The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Steven Spielberg’s 1997 sequel does not take its opening from its own book. The beach scene in which small dinosaurs attack a child comes from an unfilmed chapter of the first novel, so it opens by settling an old debt. Another opening was dropped: a Japanese trawler hauling up a rotting dinosaur. Michael Crichton wrote the book under reader pressure and revived Malcolm, killed off in the first novel, because he needed an ironic voice to say why things would go wrong. The San Diego section has no counterpart in the book. Spielberg names old monster pictures, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Gorgo, as references, and the last half hour openly changes genre. The trailer over the cliff was built by hand: a mountainside erected above a Universal parking structure, the trailer suspended from a ninety five ton crane, the head blows delivered by animatronics, so the damage on screen is real. For the raptor sequence, real grass was grown months ahead on ground wide enough for reshoots. The tone is harder than the first film, and the British board’s note itemises the deaths: a man trodden on by a T. rex, another pulled apart between two. For a viewer who wants the first film’s craft rather than its wonder. Not for a parent expecting the 1993 picture’s level.