurred on nearby Isla Sorna (referred to rather antiseptically in the movie as Site B). The tropical storm that created so much havoc in the original set all of the dinosaurs on Site B free to create their own ecologies in a completely natural setting.
That is where Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum, fresh off saving the world, but not UH, from the aliens in ID4, and reprising his role of the annoying mathematician from the original) steps in. It seems that John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), now in failing health, has seen the light from his greedy mistakes and wants Ian to head up a team of researchers to the island to document and study this wonderful lost world. Ian of course, being now a seasoned dinosaur veteran, knows the dangers of such a task and has no interest until Hammond informs him that his naturalist girlfriend, Sara Harding (Julianne Moore), is already there.
Ian, now finding this whole affair very personal (hey, Spielberg had to get him on the island somehow), agrees, if only to rescue his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Hammond's nephew Peter Ludlow (Richard Arliss), in a bid to capitalize on this genetic gold mine, has mounted his own team of hunters and mercenaries to capture and exploit the creatures in stateside attractions, a la King Kong.
With these two entourages converging on the island, Spielberg seems to be setting us up for one hell of a thrill ride. The only problem (besides the fact that it takes a yawning half-hour to do all this) is that the characterization is just not there. Even though Spielberg is working with a strong supporting cast that includes Pete Postlethwaite (Usual Suspects) and Peter Stormare (Fargo) as ruthless hunters on Ludlow's team, and Moore (Nine Months, Safe) and Vince Vaughn (Swingers) on Ian's team, he doesn't seem to be able to coax enough out of them.
Predictably, the two groups are thrust together for survival after Ian's team is nearly nudged off of a cliff and into oblivion by a couple of T. Rex's shortly after arriving on the island. Strangely, Ian's only reaction to this near death experience is to laugh it all off while making a silly joke about wanting a Big Mac (how much did McDonald's pay for that, I wonder?).
Spielberg misses the big glaring opportunity for real conflict between these two diametrically opposed groups of people. The setup is there but we never get the payoff. He never plays around with the idea of what it is to be a hero, the way he did on a smaller scale with Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw in his best thriller, Jaws. Although the big conflict in that movie was Man vs. Shark, the more satisfying one was that of Ichthyologist vs. Deranged Captain.
Although Roland Tembo (Postlethwaite) is decidedly Shaw-like, we can't feel ambiguously drawn to his character's plight because Spielberg won't let us. In Jaws, Spielberg knew better than to humanize the shark because that would have undermined the major conflict of the movie, and thus the very premise of the movie itself. But this is exactly what he does with Lost World. In a silly plot twist, Sara discovers that the savage T. Rex is actually a caring nurturer. In other words, they are just big misunderstood lizards that kill because the love for their offspring make them do so. This leaves the hunters looking like big bad meanies exploiting these poor sensitive creatures.
This point is underscored by a scene in which Dieter Stark (Stormare, whose talents are wasted as an over the top psycho) approaches a baby dinosaur while being told that the dinosaurs don't fear humans because they don't know humans. He then zaps it with a stun gun and says, "Now they do." It doesn't take much longer for Dieter to see the error of his ways when a group of 30 or so baby dinosaurs make him pay the ultimate price for being so politically incorrect.
Although Spielberg is not as bad as Oliver Stone at beating an idea into our heads until we give in, he does a good Stone impression with Lost World. He seems to have forgotten the reason we liked movies like Jaws so much was because the characters were so real. They weren't cartoon images on the screen, but people with real fears and real foibles (who can forget Indiana Jones' irrational fear of snakes?), and that's what made them so much more believable. We saw a little bit of ourselves in them and in some way felt a kind of compassion for their plight.
In his defense, however, I must mention that for those not interested in small details like storyline, there are twice as many dinosaurs in this one, and they look twice as realistic. But for those of you who do care about such trivial matters as characterization and plot development, there is no amount of computer wizardry that can make up for that.
Review