The Lost World: Jurassic Park – 20th Anniversary

By Reggie's Take on May 19, 2017

The Lost World celebrates twenty years since its release as the sequel to the movie that made dinosaurs fun and terrorizing.

When Jurassic Park hit theaters in 1993 it wowed the audience with action, suspense and the plausible idea that it might be possible to clone a dinosaur.

The Lost World is loosely based on Michael Crichton’s 1995 novel of the same name that sees the return of Jeff Goldblum and his character of Ian Malcom. Goldblum is the only actor from the first film to return with a major role. Richard Attenborough returned in a special cameo as John Hammond plus Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards as Hammond’s grandchildren Tim and Lex.

Set four years after the events of Jurassic Park and takes place on the fictional island of Isla Sorna located off Central America’s Pacific Coast, near Costa Rica. John Hammond’s nephew whose taken control of InGen wants to capture dinosaurs that are living on the island and bring them back to the States.

Hammond wants Ian to lead a team onto the island to document how the dinosaurs are thriving and surviving on their own to build support for protecting the animals, but when Ian discovers that his girlfriend Sara played by Julianne Moore has already gone to the island Ian reluctantly goes in order to bring her back safely.

One of the biggest differences between Michael Crichton’s novel and Spielberg’s film is the final act with the T-Rex. If you’ve read the book then your fully aware that the entire story takes place on the island, but in the movie the final act takes place on the main land in the city of San Diego.

The T-Rex loose in San Diego has been one of the biggest complaints about The Lost World from fans that’ve read the novel and even those who didn’t read the book.

The first Jurassic Park movie in 1993 was so good and so well loved that it was going to be hard for the sequel to live up to its expectations. Is “The Lost World” a worthy sequel to Jurassic Park or do you feel “Jurassic World” does a better job?

The Lost World was notably more graphic then the first film, drawing criticisms from some that Spielberg pushed the PG-13 rating to far.

If Spielberg had concluded The Lost World on the island and not gone to San Diego it is entirely possible some may look at the movie in a different light, but what you can’t deny is the success it had at the box office.

The Lost World on its opening weekend took in just over $72 million, which was the biggest opening weekend at the time. It would hold onto the record for four and a half years, until the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in November of 2001. It was also the fastest movie to ever pass the $100 million mark, but its total box office gross would come up short of what the original film made in 1993.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park may not of been what some had hoped for after the success of the 1993 film, but it does give you plenty of dinosaur mayhem and carnage with two T-Rex’s and plenty of Velociraptors that’s still watch able on a Saturday afternoon if your looking for something fun to watch.

Release date: May 19, 1997 (USA)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Box office: 618.6 million
Budget: 73 million
Screenplay: David Koepp

The Lost World: Jurassic Park Synopsis
John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) summons chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to his home with some startling information — while nearly everything at his Jurassic Park had been destroyed, his engineers happened to have a second site, where other dinosaurs were kept in hiding. It seems the dinosaurs on the second island are alive and well and even breeding; and Hammond wants Malcolm to observe and document the reptiles before Hammond’s financiers can get to them.