The Lost World: Jurassic Park

[Swiftbow]

I realise that Doug Walker's name is probably mud around here but I have to say he made one of the funniest reviews I have ever seen of this film. Particularly the part where Wonder Girl here took out a raptor with gymnastics and it did what appears to be a double take. The last time I saw something like that was in Moonraker with the pigeon that shakes it head as Bond drives past on his Q-gondola.

The Lost World is bad for many reasons but two things killed it: 1) the ''heroes'' here have a body count higher than the villains and never acknowledge it and 2) Sam Neill and Richard Attenbrough were the stars of JP1; Jeff Goldblum on the other hand was actually an incredibly minor character who had a level of importance only slightly above that lawyer who got eaten on the toilet. I genuinely think that you could completely remove him from the film and the only thing we would lose is a couple of jokes. You cannot say that about the kids, or Samuel Jackson, or Dennis Nedry (whoever the hell plays him), or arguably even the hunter; but you can about Jeff Goldblum.

Tl;Dr, this is like making a new Star Trek film starring Voyager's Extra Man.

You left out that Malcolm is the reason that Gennarro (said lawyer) got eaten at all. Not that he didn't deserve it after he abandoned the kids in the car. But still. Grant's flare had the T-Rex running back into the jungle. If Malcolm had actually done what Grant said (and not run) things would probably have been in a better situation.

[Rodan56]

I feel a bit compelled to talk about this review and the movie itself. Not because I disagree with Chuck's point or that I want to defend it. That's not what I'm here for. It's because... well, I feel more and more like the sole person who does not care about the poachers' lives. At all, like I don't care that they die. They're all shitty people who I hate. Always did, still do. But, I think this review best laid out why thats a position no body seems to share with me and it's hurt future installments more than helped.

The fact the hunters do all the exciting stuff while the heroes make themselves look like morons. That's what endears people to the hunters. It ruins any sense of anger or resentment we should feel towards them by giving the bad guys all the cool action scenes. And I admit, I was drawn in by the chase sequence with the dino heard myself. It's hard not to be excitied and I think that's because it's seen from the hunter's perspective. We should've been watching this from the perspective of the dinosaurs themselves, not from the backseat of the main bad guy's jeep. And it also probably doesn't help that Roiland is clearly where Spielberg's interests lie, even while accepting that the great white hunter is no longer a heroic figure in modern society. Steven just can't help but make him more heroic.

This is like a struggle I think, as Chuck put it, between a Spielberg who likes exciting cool stuff and one who is progressively minded. So he puts his Alan Quartermain on the bad guy's side, but can never bring himself to make him outright pure evil and thus the sympathies of the audience got mixed up as well.

Finally learning how the baby T-Rex's leg got broken, a question I myself kept asking because I was really confused as a kid about it, puts it all in perspective for me about why the film fails itself. If they kept the deleted scene of Peter breaking the poor animal's leg, it would've made everything that happens afterward gel better. A bumbling, exploitive idiot causes all of this shit. Nick would still be responsible for a lot of what happens, but you could more directly blame Peter for hurting the baby in the first place.

Also, the heroes and villains shouldn't have been paired up the same way they are in the movie. I remember the video game based off this movie, which was like a sorta RTS game, the heroes never join the bad guys. They remain at odds until the end. That would've worked so much better. At the very least, the villains should've been more hostile to the heroes to better sell the fact that they were the bad guys. But because they don't do anything villainous beyond hurting the dinosaurs, the audience can never really form a greater connection to why they're bad beyond some of the elements the audience might be ambivalent on. You have to go all in on who the bad guy is or you fail at setting the morality compass for both.

You know what would've made the movie work? Set it from a dinosaur's perspective in general, see it through their eyes or by proxy in some manner. These dinosaurs, surviving on their own without help or interference from man, despite all evidence that they shouldn't, should be the real heroes. This movie is supposed to be about them after all. And yet we are thrust into the shoes of people who think they know what's best for them on both sides of the aisle.

So, yeah, this is my long way of admitting, I get it now. I get why people keep siding with the hunters, the movie isn't sure if it hates them either. But honestly, I think this has only helped further my own stance concerning the sequel series to the original JP films, Jurassic World, for all the problems people might point out in both movies, is a better realization of what THIS movie wanted to do. It has finally given voice to the dinosaurs and their plight, their struggle as creatures that never asked to exist and are stuck in this world now at the behest of humanity.

I don't know, maybe it's my own bias, it very well could be, but I think this review, while forcing me to accept why the film fails in many respects, has only made me realize why Jurassic World works better than at least Lost World. It might not be perfect, but it started doing what this film wanted to do and actually did it better.

That's just my stance though. I'm probably one of the only people who actually feels the dinosaurs are the true heroes of the franchise... and wants to see Ian Malcolm get eaten.

[Marveryn]

here the deal with the poachers that i think hurt them as a bad guy. For bad guys they do very few bad guy thing. They are capturing dinosaur using rope and in some cases with high tech. We don't see the animal suffering from there capture. Cause they don't behave Like bad guys we don't treat them as bad guys. If we saw them for example capture one of the baby dino but killing the mother cause the adult would be too big for the cage. That sort of thing would had work. As it is we are not seeing the end result and why relocated them to be an exhibit which was what the park original intent was to show them off to the masses was a bad thing.

The newest movie, at least finish the task and show that them being sold to the highest bidder, so they felt more bad guy. (that movie had other issue) So i think that may be more on why your the only one that feel that way about the poachers. The sequence was just a short take on the film Safari

[Mangod]

Honestly, I don't even think you can call these guys poachers in this movie. Sure, that might be what they do in their off-time, but in the movie, they're only shown doing work they were hired to do by the people who own the island and the animals on it.

Like, the island is InGen property (so they're not trespassing), and the dinosaurs are also InGen property, whom these guys have been hired to capture non-lethally (so they're not poaching). And what they're shown to be doing in the movie, capturing the dinos using non-lethal methods, seems no different than a farmer hiring a bunch of cowboys to recapture his runaway farm animals - the movie fails spectacularly at making the "bad guys" actually do anything bad on screen.

All the evidence we have for them being evil, the only evidence we have, is the word of Nick ("a fuck-up in a safari-vest") and Sarah (zoo intern), whose word isn't worth squat because, as Chuck said, every death in the movie can be laid at the feet of the "heroes". It's a spectacular case of "Tell, don't show" with regards to the actual villainy of the designated bad guys.

[CrypticMirror]

It isn't poaching, canned hunting perhaps.

[TGLS]

You know, they probably could have fixed it by actually making them poachers (who wouldn't want to try a Brontoburger?) and then have the corrupt corporate executive decide to do the dino zoo at the end.

[Rodan56]

Ok, I opened this can of worms so I suppose it's time to address this stuff.

It is poaching. Poaching does not exclusively mean killing animals, poaching involves a deliberate distrubtion to an animal's natural life. Killing is the most explicit action in doing so. Taking animals out of their environment in the wild, for the purposes of display IS poaching. It is why zoos get put under scrutiny for the sources of their animals. It is why they advertise "Born in capitivity", so they aren't accused of hiring people like Roiland to kill the mama elephant and steal the baby. Even if they are using non-lethal means, it is still poaching.

Now you're probably going to counter with "Well even so, Ingen owns these animals, they created them." A good point, one that was ignored in this movie to its detriment. a point that Jurassic World did not ignore. Claire refering to the dinosaurs as products and assests, not as living creatures. Vic Hoskins explicitly declares "Extinct Animals have no rights." A quick question, what is the difference between that mindset and the one that wanted to make Data personal property of Starfleet and thus owned by them?

You might say "Well, Data is sapient, he manufactured but clearly alive." True, but while the dinosaurs aren't exactly sapient they are at least sentient. They are alive, they exist, they breath, they eat, they have children. There's technically a better case that the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park actually are living things with thoughts, feelings and desires of their own more so than any robot in any fictional story. Because it's rather undeniable that they are alive.

The responses seem to suggest the dinosaurs don't particularly care about being ripped from their island and put on display in a zoo. I imagine they DO have a problem with that. Otherwise they wouldn't be struggling this much. Nick is a reckless eco-terrorist and he doesn't help his side of the argument at all with his actions. But a bad character does not encompass the entire argument. If Nick was the solution to dismissing all of this, then he's no better than a strawman against the dinosaur's rights as living creatures as the hunters are strawmen for their exploitation.

Here's what Jurassic World did right above all else that Lost World failed at, properly repositioning the dinosaurs from monsters to victims of an exploitive corporate hierarchy that values them only as products and not living beings. Even people who hate Fallen Kingdom tend to argue that point and still love Blue's story about her liberation from being caged. Now you can argue Lost World did this poorly in contrast, and I'll agree... but it does not make me sympathize with the hunters in the film.

Nick is an idiot, I'll accept that. But I don't care that a number of them die. Just because they're poor villains because they don't do anything explicitly villainous, doesn't make them the true heroes. They're all here for a quick buck and Great White Hunting Safari. They're not noble. At best they're at the Suicide Squad's level of morality. There to do a job and get paid. The Suicide Squad actually has one up on them in fact, because they're being forced to do this dirty work. These guys, they came of their own free will to capture dinosaurs, maybe kill a few if they posed a threat.

I have no sympathy for them, even if they aren't being very evil. When I watch them all get chomped by the T-Rexes I feel only satisfaction. It's the same feeling I get when I hear about how an elephant trampled a big game hunter on a reserve. Insert "That's a Shame" Sienfeld Gif here. So even if Nick is an asshole for taking the bullets and putting at least his own friends at risk, I really don't care about any of the lives the male Rex kills initially. Now there's an argument about AFTER when the T-Rex is brought to San Diego, but let's be a bit fair, Ingen had the Rex under lock and key. It's kinda on them that the thing go loose at all, somehow. Nick might have forced them into that corner, but this is still on Ingen for being utterly incompetent concerning keeping a big lizard-bird predator in a damn cage.

These people volunteered to entrap living creatures and place them in bondage as the property of a corporation. If you knew a corporation that had a copyright and patent on an animal, even one it created, wouldn't that be disturbing all the same? Like, this company owns a species... it owns something alive. Not as a pet or some kind of livestock, like a farm would own it. It owns a species, entirely, it created them and made them and can do whatever it wants with them. It is, quite honestly, a horrifying prospect. That a company could own a living being because it created it. We talk about this in science fiction all the time in stories about human cloning. Why aren't we as horrified concerning animals?

It might be because, naturally, we value human life more than animal life. I'm not saying that's wrong, it makes sense and honestly I imagine a lot of us would be more concerned with human lives overall. But, the Dinosaurs didn't ASK to be born like this. They didn't ask to be brought into this world. A company did that to them, they exploited an animal and basically stole any form of autonomy. Moreso than any cow, sheep or pig in existence. Ingen owns the dinosaurs... isn't that disturbing to anyone? Why isn't it more disturbing? Why do we just shrug that off and seem to think that means it's okay if they exploit the dinosaurs however they want? At least figuratively a Cow has a life outside of being a food source. There are wild cows out there. McDonalds does not own cows. Ingen owns Dinosaurs, that makes their plight unique.

I'm not trying to sound like PeTA here, fuck those guys. Nor am I trying to defend Nick, fuck him too. All I'm saying is, just because the movie failed the properly show the bad guys as bad, does not mean their motives are justified. If anything, my argument is that the movie did a disservice to future films in the franchise, making it harder for audiences to accept the script when it was flipped and executed much more competently. When it actually showed the hunters being assholes, when it better showcased the plight of the dinosaurs themselves. Because of the Lost World insisting so fiercly and failing so utterly at its objectives, years later, the new films are still fighting to overcome that stigma in audiences.

It's why I argue for these films to continue from the viewpoint of the dinosaurs themselves. Because it would work so much better if we actually got in their heads for once instead of looking at their situation from the outside. That's my two cents on the matter.

[GreyICE]

The sad part about it is that it's not the corporate executives being eaten.

Imagine a T-Rex eating a board room full of suits who ordered the T-Rex captured. People would be clapping.

[Rodan56]

The sad part about it is that it's not the corporate executives being eaten.

Imagine a T-Rex eating a board room full of suits who ordered the T-Rex captured. People would be clapping.

Well, thats again why Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is actually a good film, because the bad guys who do all the actually bad things actually pay for all the really bad things they do. I mean at least it's a better movie than Lost World.

[GreyICE]

The sad part about it is that it's not the corporate executives being eaten.

Imagine a T-Rex eating a board room full of suits who ordered the T-Rex captured. People would be clapping.

Well, thats again why Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom is actually a good film, because the bad guys who do all the actually bad things actually pay for all the really bad things they do. I mean at least it's a better movie than Lost World.

You reminded me of one of Twain's immortal 18 offenses:

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/HNS/Indians/offense.html

Proving that authors ripping trash is older than the internet (though granted, none have ever risen to the level of Mark Twain's skill in doing so).