TAKE ONE Presents... - The Dinopod 2: THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK (1997)

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Simon and Jim arrive at the mysterious Site B to discuss Steven Spielberg's sequel to his blockbuster hit analysing the interesting things that this film does as a sequel, the themes around animal rights and exploitation that the film could have explored better, how the film sets up ecological management questions that subsequent films are never interested in discussing, and some of the film's more baffling decisions around casting and the epilogue. Content warnings: death and mutilation, animal abuse and hunting, brownface, colonialism. Our theme song is Jurassic Park Remix by Gabriel Filósofo available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/gfilosofo/jurassic-park-remix Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/RX7TFTS4

Hello and welcome to Take One presents the Diner Pod, a podcast where we watch all the Jurassic Park franchise fans, films in order while contextualising them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie and joined, as always, by my co-host Jim Ross. Hello. Today we are watching The Lost World, colon, Jurassic Park, the 1997 sequel to the original Jurassic Park. Jim, what's your experience with The Lost World? We're just chatting a bit before we started recording about how you hadn't seen it in a while. Yeah, it's been quite a while.

I'm not even actually sure when the last time I watched it is. I've definitely watched it on Blu-ray, though. So, I mean, it must have been within the past, like, 10 years or so at least. But I don't recall seeing this at the cinema. And I'd be lying if I said, I can actually remember when I saw it.

There's two possibilities. I either saw it on a rental from Blockbuster, because this is in the era where, you know, I was still a kid living at home and I watched quite a lot of movies with my mum using her Blockbuster video membership. So that's

a possibility. The other possibility is, this is also in the age when you could still kind of like well, I still could and the only way you would sometimes get a chance to watch these films is when they aired on terrestrial TV for the first time in Britain. So that's also a possibility. I meant to look up when it was maybe

first broadcast on terrestrial TV in the UK and I forgot to do so. It was basically one of those two. I didn't see this in the cinema for the first time. I've never actually seen this one in the cinema but I've watched it on DVD and Blu-ray quite a few times since then. I'm pretty sure I saw it in the cinema as a kid but don't really remember it not hugely impactful

in the way Jurassic Park was but I've definitely seen it on DVD a lot I own the DVD as I think I said on the last episode I watched it just a couple of years ago when I was sort of doing Jurassic Park and the Lost World Review watchers

so yeah I've seen it quite a bit I have a soft spot for this film I don't think we'll get into it as we discuss the film I don't think it's as good as Jurassic Park obviously or a particularly well-made film in some ways but I have a soft spot for it and I quite like it. It has some memorable elements to me. Yeah, I'm kind of in a similar position myself. We'll get into it. I mean, I think a little bit like when we did the Xenopod, and I think you and I are not in a minority, but not necessarily a majority about alien being clearly better than aliens.

this franchise has the same feel to me the first one is unambiguously the best and I didn't even going into this as a rewatch I wasn't expecting a rewatch of The Lost World to upend that opinion to be honest Yeah I think We'll discuss the parallels with Alien

But this similarly makes some missteps Which the rest of the franchise will suffer from I think it's fair to say What I do remember about The Lost World specifically is the video games. So there were a couple of video games for The Lost World that were really quite formative for me, that were real hooks. So there's Chaos Island, The Lost World, which is a kind of top-down command and conquer style game where you're leading your troops and your dinosaurs and whatever around the map.

really not a natural fit for the film at all but it really stuck with me partly because it has the voice actors from the original film it seems like an odd choice for them it's a very cheap and janky game but I also remember a trespasser which is a very ambitious a game put out after the Lost World

with Mini Driver voicing the main character and Richard Amber as John Hammond but it was hugely ambitious because it was the first kind of physics-based engine in a game so the idea was that everything in the world would respond to you in a physical way what this actually meant was that you end up spending ages on the controls just to lift up a gun and move the character's hand

so you're pointing the gun in the right direction I've not played this way I think I've seen footage of it the jungle is incredibly floppy and weird in some ways it looks a bit like when people play VR games now it looks a bit like you know actively controlling it except you're controlling it with the keyboard and mouse so it was

an absolute nightmare and I just I love the idea this open sandbox of wandering around the island but it just fails so spectacularly I don't think you can even run it on modern hardware now I think it's entirely dead but

I have very fond memories of that Yeah. I think my most enduring memories of this film, actually, are probably also computer games, right? Because I think, and I'm pretty sure it was on PlayStation, on the original PlayStation. It was like the Lost World Jurassic part, and it was a platform, I say it was a platform game. It was 3D, but it was kind of like on Rails. And I remember playing that, and you play various different characters throughout. There's one level where you're, you know, you're playing a sort of Muldunee. type character and you can repel from ceilings and stuff there's another bit where you're the T-Rex, there's another bit where you're Velociraptor there's another bit where you're one of the compies

which we'll talk about when we get to the intro of the film and I really like that game I remember playing that a lot. There's a lot of footage on YouTube and more I have a very stupid specific memory from this game which was because I would listen to music

it was a right about the time where you know you were still listening to CDs in you know stereo systems a lot of the time. And I remember that in that game, if you run as the Velociraptor, the Velociraptor's footsteps almost perfectly match the beat of jamming by Bob Marley. And I encourage you to try that out. If you run with that dinosaur, we'll match up with the beat for jamming perfectly. And that's, honestly, that tells you a lot of the things I was listening

to and playing at the time, because that's really stuck in my mind That's something to do once you've finished, you know, Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz, get you on the Lost World PC-Fit PlayStation game and jamming. This film comes about after the massive success of Jurassic Park, obviously, and both Michael Crichton and Stephen Spielberg were pressured into doing sequels. Michael Crichton didn't do sequel novels. Stephen Spielberg, historically, has not really done sequels. Jim, can you name the other two sequel films that Stephen.

Spielberg has done. The other two sequel that Spielberg has done? Temple of Doom. So I've not included that because I considered it a prequel, but I'll take it. So free sequel films then. Okay, all right, so

I've got the one that's not technically right. Yeah, I always forget Temple of Doom as a prequel. And you're very much on the right track. Possibly because I don't like it that much. There's maybe a pattern emerging here with Spielberg sequels. What are the other the other sequels real work has done?

Well, he did, he directed, um, actually, did both Indiana Jones. Yeah, it's all, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just the Indiana Jones films. Yeah, because I, because I was going to say Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and I was like, well, he must have done the, I certainly can't think who did the last crusade if he did, yeah, so.

So in his career, he has only done sequels for Jurassic Park and the Indiana Jones films. He's never done any of the sequels. But yeah, there was talk of a sequel film, and Crichton eventually wrote, came up with a concept for the novel and wrote that for publication in 1985. Spielberg reads it and puts together a deal with the same screenwriter as Jurassic Park, David Currup, and they changed the story from the novel quite a bit. They take the essential idea of this second island full of dinosaurs

and this conflict which no one has ever mentioned before the secret second island site be until this very moment and they decide that the primary conflict of the film should be between what they call gatherers who are kind of the observers of the dinosaurs

these naturalists and hunters who want to capture the dinosaurs for a zoo so that becomes a central conflict of the script there's a little bit of that in Crichton's novel but it's not in Gentens It's Biosyn and it's Lewis Dodgson, the baddie from the first film, instead of Peter Ludlow from InGen in this. But they take some of Crichton's ideas, like the trailer attack scene,

the T-Xs, stuff like that, and they compress other things. So there's two child characters in the novel who are compressed into just the one Kelly character and they add new characters like Nick Van Owen and Roland Tembo and then weeks before filming began and we'll discuss this when we get to it but Spielberg decided to change the ending

and suddenly have a big last epilogue with the T-Rex rampaging through San Diego with the reason for this change being absolutely fascinating to me as well actually I can see us coming back to this when we talk about Jurassic Park 3 in the next episode actually but yeah this eventually comes out

in May 1997 and 1997 in film I'll run through the list of the highest gross in films of that year this may be familiar to you because I realized I'd looked at this list before for our Alien Resurrection episode in our previous

series but the top grossing film of the year is obviously Titanic it is huge it is grossing a lot significantly more than the next highest film in the list which is The Lost World. Then we have Men in Black, Tumo Never Dies, Air Force One. So it's kind of a good top half of this list of kind of blockbuster semi-family friendly films, blockbuster action films, let's say. Good Lord, I wouldn't it be a liar to be that high.

And then yeah, we have as good as it gets, lie a liar, my best friend's wedding, the fifth element and the full Monty. We're getting more blockbusters in the top half of the list. but still a good selection of kind of romantic comedies straight up comedies weird sci-fi by French directors I think another thing there's not really I can't think that they're being actually there is a couple of it actually there is one example

in the worldwide box office I think is relevant here and I would say it's probably looking at them I think you're probably talking Batman Robin and Speed 2 cruise control right this timid it's a I find this is also an interesting sequel because this is something we didn't really necessarily get much of a chance to talk about

with the Xenopod. To a certain extent we got it with Alien Resurrection, I would think, is like I would say in the 90s is probably that era where we solidify this idea that the sequels never as good, right? Because I've kind of stated recently that if you're look at it now as we record it 2024. I don't think that's

true anymore. You know? I mean, obviously you can get crap sequels. Of course you can. But this kind of like this mantra. Like I heard that, like it was not to bring in politics. Received wisdom when I was brought up. Like in the

90s and nearly 2000s. Received wisdom that the sequel is always worse. Like there's a few exceptions, but that's a fact. And it kind of persists now, right? I think it was not to bring in politics, but like I think it was something in referring to a Donald Trump

a potential Donald Trump second term, I think Obama, Barack Obama made a statement, made sort of like a quip of it kind of like, you know, we all know the sequels never as, you know, good as, you know, and I think it's a question we'll want to be making about a Donald Trump presidency anyway but it's a bit cheeky for Obama

who did two terms. Yeah, exactly right, so like putting that to one side for a minute, right? It got me thinking that I've said this over a few years, I don't think that's actually true anymore. If you look at a lot of kind of like Blockbuster franchises now, right, particularly like the Marvel ones, right? You know, whatever you think about individual ones, like the second captain America is the best captain America. The third Thor is the best Thor, blah, blah, blah, right?

You can kind of go on with this. But I feel like the Edda that probably really solidified this for me, where like Hollywood was in love with sequels, but also they were typically not really that good was the 1990s, right? You know, you can think about so many films that came out in the 90, like, I'm thinking, and some of these films I like, but they're not as good, like, Back to the Future, Part 3, the Godfather, the third one,

the second Predator film, I think Robocop 2 came out at the start of the 90s. This film, frankly, is another one. You know, I'm trying to think of, like, other ones that are, you know, kicking around during this, but, like, it's, this seemed to be that era, where

lots of sequels came out, and not a lot of them were really that, necessarily even that good, let alone as good as the original. I think that starts to turn around by the time you get to the, you know, the naughties and particularly, you know, the last 10 or 15 years or so.

But just in terms of setting the context of when this film was made, I think this is squared in that year where it kind of solidified that, you know, as you've called it, received wisdom. I don't think it's necessarily true anymore. And that's probably even necessarily true of this franchise once we get

a little bit further into it. Not, I think any of them, or Bairton Jurassic Park. This idea of diminishing returns is not true later on, but this isn't the period where it very much is true, and I think this film exemplifies it quite nicely, really. Yeah, one thing I found, before we get into the kind of discussion going through the film, one thing I found in both contemporary and retrospective reviews of this film is the idea that Spielberg simply lost the ability to direct a family-friendly adventure film. Like, the only film between Jurassic Park and The Lost World that Spielberg directs is Schindler's List. And the idea is that people think Spielberg simply lost the juice.

Like, he's fundamentally changed by his experience of Schindler's List, and he can't do it anymore. Which, more based on the retrospective reviews, is kind of borne out by his subsequent filmography. Yeah, there's a review by Tim Brayton, which says, The only movie Spielberg directs in between the two Jurassic Parks is Schindler's List, and it looks like Spielberg just plain lost interest in making glitzy, untroubled, populist adventure movies like he used to do, you know, like E.T. and whatever. This Brayton review goes so far as to say, The Lost World was directed by a man who didn't want to direct it.

There's also a review from 1997 by Chuck Stevens in film comment, where Spielberg, in an interview, admits that he likens himself to the hunters that go after the animals. he says they'll do anything for money and so will we so there's this suggestion that spielberg didn't want to do this he's only in it for the money and just can't direct these kinds of films like he used to yeah and i think if you look at his filmography after i think there's something to this yeah i i can i can pick a couple of a couple of it like i think um like i personally think the tinton movie made is actually much maligned i actually that that's like actually quite a good good film maybe some of the

the visual style of it, notwithstanding, but like, I actually think that's pretty good, but there is something to it. Like, I mean, his best films after this, you're talking, you know, Amstads, even Private Ryan, Lincoln, I think Bridge Spies is pretty good, and then if you look at the times where he has attempted this, well, yeah, you're looking at it's kind of mixed results. You're looking at Ready Player 1, you're looking at the BFG, you're looking at Warhorse, potentially. I haven't seen it. You could make a case for Minority Report, actually.

Like, I realize it's pretty dark subject matter, but it does have that sort of, you know, sort of action, action adventure type element to it, right? Sure. You know, but, I mean, that's pretty tenuous, right? You know, I think you're making a stretch, but, like, you know, you're not, Jaws isn't there. E.T. is not there. You know, even things like, um, that, oh, actually, Indiana Jones. I mean, you know, we've kind of forgotten about, you know, that. You know, it's not, even stuff he was involved with as a producer, like it, yeah, it's, I think you can, I don't know how much I, how much I agree that, because I think there are a couple of examples.

I think you could probably argue the case about whether he's lost his ability to do so or whether he's lost the interest in doing so, because I think Ready Player 1, for instance, like, there's plenty of things in that film that are probably quite well done, but, You know, it strikes me as a film made by somebody who's not really interested in making it. Yeah. Which I find quite ironic. So, no, I think there is something to do that. You can argue the case about what the precise root cause is, but I think I wouldn't dispute the conclusion there too much, to be honest. So let's run through the film. Let's run through The Lost World, Colan Jocet Park.

So the film opens on Isla Sona, which is, we're told, is an island 87 miles southwest of Isla Nubla. This is a scene taken from the first novel where a young girl is attacked by compi's pre-concsovnafuses on a beach and there's this kind of dark humour in these extremely wealthy people surrounded by servants, you know, thinking that they can travel anywhere and instead they get attacked. It's a little bit triangle of sadness, the film from a couple of years ago. We match cut from here to Malcolm yawning on the subway. He's regarded as a bit of a crank now for writing about dinosaurs being brought back to life on some island and he visits Hammond in his mansion where Hamilton briefly meets the kids but he also meets Peter Ludlow

who is Hammond's slimy nephew who has taken over in Jen. Ludlow is an interestingly portrayed villain Ludlow is played by Arliss Howard but he's kind of portrayed in a kind of feminine way. So in this first scene where you meet him, he's wearing what appears to be a woman's jacket. It's very high up and it's a strange look. I think he's also portrayed as quite camp. So there's this kind of feminizing choice to how Luddlo is portrayed that's not really explored in any depth, but is an interesting choice that I just briefly wanted to mention. So we get an exposition dump scene of Hammond, who is now bedridden or at least not in charge of InGen anymore and he explains what site B is to Malcolm

this is like you said Jim the island that no one's ever mentioned before that they're now discovering yeah yeah conveniently don't mention second island of dinosaurs any any canonical moment before this yeah Hammond wants to preserve the site as a kind of nature preserve and he's sending in a team to document the site to help protect it he needs a photo record of the animals in their natural habitat to get public opinion on the side and he wants to get Malcolm to join this team

first of all it was he wants to call his brother like David Attenborough is great at this kind of thing he's always documenting wildlife for preservation purposes they got the wrong Attenborough but Malcolm is only convinced when he discovers that his girlfriend Sarah Harding has already gone over to the island

she's a paleontologist and she's keen to see the animals in their natural habitat. I think this is kind of an interesting sequel hook, to be honest. I think it is very sequelae in that there's just a second island full of dinosaurs. But I think it takes a new approach with Site B. You know, it's not another dinosaur theme park, for example. And it boosts a character to kind of lead status who wasn't the lead in the last film.

So Malcolm was, I would say, a supporting character who is now boosted to, to lead, which is an interesting approach. The soundtrack is almost completely new. It doesn't really use the leap motifs of the previous film, apart from a subtle, a couple specific moments. You know, you don't get your big Jurassic Park theme until there's a quiet moment later on in the film and then a big moment over the credits. But it uses elements from the original film very sparingly, I think.

and I find it quite refreshing to not be pandered by a sequel quite as much as you get nowadays. And this is something I quite like about this. And as I say, we'll get into the issues I hope with the film. Because overall, I don't know from that into it, but there are things that I like about it. And the music is one of them, because it kind of speaks to this idea where it is,

it is, for better or worse, going for a slightly different tone and set up in the Jurassic Park. Like Jurassic Park has its themes that we spoke about around kind of, you know, capitalist exploitation or the rest of it, which I think we tend to find a lot in films a way that says more about our political lean than anything else. But it is there, right? And particularly in the boardroom sort of scene in Jurassic Park. So it's not, but it's still filled with a lot of wonder and law, right? You know, and the initial scene with the Brachiosaur kind of speaks to that. This film is not, right?

it's a darker film and I think that's kind of that's kind of covered in the opening right it's got the same idea kind of like this bit that's removed from the main narrative where it's the kid the kid being attacked by the compies and I honestly I think that's a fantastic opening right it's the one part of this film that I could remember 20 plus years later right

but the music is a case in point the music also kind of like helps to set that tone the music is a lot darker and more kind of like feelings of like danger, right? There's not a lot of awe and wonder here. As you say, there is a bit where it kind of like harks back to it briefly, but it is brief, and it does a very good job of blending kind of like a familiar sort of John Williamsy sort of feel to it,

whilst also kind of establishing this slightly more, you know, this tone where it's less about the wonder and the awe of it. and more kind of like, you know, the horror of it, there are bits of this film where it is a darker film, and I think the opening where a kid is attacked by compi's kind of speaks to that. You know, by contrast,

the Jurassic Park opens with a dinosaur attack, but it is on a full-grown man and part of the construction crew, someone who signed up for this, whereas the girl represents kind of innocence and childhood innocence and all that. So it's clearly darker,

clearly with a darker sensibility. So Malcolm goes across to meet Eddie Carr, who is a new character who is building the vehicles and the equipment for the expedition, and he meets Nick Van Owen, who is the field photographer. We also introduced to Malcolm's daughter, Kelly, who is frustrated at Malcolm's absence, and who sneaks into one of the trailers to throw away on the expedition. So I think at this point in the film, I'm thinking that the script is a bit clumsy and exposition heavy compared to Jurassic Park, which was a lot more elegant introducing its characters. in particular the scene with Malcolm and his daughter she just spells out like his character motivations and what his arc will be she's like you don't like having kids

you only like the process of biologically having kids but you don't like raising your kids which is a very clumsy way for this character to explain where Malcolm is so that's a script problem that I think will recur throughout the film the crew journey to Ila Sona where they meet up with Sarah Harding

played by Julianne Moore who is photographing stegosaurus the stegosaurus scene is a bit like the brachiosaurus scene from the previous film but less awe-inspiring there's also a kind of detachment and cynicism that Malcolm is bringing to it and he's like oh yeah it starts with this grandeur but then it

descends into chaos and running and teeth it's a good line and I like that part of it right It's a good line. Like Jeff Goldblum gets a few good quips throughout this film, right? And I think that's where it plays in its tracks. This is kind of the first warning sign for me, though, that I'm not going to be as into this film.

I don't know how you felt about this, but looking back at this, and there are certain set pieces I remember from this film, this wasn't really one of them. And re-watching it, I kind of realized it has nowhere near the same impact as that initial one, Park, this felt comparatively pretty weightless, like when, you know, when Julianne Moore's

running around and dodging the Stegosaurus' tail, you can kind of tell she's not really acting against anything, really, in my opinion. And it's, it's that same thing where, and this is good, if you think about when the Brachiosaur shows up in Jurassic Park, versus when the Stegosaurus shows up in the Lost World, and I appreciate you can't have the same approach, because we know dinosaurs exist. We've already seen them. Anybody coming to this film has probably watched Jurassic Park, right? But it just feels so, so rushed in comparison. You know, and when you rush to it, and it has such a lack of impact,

it's kind of a bit of an uphill task from there, really. Yeah, it feels like it's about the same length of time in Jurassic Park. But because I mentioned, like I mentioned last time, Jurassic Park's script is just so much tighter and better at introducing characters that it doesn't feel rushed. Whereas it does here, it feels like you're introducing all these characters very quickly and getting them where they need to go. You know, they need to be on the island, they're on the island. And immediately Harding gets right up close to a juvenile stegosaurus and touches it,

gets her scent on it so the parents won't take it back. and I think there's a little bit of a Prometheus problem in the film in that Harding's character talks a lot about observation without interference and leaving no trace and watching but like in Prometheus the scientists and naturalists so frequently don't act like scientists and naturalists you know they lecture a lot about it but then Harding will immediately touch a juvenile

and they'll immediately take a juvenile T-Rex back to their trailer, which creates this kind of problem of respecting these scientists while they're doing the opposite of what they actually say they should be doing. Yeah, and I'm going to come back to the baby T-Rex. We'll get to it when we talk to it, but later on, yeah. But yeah, you've set the seed nicely there. Because I like, and I'll talk about this later as well, I like the focus on naturalism and wildlife photography

and discovering how these animals behave in their natural habitat. I think that's a fun hook that distinguishes it from the theme park hook of the previous film, but that doesn't get explored in nearly an up depth. So Malcolm discovers Kelly in the trailer and he's mad, Malcolm argues with Harding, he seems a lot more dower than the previous film, which we can put down to PTSD, I suppose, but he doesn't seem quite like the same character. The crew spot an in-gen hunting party arriving on the island in helicopters. This is led by Peter Ludlow with the lead hunter, Roland Tembo, played by Pete Possofway. And I'll just come out in front and say, I love this character.

I think he's great. I think Pete Possibly plays him terrifically. He's this extremely competent hunter who just wants to hunt a Tyrannosaur. That's his motivation. He's hunted everything else. Hands down the most interesting character. Clearly, by Miles. He's hunted everything else.

He wants to hunt a Tyrannosaur. He's vaguely disdainful of the whole endeavour of catching these dinosaurs. He just wants to hunt the Tyrannosaur. And he's terrific. I really like that character. I think this is quite a good scene where we're introduced to the hunting party, and it introduces their more violent methods, while also meeting some of the characters in their team.

So they're kind of driving on this hunting trail along these largely herbivores. So we're introduced to Tembo, played by Pete Possible, Burke, who is a paleontologist, based on the lead consultant of the film's rival, backer. There is Dieter, played by Peter Stormair. There is Adjee, who is played by Harvey Jason. It's kind of less elegant than the first film in introducing these characters, but I think this scene largely worked by just sort of rushing through it and sketching them out broadly.

Jim, who is Adjay? Who is the character of Adjay? And would you like to talk to his characterisation a little bit? Yeah, so this is one that kind of struck me to watch him where I was quite surprised. So, first of all, he's pitched as the best friend of Roland's Tembo. And there's an early scene where I think he observes like a, you know, the junior, the young T-Rex with Roland and. which I'm sure we'll get into the thing they've mainly struck me about it though is and it really jumped out to me like a sore thumb is this guy is meant to be

Indian and in fact there's a deleted scene set in Kenya where it introduces the Roland's character and AJ yeah you get a bit more of them interacting but you get a little bit more and I actually think that film

I actually think that scene would have added a bit to this, right, where it sets up Roland's motivations a little bit. Yeah, I'm going to say a bit further later on, but I think more Roland would have been great for this film. Yeah, and I think it's interesting because even this idea of it kind of like being in a, you know, a setting apart from where it is actually kind of the deleted scene, you go and find it, and it's on YouTube, it's on the

extras for the Blu-ray and stuff. It kind of remind me a little bit of the Dennis Nedre dodged scene, right, in terms of like setting characters up, I think it would have I've added a lot. But what jumps out at you is it's an Indian man played by a white actor in brownface and it just kind of came out of nowhere for me and it's just it feels so so absolutely needless. I don't really get, you know, and we're talking about a film that has like a reasonable, you know, films which I've had to have reasonably, you know, diverse cast. I mean, I would say probably like this one a little bit more than the.

the previous one. The later films will go on to it, but it's just like absolutely out of nowhere. And the guy who plays on, I'm just trying to remember his name, it's Harvey Jason. Harvey Jason. Yeah, Harvey Jason. So presented as the best round of Roland Tembo, and he is

from what I can see, I don't have access to his family background, a white English actor playing a so darker-skinned Indian man and it just that's just

replete with all sorts of issues for me Yeah I can't say I've ever noticed it before but once you notice it is very clearly an English actor doing brown face you know not not yeah it's clearly an English actor doing brown face and it which is

borne out by the fact that they originally had an Indian actor cast for this film They had... Which makes us even more... Emar Goba Kumar, who is a Malaya Lam actor, was cast in this role, but you couldn't get a work permit,

you couldn't get a visa. So at the last minute, they recast him with Harvey Jason. Which is a bit of a... Just a bit of a baffling decision. Like, get another Indian actor or recast the character and make him English

or whatever. Just don't make him... him indian. And it's just it's kind of replete with all sorts of like you know, like I'm probably I'm not one of, you know, when we talk about kind of diversity on film, I don't think I necessarily subscribe to the view that somebody should match the identity

of who they're playing, right? Because I think to a certain extent I subscribe to the all kind of like, you know, actors are paid to act thing. But like it doesn't really apply in this case. You know, we're talking, like we've moved past the age of like people needing being in blackface. or in this case brown face or, you know, the horrendous instances of yellow face that you had in, you know, the older films, right? We should be past this and we should certainly be passed it by the 1990s when they'd already cast an Indian actor in the role.

And the, just the optics on this are not great because then when you put it into the context of he's the best friend of this very obviously sort of like, you know, safari hunter British gentleman, like it introduces all. all sorts of questions about, like, you know, what is the relationship here? And, like, it, you know, when you bring in the fact that the deleted scene is said in Kenya, and you put that with the kind of the, you know, the vibes that we got from the last film with the, the Muldoon and Hammond characters being presented in this kind of like, you know, colonial costuming. It's, it's a really weird decision. It's a really weird decision. I'm not going to lie, when you clock him fully for the first time it did yank me out of the film pretty rapidly. Yeah, there's kind of layers, like you say, with him being Indian that turns him

into a kind of Batman to Tembo or a kind of Indian colonial man-servant. There's no indication in the film that they're anything but friends, but it creates this kind of tension that is very strange, especially when you consider it's an English actor in Brownface. It's a weird thing to do. I don't know that we're going to talk about AdJ much more because he's not honestly in the film that much. No. But it's a very strange thing once you notice it

and a very strange thing for the late 90s. But it was a different time, a worse time. So Roland and Ajay do go out and capture a juvenile T-Rex. They find a T-Rex, a Tyrannosaur nest, and capture the juvenile as a trap for the parents. Ludlow giving a remote speech to the Ingen board where he's talking about his plans for bringing the animals back to the mainland and building a new amusement park for them closer to a major population centre. Then Hammond's original park. He wants to finish off Hammond's initially

less ambitious plans for Jurassic Park, San Diego. Van Owen and Harding sabotage the hunters' camp and Van Owen takes the captured juvenile T-Rex back to their trailer. As I said, Harding objects, but doesn't really put much of a fight. We've taken this juvenile back to their trailer. And they give the juvenile some morphine, they attempt to set its broken leg, Malcolm and Kelly are scared by this and escape to the high-hearted that Eddie Carr has set up.

So the two Tyrannosaur parents discover the juvenile and make sure it's safe, but then proceed to wreck shit. So this is kind of sequely pandering, you know, this time, this time there's two Tyrannosaurs in a very sequally way where you often just double things up for the sequel but it actually does work for me and I'm not too bothered by there being two Tyrannosaurs because I think the Tyrannosaurs are tracking the trailers is a really good action scene that calls back to the original T-Rex attack but bigger and we've more focused on the kind of animals behavior so this is a great example of what I called in the last episode Spielberg's

visual language in telling the story using visual and cinematic language. And I was very pleased to discover a book chapter by Warren Buckland called creating a cliffhanger in a companion to Stephen Spielberg where he says basically the same thing that I said in the last episode. So he calls this, I called it kind of visual and cinematic storytelling. Buckland refers to it as filmic narrational strategies. So he locates Spielberg's status in the effective employment of these cinematographic and editing conventions to create particular moods, attitudes or understandings. These are more intense than is explicable by any transfer of information from script to screen. That's basically his point, that Spielberg achieves more through this cinematic language

than you would expect when you're just looking at the script. He uses this whole chapter who's a case study of the T-UX attack scene, doing a really deep reading into how Spielberg achieves this, how he makes sure you always know what's going on in the scene, what the layout of the trailers is, he's got shots that aren't too short, they're long enough to effectively communicate information. For example, when Eddie turns up,

you get a great long shot of Eddie just moving through the environment to reinforce the location, sort of halfway through the scene, so you're aware of what's happening. It's really good. And Buckland does this full deep dive on specifically how many shots there are, you know, counting them up and how Spielberg puts them together. The point is that this scene is a great example of Spielberg's visual language, visual storytelling in this scene that really makes it more than the sum of its parts.

But Eddie comes down from the high hide to rescue the three characters in the trailer. and for me this is the best bit of the scene this slow war of attrition against gravity as the trailer is slowly slipping over this muddy cliff and it just looks like Eddie might just save the day but then the Tyrannosaurs return and they attack his car and they joyously kind of tear him into as they feed together

Eddie's kind of been the nicest character in the crew so far so it does feel quite dark and cynical to have him unceremoniously torn apart just as he was about to save the day. It feels a lot more cynical than any of the other deaths in the original Jurassic Park, certainly. Yeah, and when I was talking about

this being a feeling like a slightly darker film, like this is a particularly sort of like nihilistic feeling moment. It's pretty grim actually, you know, and it kind of surpassed anything out of anything in the first film. It's not the, you know, I think this is probably the probably the bit that speaks most to that sort of observation. The one that I'm

going to just, and this is kind of where I started to to a certain extent have some issues with this film, right? Because I really like this sequence of the dual transaur tack and you know the thing going over the cliff and but there's this one moment in it where

Eddie is running around trying to attach like a rope and feed a rope down and it just felt like it went on forever I just like honestly I really I've got it written

I've got written down here where like it feels very slapsticky and I feel like if you if you put like there's this one bit where he's just trying to attach a rope and like you know and then and then that goes

so he goes and gets the winch on the jeep and he goes back with like honest to God I think it speaks a lot to kind of like the music and the filmmaking approach that this doesn't feel as absurd as I maybe think it is, because you put the Benny Hill theme over the top of this and it

wouldn't look out of place, right? Just that one bit, not the whole thing. There's a lot in that sequence I think is really good, but it does, it feels like a little micro example of how this film just, there's a little bit too much

everywhere, you know? It's not as tight, it's not as focused, and even within this kind of like this sequence, which I think broadest we could obviously is probably the high point of the film, particularly once we get to kind of like the actual conclusion of this segment, where it just, it feels very unfocused, it feels very baggy, it's not, you know, it doesn't have that same sort of tight, effective storytelling

that the first one did, really. Yeah, I see what you mean. It does feel like it goes on for maybe a, pinch too long. Yeah. I'm not sure I minded it as much as you seem to have done. Yeah, it's just one of those things where

I think as we go on, there are bits and pieces where it'll indicate that as much as I like certain bits of this film and I think it's still very effective. It's more effective moments than it was in Jurassic Park. I feel like it's less, it flows less well, it's less carefully thought out

and I ultimately find it a bit of a slog. You know? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah. Anyway, after Eddie is killed and the crew are rescued by the hunting party, they decide to work together since they're now all stuck together. And they determine that they need to get to an old village and communication center,

which is unfortunately deep in Velociraptor territory. As the party journey towards the village, there's some nice little character moments, mostly for Roland. So Roland calls it a movable feast, which is fun. He gives a little speech to Van Owen about the man who went up Everest without air. You know, he went up there to live. There's a little moment showing Ludlow's lack of authority among the unnamed hunters when he says, come on, let's get up and let's go, and no one listens to him.

But at this point, there's a kind of conflict between Roland and Nick Van Owing, which I find interesting. You know, Owens is kind of Greenpeace advocate. this kind of nature photographer and Roland is a hunter he just wants to hunt and kill the animals and I found this

dynamic very interesting so for me that's the most central conflict of the film you know between these two characters who interestingly are not in the novel who were both made up for the film I think

if I were making the film I would strip everything back and just have the conflict between these two characters as the focus. So strip out all the InGen stuff, make the hunting party a lot smaller because there's like 30, 25 people in this hunting party. It's huge and extraneous.

But if you just have this central conflict, I think, between Nick Vanneau in the photographer and Roland, the hunter, you're kind of asking yourself, what is the essential difference between these two characters? What's the essential difference between seeking an animal through the scope,

of a camera and seeking an animal through the scope of a rifle. In some ways, both are exploiting in different ways, both are separating the human from nature in different ways, one in a kind of paternalistic, I won't harm these animals' way, but they're still standing separate while the other is obviously harming and killing them. I just think that's the more interesting conflict, which kind of speaks to what Spielberg and cope were trying to achieve with the screenplay when they're talk about gatherers and hunters, but it all gets mixed up with so much ingent stuff and so much extraneous stuff, especially the San Diego

stuff, that we lose out on that central conflict between Nick and Roland as archetypes of kind of naturalism versus hunting. So I just think that's a lost opportunity. I think it is, and I think it's the most interesting character conflict in the film, right? If you even focus it's like suddenly we have these prehistoric creatures that are back you know sort of

among us. Okay sure on the island like off Costa Rica but like among us and it's like kind of like you know this idea of how do you respect them? Do you respect them like you know should we be conserving them? Should we be hunted? You know there's a lot of interesting ideas there that I don't think

are developed particularly fully. They're visited briefly in that conflict between these two actors, but they're not really expounded upon, in favour of, it gets kind of pushed aside in this sort of, like, more caricatured, simultaneously somehow more caricatured, but also watered down version of the conflict in the first film, right? Because I think, something I find interesting, and it comes full circle when we get to the end of the film, with like a brief coda, but really, the intro to the film threw into, uh, what the, what's the name of the, of the, of the, the, Hammond's nephew. you know, like the new CEO of Ingem, yeah. And it's just a case of, it's like the recasting of Hammond is complete now. Like, he's suddenly the sort of the Nick Van Owen equivalent to boardroom level. He's kind of like all about preservation of the creatures.

And in his place, we have this character who is a more obviously antagonistic caricaturey corporate villain, you know? Yeah. And you get some neat moments, like the thing that, like the moment you said, where he can only tells everybody stand up, nobody stands up, and he has no respect amongst them, right? It's not that it doesn't lend itself to some neat little moments, but it is a very caricature representation of the conflict in the first film, you know, kind of like, you know, respecting these animals

and respecting nature versus kind of like, you know, yes, I'm going to ship them to San Diego and make a theme park, and here's a little diorama of that theme part. You know, yeah, it's just, it feels like a less intelligent version of what was going on, the first. film while these other themes that you've described there are sitting there. They're in the script. They're in the characters and I think

Pete Possibly, and even believe it or not, Vince Vaughn, do a very cute job of kind of like illustrating that, but it's not really it's not given any space to develop in favour of this kind of Jurassic Park Fisher Price version

actually going on elsewhere. We've already seen those themes. We saw them in the last film with a more interesting quote unquote villain in John Hammond like you say Ludlow's made out to be a bit of a caricature

I've also talked I've already talked about how he's kind of feminized and made vaguely camp in a kind of clumsy attempt to make him more villainous in a way which Hammond was not in the first film

in the way that Hammond was clearly not and so it is broader it's more of a caricature and it is far less effective for repeating itself so I do yeah you know And like you just said, I think there's interesting themes that they've just left on the table here.

So Dieter, Peters Romer, separates from the party to go to the loo, but he is beset by compis, who take their revenge on his earlier sadistic behaviour. His death, where he's overwhelmed by these tiny bird-like compies, basically recreates Hammond's death in the original novel. I also noted that I feel like the upcoming films will lose their focus on these kind of smaller dinosaurs, like Dylophosaurus and like pre-concumnathus, in favour of bigger,

more, quote-unquote, monstrous dinosaurs. Yeah, I mean, bigger than the quite literal sense, in a literal sense, very soon. I think it's unfortunate, because I think the opening scene and also this one here, it kind of gets across that, like, it's a different way of doing it, right?

It gets across a different horror, kind of like, the wee beasties, you know? this idea, kind of like, you know, you can get away from a T-Rex by kind of like hiding under, you know, hiding in an opening that's sufficiently small, right? You know, and I realize I'm kind of like grossly oversimplifying here.

But like, it's a different type of scare, it's a different type of horror. And I think it, I think that's something this film did really well, introduced that, that sort of thing which it didn't have in before. And I remember kind of like being really scared of the idea of the compies, kind of like off the back of some of the scenes

in this film. And I think, I think you're right. that it loses going forward. So while the camp is asleep, the Tyrannosaurs return. There's an animatronic that enters Harding's tent that look great. It looks better than the last film even. But in general, the Tyrannosaurs attack the camp and pursue the fleeing hunters to a waterfall, consuming and treading on them as they go. The paleontologist, Robert Burke, is pulled out of the waterfall,

and there's shot of blood coming down the waterfall as these kind of bones crunch in the two X's jaws, which is a pretty good shot, pretty good scene. The character of Robert Burke, I mentioned, is based on Robert Bacca, who is an actual paleontologist, who believes that T-U-X was a predator. So, his rival paleontologist, Jack Horner, was the film's technical advisor, and his view of the terenosaur is that the terenosaur is protective, not inherently aggressive, most likely a scavenger rather than a hunter. so Horner requested that this character based on Baca be eaten by the T-Rex even though Baca came back and said that was a good scene that vindicates my theory that T-Wex was a predator

so some interdisciplinary beef being played out on screen in an interesting way but they flee the Tyrannosaurs Roland takes the opportunity to hunt the Tyrannosaur and manage is to knock one out. While the hunters flee through a patch of long grass and find themselves predated by the velociraptors, at this point Adjay is killed by the raptors.

Our heroes discover the village and find the communication centre. Very big rule, as we discussed. Yeah, a huge role. Primarily known for his line, don't go into long grass, which he shouts a couple of times. But our heroes discover the village to find the communication centre,

but also that the village is swarming with raptors. At this point, we get some faint echo of John Williams' Jurassic Park theme, but only very, very, very muted. There's essentially an action scene running around the village escaping from the raptors. For me, this is the least effective action scene out of all the, out of the film. It doesn't have the kind of slow threat of the raptors in the original. They all seem a little speedier. The raptors seem less intelligent. It's just like they're chasing our heroes rather than planning a hunt like they did with Muldoon.

in the way that was so effective with Muldoon and then the kids in the kitchen in Jurassic Park. And on top of everything else, it feels like the accident scene just suddenly ends when a helicopter arrives, and our heroes just fly away. Action scene over, Raptors defeated.

You know, it just feels a little flat. Yeah, I won't lie, by the time the Raptors have shown up. And as you say, it doesn't have that same slow build, right? Now, admittedly, this is where kind of like there's an element of

you know I've spoken about sequels and things relying on iconography of previous films and I think to a certain extent this film even all the way back in 1997 is guilty of that a little bit here because part of the reason that the Raptors were so effective

in the first one is that kind of like teasing introduction right that jaws like introduction almost right you know you have that opening scene where you know you get glimpses of it but you don't really see it.

You have the later scene where they eat the cow, and you again, you don't really see it, but then you hear, but you know, but you've heard it, and then, you know, it has this buildup. Here, just kind of show up, right? And it's kind of relying on the threat established by them in the previous film. And because there's such little information kind of like teased out ahead, the closest you get is this idea that the carnivores live in the middle of the island. And, you know, this is, you know, that's kind of the closest you get to it. but it's people talking, it's not visual, right?

You're told this, you're not shown this. The one shot that I think pays at least lip service to this is an overhead shot of the grass as the hunters move through it and there's different, you can see raptors moving in from different points heading towards them. So it kind of hides the raptors while also saying, you know, you are being hunted. Yeah.

But then they immediately jump around. out and you see yeah exactly right and don't be wrong don't be wrong it's a really well done scene a lot of people kind of like flag this up as like one of the good scenes of the film and I don't necessarily disagree

but it's just it there's so little teased ahead of it and it just kind of happens you know it just kind of happens and I won't lie I was kind of bored by the time this this scene shows up really because it's kind of like

you know the film's picking up and dropping threads left right and centre and having these bits that are basically just kind of like slightly less impactful versions of what has gone before in the film and I have slightly

controversial opinions about where the film is going from here after this but up to this point I'd said it before I'll say again I'd kind of find it a slog up to this point and it's because everything just about everything in this film is less well developed and less well established than the previous

one. That doesn't mean it doesn't have effective moments. We've spoken about the trailer, but we've spoken about kind of like, you know, in a vacuum that long grass segment. They're all really well done, but it just doesn't hang together in the same way. It's moments strung together without much connective tissue

that really makes it stay with you. Yeah, it never quite coheres. It all ends up feeling a bit flat because it feels like it's getting 50 to 60% of the way there with its themes and its characters. But they're never really going anywhere or cohering.

So I didn't mention it, but the kind of Nick Vanneau in Roland Tembo conflict that I mentioned should be the central to the film has already resolved itself. So at some point Nick stole the bullets out of Tembo's shotgun. Roland went to pick up the gun to shoot the T-Rex, found it didn't work, and just picked up another gun. Like, that's the extent of kind of their character conflict coming to an end. That's their little arc. it's yeah

frustratingly a bit of a damp squib so I hear us a helicopter away from the island Ludlow finds Roland and the defeated Tyrannosaur the InGen team capture the Tyrannosaur

and the juvenile Roland feels no joy his trophy since he lost his friend Adjay and he turns down a job at Jurassic Park San Diego and disappears off into the sunset what a guy

and this is a woman that really stood out to me right because you've spoken a little bit about this film kind of representing a break in Spielberg's career and I found the bit you said at the start which I'd not come across fascinating about kind of like you know

him speaking about the hunters right he identifies with the hunters who were in it from the yeah because I'd go even further than that and say I wonder whether he identified specifically with this character because it just feels so like you know because like the entire the entire thing with this

character is he's bored of conventional big game and I say you get more of this in a deleted scene but like it still comes through in the film which speaks to Pete possibly its performance as much as anything else where he's bored with conventional big game and he's kind of like going after this bigger bigger trophy right this grander goal and and to an extent you can apply that to Spielberg himself right you can think about Jaws E.T. Close Encounters hook the Indiana Jones films the original Park thing and then it breaks right and he almost becomes

less interest in that and he's looking at Schindler's list you could even argue by coming back to this as a sequel he's kind of the way I would try it chasing the end of the rainbow with this film like I've improved on it and it kind of it's almost like this one character

represents the break that happens in Spielberg's career right where he starts going after and he goes after something that's kind of grander and I find not an interesting thing, particularly the fact that he basically just swans off into the sunset before the final act of the film. You know, this most memorable character just disappears before the final act of the film. And I have some thoughts about the final act of the film that

we'll get on to when we're talking about it. But, you know, the symbolism of that is like quite stark when you look at this many, many, you know, when you look at this a couple of decades later, the symbolism here is quite stark really. Yeah, that's an interesting thing, especially with Spielberg's filmography open in front of me. He goes from, you know, Hook, Indiana Jones and Las Cusade, E.T.

to Jurassic Park, chases the Tyrannosaur of Schindler's List. And then after that, he's fundamentally changed. So we mentioned he can't do these kind of glitzy, populist action-adventure movies after that. I think it's borne out.

I think he becomes a different director after doing Schindler's list, you know, for better or worse. I kind of subscribe to Claude Lansman's view on Schindler's list as a film that maybe should not ever have been made but I don't think there's any arguing that he becomes someone different after this Munich is a very different filmmaker. Munich is an entirely different film to the first half of Spielberg's filmography. Yeah and like in this period if you go back to and we don't need to go back to the you know because obviously you know directors developed throughout their career but like you know you go back to

like, kind of like, let's say, just pre-Jurassic Park, right? That Stephen Spielberg is not making Lincoln, you know, that Stephen Spielberg is not making Bridge of Spies. That Stephen Spielberg is not making the fablemans, right? It's a different, it's a different, it's a different, it's a different sensibility, right? You know, and they're kind of, like, the skill with visual storytelling and all the rest of it is still there, right, because he's a very accomplished director, but it is a different tone. tender of film. Yeah. And you can even see it when he comes back to the Lost World, in this case, or Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,

which was not well regarded at the time. I think he's still not well regarded. No, it's not. I don't think it... I mean, you know, Kingdom of Crystal Skull, I don't think it's as bad as it gets made out to be, but it's also... It's kind of a little bit like this, actually. It's definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be. It's definitely not that good, though. You know, that's what it comes down to. So we cut to San Diego, presumably several days later,

where Ludlow is doing a late-night press conference for Jurassic Park, San Diego. From this point on, the summary, my notes for the summary get a lot more snarky. And I think that speaks to kind of how late in the production process Spielberg decided he wanted to have the T-Rex running around San Diego. Because I talked in the last episode about the 26 months of pre-production or whatever they did, on Jurassic Park and how formative that is for getting all their ducks in order

and knowing what the film was, what the structure was. I think this late edition of this I'm going to call it an epilogue because I think like it really is an appendix to the rest of the film. Just doesn't hang together as well. So I've got Ludlow is doing

a late night press conference for Jurassic Park San Diego despite the fact that his boat with the Tyrannosaurs hasn't yet arrived. The boat is traveling too fast and it crashes into the pier. pretty good shot of the ship zooming out of the mist and

I've got to be I've got to be honest that shot I love it I absolutely love that that shot that shot's pretty great as this kind of like segment develops there's a lot of things I like about it actually

which I find I was really surprised rewatching it but that to kind of like kick things off honestly that you know the entire sequence of kind of like because they have the ship on the radar right and the whole thing is that it's not

slowing. It's not slowing, right? But, you know, there's this deep mist over kind of like the harbour and all the rest of it. And I have to be honest, that shot of kind of like where they realize the ship is not slowing down and it's heading straight for the docks and it just kind of like, at the last second it just looms

out of the mist and smacks into everything. Honestly, I freaking loved it. I absolutely love that. It's a one as well with that Lulow realizes what is happening a couple of seconds before everyone else and runs out of the

little pier office and the shot links with that. It works really well and that little radar bit is kind of evocative of alien and aliens with the alien pinging on the radar. It's pretty good. But the ship crashes into the pier.

They discover that the crew of the ship is dead including in a cabin that the adult tornadoesaur could not possibly have fit in. Yeah, not even his head could fit through that door. But the adult T-Rex is released from the cargo hold and therefore set free to rampage through San Diego. Malcolm and Harding realised that the juvenile might attract the T-Rex, so they asked Luddler where it is.

The T-Rex gets from the dock to the San Diego suburbs awfully quickly. It scares a child and a family while drinking from their pool. And I'm a lot less interested in these animals outside their natural habitat. Obviously, they're always outside their natural habitat because their natural habitat was millions of years ago and a different geological age but you know these dinosaurs in a city just does not interest me

if they were for example running through the streets of Italy I wouldn't find that at all compelling is that foreshadowing that's foreshadowing I imagine you know so we're going to have our first moment of disagreement on this podcast

right because I find myself really surprised re-watching this segment, right? Because, now, I'm not going to... I'm making no bones about it. I hate this bit. Right. But here's the thing, right? I actually kind of enjoyed this sequence.

It makes no sense, right? I'm fully... I'm fully aware of it. It makes no sense. It doesn't link well to the film before, but like, I'd argue a lot of the sequences don't link well to the film within it, right? So, you know, it's not a deal breaker for me, but there's something about, like,

I really like, the song, of the T-Rex stomping around sort of like King Kong type vibe that this entire sequence had and that's obviously like that's obviously what it's going for right if you look at it the ship is called the SS Venture

right which is the same as the the boat in the 1933 King Kong film right it's very obviously what is going for and in and of itself I actually think the sequence is really good It's got a really good blend of kind of like, you know, just that gnarly sort of horrid. There's a bystandard that's just mercilessly eaten by this T-Rex, right?

You know, no bones about it. No, it's just a complete bystandard, innocent bloke walking around San Diego, is devoured by this T-Rex. And this all happens in kind of like the same extended set piece where, like, it's drinking water from a swimming pool and it eats, you know, it eats a dog. and you get this kind of like family seeing a T-Rex in her garden there's something about it that I just I just liked right and I acknowledge that it has absolutely no license blogging in this film

it's tacked on it's a complete epilogue as you just said but in a film which doesn't hang together anyway honestly this is one of the one this is the sequence I probably think I had the most fun with in all honesty for me I can't get past how late Ital it links to the rest of the film and the rest of the series. It's just a self-contained monster movie, like you said.

As well as the boat being named after King Kong, there is a conspicuous shot of Japanese businessmen running away from the T-Rex, like its Godzilla. You know, and I don't mind a kaiju movie. I like a kaiju movie. That's not what Jurassic Park was about. That's not what these films are for me. And it becomes a bit like aliens.

where these films aren't about that kind of action. You know, I want the different kind of action that is in the original Jurassic Park, the same way I want the original horror that is in the original alien that is not replicated in the sequel. So it just doesn't hang together for me, you know? It's all Spielberg, so the visual storytelling and stuff is there.

There's some funny bits, some funny shots, but it's so separate from the rest of the film and the themes of the film. it doesn't cohere at all. Yeah, no, I think that's all fair. I think that's all fair. I think I like this. I do, but I don't. You know, it's like I like this.

I, you know, like the rest of the film, I want to like it more, right? But because none of it coheres and it kind of, you know, it teases interesting things and drops them and there are bits that are drawn out that shouldn't be, I just can't, right? this segment, because it's just so divorced from the rest of it, right, it's tacked on. And as you say, it's, you know, it doesn't really link into the themes that are teased earlier in this film and are very much present in the last one, right? I want to dislike this segment more, right?

I'll be quite honest, I want to dislike it, right? It's ridiculous. But there are just so many bits that kind of like just bring this sort of like stupid grin to my face, right? In some ways, you know, like when we talk about the later films in the franchise, right, there were a couple of short films, right, that were made to promote, I think it was Fallen Kingdom, right, the Second Jurassic World film, right? And actually, I think there might have been one before the last one. But the point is, there were a couple of short films that

were made as kind of like marketing material. Honestly, if there'd been a way to, like, have this exist in that space, just as its own sort of like little monster short type thing, I actually think it would have been really good. It has no business belonging in this film. It has not no business belonging as a kind of like meant to be a third act of a film in this series. Yeah. There's a lot in it that I like, right? If it could have existed in that sort of like parallel space, I think I'd like it more, you know, and I think it would be, it would fit better than that sort of way. So yeah, yeah, I don't know.

I have a complicated relationship with this last segment in this last segment of the film. I like it in a lot of ways, but I honestly cannot disagree with any of your criticisms of it. Yeah, in thinking about this becoming a monster movie at this point, I think it's interesting that Garif Edwards is the next director doing a Jurassic World film. So he's doing Jurassic World Rebirth, which will come out next year, which this series is kind of leading towards and culminating in. Garif Edwards is known for his film Monsters and for Godzilla, kind of big action films, big monster films. and so it's interesting to get that director on and I sort of have more hope for this new Jurassic World film because he's on board

because I'm not averse to the idea of the monster film or the kaiju or whatever but it has to cohere with the rest of the film yeah so I think Garof Edwards could bring that kind of coherence in a way that Spielberg doesn't hear yeah that's true

anyway the adult T-Rex terrorizes downtown San Diego Malcolm and Harding used the juvenile to lead the T-UX back to the boat. A boat that I'm not convinced is still seaworthy, so I'm not sure what the long-term plan is, but the adult follows the juvenile into the cargo hold, and the adult feeds Ludlow to the juvenile. I will say it's nice that the film is so focused on representing the Rexes as parental and nurturing creatures rather than as monsters, and there's a bit here, you know, where the T-Rex is looking on approvingly while its offspring eats Ludlow. There's a

definite behavioural point about the kind of biology of these creatures, as we intuit through paleontology, being made here, and I think that's quite nice. I think having just praised this sequence, I think this is the one bit we're kind of like, it's a bit like, it is ridiculous this, and there's a moment where, you know, so they're trying to lure the parent T-Rex back to the boat with the juvenile. So there's a lot of scenes of kind of like, you know, Harding and Ian Malcolm running around with this thing, right? And, you know, it's an actual prop, you know, and in a lot of ways it's quite well done.

But there's something about the fact that they're running around the docks with this thing where the image I just couldn't get out of my head is, have you ever seen the movie version of Adam West's 1960s Batman? No, but I know the scene you're about to reference. Yeah, right? Honestly God, the famous scene. of him running around with the comedy prop bomb around kind of like a

waterfront. That's honestly the bit that I couldn't get out of my head when I watched this and there's one bit in particular. We're kind of like you know, like, you know, Jeff Goldblum's ruddered or, you know, making a run kind of like, you know, the T-Rex is swinging side to side and its tails flapping from side to side because it's obviously a big problem and it's just like, this is

ridiculous, you know. And as I say, there's a lot of things I like about this extended sequence, but that one bit where I was just kind of like, you know, you think about that and then you contrast that with like the velociraptor face off and at the end of the last film and it's just like

these two things are not the same they're not the same very different it just feels put together at the last minute you know it all feels rushed and not properly structured and all a bit slapdash

yeah absolutely but the Rexes are back on the boat Harding sedates the Tyrannosaur in a climactic shot as the cargo hold closes is the boat transports the Tyrannosaur back to Isla Sona and Hammond's dream of turning the island into a biological preserve becomes reality. So we get a nice broadcast of Hammond's rehabilitation in the public eye. He's explaining the themes about trusting in nature alongside this extremely improbable shot

of multiple dinosaurs peacefully coexisting. You know, the Tyrannosaurs have their baby back and they're looking after him on the island. The Stegosaurs and the other herbivores are marching down there, marching trail. A big tyrannodon scroops out of the sky and lands on a branch. The end. So in the Crichton novels, at the end of Jurassic Park, Isla Nubla is bombed, I think, by the Costa Rican government. The entire island is napalmed. No more dinosaurs. At the end of the Lost World novel, Malcolm and his team discover that the dinosaurs are infected with a disease from eating diseased sheep with this brain disease from prions so the dinosaurs will be extinct in a couple of years

no more dinosaurs what the Jurassic Park films do is maintain this island of dinosaurs so they maintain islea sauna as this biological preserve and that's kind of that feels like Spielberg bringing his kind of more gentle approach to it you know the the dinosaurs still live they're not going to be extinct in a couple of years. This is a biological preserve. We have to look after nature. We have to look after these animals. Fine, but I think Crichton deliberately killed off the dinosaurs at the end because he didn't want to deal with the ecological management questions that would arise from that. So what we have is a small island of diverse, charismatic megafauna that is surely not big enough to live on its own, to be managed independently.

There's an incestuously small gene pool on that relatively small island that will not survive. You know, it helps that they have predators, so they're not going to bloom out of control, like the herbivores in the cairms, for example, where deer have just taken over and devastated the local ecosystem. It helps that there's multiple predators. But, There's open questions about how you would manage this kind of preserve. You've got Hammond's paternalistic approach saying, let's just leave it and let nature take its course. You have the openly exploitative approach of InGen,

where they want to take the dinosaurs off the island. But I think there's space for a kind of post-humanist perspective where we ask, what is humans' responsibility here? How do we live alongside these creatures? how do we manage that preserve? Do you let the animals, presumably, die out naturally, which I think is Hammond's approach, while the world watches as these creatures die out?

Or do you attempt to manage and sustain this small population of animals that never should have been? I appreciate that it sounds like I'm being facetious or nitpicky here, saying, oh, you couldn't have that kind of population on that island. But I think these are genuinely interesting kind of ecological, logical management questions that could have been explored. That could have been explored in subsequent films

or could have been explored in this film. I think there's some genuinely interesting conflicts there that they're not interested in exploring. Yeah, and I think actually this idea of you know, right, the dinosaurs are here, they're on this island,

what happens now? That is a question that this franchise has actually kind of failed to establish and deal with in every film that follows this one. Because I think it stuck on the first film's question. So the first film's question, central kind of ethical moral quandary was, is it right to bring these creatures back? You know, is it right to genetically engineer these creatures? And I think the film answers that with a resounding no. But then the question after that is, okay, well, he has done.

So now what is humanity's responsibility? What is the responsibility of the creator for these creations? If we accept that it was wrong to bring them back, should we let them die out? You know, should we leave them on this preserve where this incestuously small gene pool will eventually just die out? Or do they need to be managed in some way? Do we need to, I don't know, airdrop in food or manage diseases, manage contaminants? Yeah, now we're responsible for it. Is there a duty of care?

Exactly, yeah, yeah. And these are questions that I think the film never wants to address and that subsequent films do not want to address. I mean, we'll especially get onto this in later films where the dinosaurs spread more widely. But there's... I think these are fascinating ecological questions. You know, maybe that's not why people go to see Blockbuster films,

but I think there's space for this kind of intelligent discussion of ecology and wildlife in these films that simply don't get there. it that way, then yes, nobody is going to go see a Jurassic, you know, Park slash World Film on that basis. But like these questions are there in the original Jurassic Park, right? Exactly. With appropriately considered filmmaking

and an appropriately crafted script, you can have your cake and eat it here. You know, like we spoke in depth in the last episode about the ideas that Jurassic Park is putting forward. Now, are they all kind of like contained a little bit in the initial

stretches of the film and even even you know like maybe a handful of scenes yes absolutely right but they're there right they're there and it's what it was those scenes that kind of established the motivation of the characters their outlook what they're trying to get out of this situation that is not present in this one right to an extent is with roland tembo and i think that's why both of us have glommed on to that character so much because that's where they're established so no you're right no if if you if you go and pitch the next Jurassic World film and you put it that way

and just that way, no, nobody's going to pick that up as a script, you know, as a script option, nobody's going to go see that film. But if you then marry it with these other things, which link into it, that's when you can then get a great film, right? And I'm going to jump off here

in terms of, I think, this film and later ones, we are getting the Xenapod, right? And, you know, part of the reason that we're talking about this particular film series is because of some of the similarities we see there in terms of reflecting the time in which it's made and, you know, other things. And one of the arguments that we made is we started to go through the alien series was that that series of films,

that franchise, kind of learnt the wrong lessons from the success of aliens, right? And to diminishing returns, it's tried to recreate that kind of like tone and outlook and it's kind of lost sight of the the deeper things that allowed you to give a bit of weight to the more showy aspects, right? And I actually think you can make the same argument here not with the first film

and the second film, but with the first part and the second part of the original film, right? Like the last 45 minutes of Jurassic Park is very action heavy. It has some of those iconic sequences. There's less of the talky bits where you kind of establish the themes, right? And I think it's

allowed to do that because it's established them so well. And I think this film has the problem, as much as I kind of enjoyed in a vacuum that last kind of like San Diego segment, it is a perfect example of how there is, it's learnt the wrong lessons, it's all about the rush to the set pieces and the, the monstery bits and the, you know, running, like, you know, to quote Malcolm at the start of the film, when all the running and the screaming happens, right? There's nowhere near as much attention to establishing the characters there's nowhere near as much attention

to establishing the themes and that means that do we have some set pieces that in isolation are great yeah the long grass sequence is really pretty good the San Diego sequence I kind of like for you know some of its bits and pieces the trailer sequence is great

they exist in a vacuum they carry a lot less weight as a result and it's kind of that you'll see this repeated in different kind of shades in later films and it's the same thing that I saw with the alien series It's learnt the wrong lessons from the success of, in this case, the first film, and in the case of the Xenopod, when we were talking about, that series, the second film, right,

which is very different in tone. It's taken, for me, the wrong lessons, and that's why you end up with this kind of, like, diminishing returns as we go on, with a couple of exceptions, which we'll talk about when we come to them. But I just, I find it interesting, and that links in, I think, to what you said there pretty neatly. Yeah, I think that's, I'd probably take that. as true. This film's certainly leaning more on the kind of action loose among the dinosaurs than the first film's slow-considered approach.

And I think that's why I was so keen to mention that Crichton didn't write this. Crichton didn't want the animals preserved because he would have dealt with the fawny questions of ecological management and preservation. Because he, you know, I feel like maybe I was quite harsh on Crichton in the last episode for being a small sea conservative. But he was a talented writer with an ability to blend this intelligent discussion

of scientific issues with kind of blockbuster entertainment apart from his novel about climate change which is just rubbish. So again, not an entirely successful film and yet I find myself having a soft spot for it. I think because I saw it at a young age before I developed critical faculties.

So it's already sneaked into my brain. You know. I'm going to put that on the next 4K box. Yeah. I kind of like this because I watched it before I developed critical faculties. Yeah, it snuck into my brain before the shield came down

and blocked off films that are clearly bad. I'll tell you what. You come out with some of these crackers where it really is properly dabbing something with fade praise. I think you had one of it. That's a good one, that. I'm going to remember that.

There's films that, you know, know, I don't remember well, presumably because they're bad films. But the first film I actively remember thinking, oh, this is bad. And I was in a cinema watching it, was Van Helsing, the 2004 film where Hugh Jackman is Van Helsing. And I remember thinking, this is just, this is bad. Which is probably how it was marketed, frankly. Yeah, this doesn't work. This is rubbish.

So that's when, you know, that's the critical faculties coming down, the barrier coming down. I can actually I can remember the first film where that happened to me actually it happened in a surprisingly young age I can tell you it was a mighty morphin Power Rangers the movie and I remember

I went to see it with a pal of mine and his dad he was the one who took us and he fell as to the father he fell asleep in the film and started snoring and I remember I can very distinctly remember

thinking to myself even as a young kid obsessed with the Power Rangers who was watching the Power Rangers Rangers movie. I remember looking at him going, yeah, I kind of get out. Yeah, he's right. Yeah, so

yeah, just shows you, but a bad film can make those short has come down pretty early age, frankly. Yeah, but so, yeah, I have a soft spot for The Lost World. I don't think it entirely works, it's flat, it doesn't go here.

I think it's probably, you know, we'll rank all these at the end, I suppose, but I think it's probably better than a lot of the other films we're going to be watching. I don't really remember. Yeah, looking at it, my instincts are... It's a tough one, right? Because I came

into this re-watch fully kind of mentally prepared to get on board the Lost World Reassessment train, you know? And I did not board that train. You know, I just didn't. So it'll be

interesting to come back to it, right? Because I haven't watched Jurassic Park three in even longer than this one I think and then the Jurassic World films I have my feelings on we'll get into them when we get there but I'm kind of interested to see where this comes out

because I think this really I think where this ends up landing in that ranking is probably a reasonably good bellwether for how good I think this series is in terms of quality overall anyway so we'll see we'll see I this is kind of

I think it came out slightly worse and I was expecting in all honesty because I was fully prepared to get on board with, you know, reassessing. Kind of like, oh, actually, surprisingly good. And, you know, that's not happened, to be honest. Yeah, I'll finish off with a quote from Chuck Stevens' review

from 1997 in film comment about this film, which is broadly negative and broadly asking, you know, why has Spielberg made this? Why couldn't Spielberg replicate what he did in the first film? He says, the very first thing I found myself missing was Jurassic Park's fleeting stink of the real. The fragrant immediacy of Laura Dern's long arms, freshly caressed by Jeff Goldblum, in a highly eroticized demonstration of chaos fairy, plunging deep into a fertile mound of dino dung. That's just how film reviews used to go back in 1997, strangely erotic and frankly a little bit weird.

I don't know. I can point that. some modern examples. I'm sure you can. So that's the lost world. It's just a slightly less well-crafted version of what came before in the previous film. And like in the last episode, I'm pleased

you put so much emphasis on the length of time this was in pre-production, the length of time Jurassic Park was in pre-production, because you can tell, you can tell that this one had nowhere near the same level of care and attention to detail. And it doesn't mean it doesn't

doesn't have good bits. It does have good bits, but it's that, they're bits. They exist in the vacuum. It's not a cohesive piece of work. It's good, good bits. The trailer scene, like you said, you're wrong about the monster, the scene at the end, but I'll take your point

that you think it's good. Yeah, no, I just think T-Rex has eaten traffic lights, you know? There's something neat about it. Sure. But what are we covering next time? So next time, In one month, we'll be back to discuss Jurassic Park Free from 2001.

So this is a film directed by Joe Johnston, written by Peter Buckman, Alexander Payne. Alexander Payne. Yeah, Alexander Payne. And Jim Taylor. So we'll be back to discuss Jurassic Park Free next time. Until then, you can follow Take One Cinema on X and Blue Sky and Mastodon at Take One Cinema. to previous episodes of Take 1 Presents, where we discuss the alien films, and we'll be back next month to discuss Jurassic Park Free. Thanks, Jim. All right, see you down. Bye.