Updated: 17 August 1997

THE LOST WORLD

This could have been a tremendous film. Instead, it was merely a pretty good one. Stephen King...er...Spielberg didn't waste any time declaring that this was to be a terror-fest. The very effective opening sequence established a willingness to attack the audience in very vulnerable areas, which sets the perfect tone for a film of this genre.

The main beef I have with the idea behind this film is this: I disagree with the idea that in a summer thrill-ride movie there is no room for subtext. There is.

A smaller beef is that this film has better actors than JURASSIC PARK, but this lot is given less to do.

Steven Spielberg announced that with the first PARK, he was getting back to a genre that he had only visited peripherally [POLTERGEIST] since making JAWS, a terror masterpiece.

JAWS had subtext, surtext, midtext, context...it was textured in spades. And it was a summer thrill-ride. And it was absolutely magnificent. We knew the men. We knew why they did what they did. Each one was delineated crisply, and had crystal-clear motivations, though not one was reduced to a cardboard figure. Because besides their driving forces, they were whole characters--people that were more than their motives, though all their big decisions were guided by their motives.

In LOST WORLD, we have less of that than ever. Though the outstanding Jeff Goldblum comes awfully close a few times, he is never given an opportunity to be anything but the doomsday science-prophet. He loves, he cares, he worries, he fears, he angers...all within the confines of a very predictable role. He is never given the chance to show an emotion or thought outside the narrow definition of that comic naysayer. Which is altogether too bad. Because the more a role is reduced to stereotype, the more predictable that role becomes. In a horror film, predictability is a security blanket that can rob the audience of fear--the whole reason behind the film. "Oh," we say to ourselves upon realizing what role the characters are filling, "They are going to live, he is going to die, and those few there--might--but they don't matter. I can relax."

Not good.

Another goof: the Velociraptor scene. What a wonderful buildup. And what a big letdown. The overhead shot of the lines worming through the nighttime field as the velociraptor formation closed in on the main hunting party was terrific. Then comes the disappointing payoff.

The kitchen scene in PARK was so very very good because we got to see the malevolence in the Raptors. The camera lingered on their eyes, showing their intelligence and thereby making them more fearsome. The velociraptor scene in LOST WORLD merely has them hopping everywhere and gashing huge holes in everything. With the exception of one very unexpected and sudden appearance of a velociraptor head under a door (got a good jump out of that), the whole scene is an MTV-fest of very fast camera action. If, in the middle of that, they had just settled for a moment--on the raptor that forced his head through the car window, for instance--and allowed a scene to slowly build in intensity, that would have been great. But it didn't happen.

One thing I thought was very odd: the comparisons between the films. I heard, both in reviews and from acquaintances, that at least this film has a more concrete plot. I also heard, both in reviews and from acquaintances, that they were disappointed because the first film has a more concrete plot.

Hmmm.

I will go on record as saying that I think they both have weak plots per se, but that the first movie definitely has a better--tighter--story construction. The second film seems more a jumbled mass of story ideas crammed into one movie and loosely interlinked by a thin set of transitions.

There. And it's too bad, because LOST WORLD had at its fingertips all the necessary technical and artistic elements to make a superior movie. Just a spoonful of story--real story--and the whole enterprise would have been lifted to a higher level of filmmaking.