Why they did not call The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) simply “Jurassic Park II,” I could not tell you.  I can theorize, however.  There is a 1960 movie called The Lost World.  It is one of those campy creature features that attempted to use actual animals in place of monsters, hence the camp.  There may be some die-hard cinephiles out there with a passing familiarity with it, but were the producers of today’s film worried about upsetting them by using only the title before the colon?  I doubt it.  Instead, it might have something to do with the book series by Michael Crichton on which the Jurassic Park franchise is based.  Yet, if the desire here was to be slightly original with The Lost World: Jurassic Park by maintaining some fidelity to the novel, then there is an issue here, too.  You see, the 1960 production is a more modern telling of a book of the same name written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1912.  Yes, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as if there could be any other, the one you gave Western literature the character Sherlock Holmes.  As confusing as this might seem thus far, it pales in comparison to some of the head-scratching decisions that were made while shooting and editing The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

In some unspecified ocean, there is a rich British family that has unwittingly arrived at The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  They are setting up for a lunch picnic on a deserted island beach with an army of servants when their daughter wanders off on her own.  Her first encounter with a diminutive dinosaur is met with excitement.  When it is time to eat, however, these are turned to screams . . . and scene!  In a more defined location, being some city’s subway system anyway, we meet Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum).  Carrying a perpetual look of worry (probably because he is in this movie), the chaos theoretician is recognized by another passenger for his appearing on the news and talking about the existence of several species of animals thought to be extinct for millions of years.  Dr. Malcolm is on his way to see the person who had made this all possible in the first place, the eccentric billionaire Dr. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough).  Upon arriving at Dr. Hammond’s palatial estate, Dr. Malcolm encounters Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard).  Peter is Dr. Hammond’s nephew and current president InGen, the company that first created modern dinosaurs for the expected amusement park to open on an island off the coast of Costa Rica.  Peter is not happy to see Dr. Malcolm, reminding the scientist that he had broken his non-disclosure agreement by speaking out about Jurassic Park.  Still, Dr. Malcolm did not come to quarrel with Peter.  Dr. Malcolm is there at the request of Dr. Hammond.  At this meeting, Dr. Hammond reveals that there was a second island full of dinosaurs, and that he intends to leave them alone there in the wake of InGen’s falling fortunes.  Before doing so, he intends to document these oversized creatures, which means sending people to the island.  Dr. Malcolm is not shy about telling the former entrepreneur how nuts is this idea to him, particular when he is asked to be part of the team.  To entice Dr. Malcolm, Dr. Hammond says that Dr. Malcolm’s girlfriend, Dr. Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), is already on-site . . . by herself.  Thus, Dr. Malcolm agrees to go, but this means leaving behind his daughter, Kelly Curtis (Vanessa Lee Chester).  If you are not seeing the connection, do not worry.  The film does not seem to know how to explain it either.  Because she does not want to be separated from her father, she stows away on the elaborate Winnebago (that is not a joke, by the way, as the famous recreational vehicle company’s logo is visible on the hood) and lands with the rest on an island to which no local fisherman wants to get close.  Shortly after setting down, they find Dr. Harding wandering alone in the woods, and have their first encounter with dinosaurs.  Not long following this is when Kelly surprises them by her presence, which only increases Dr. Malcolm’s anxiety to get off the island.  However, they are not the only ones that have come to this lonely speck of land.  Peter has brought a large group of hunters and other experts to trap various dinosaurs for his own Jurassic Park, to be opened in San Diego, California.  As much as Dr. Malcolm wants to get away, the new plan becomes freeing the animals ensnared by InGen’s expert tracker, Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite).  Though these are the enemies, they end up saving Drs. Harding and Malcolm, along with photojournalist Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), when they are attacked by a pair of Tyrannosaurus Rexes.  The reason for the experience is that Dr. Harding had decided to nurse an injured offspring of the two apex predators.  With the amount of carnage that has happened, they decide to make a mad dash, and all the “adventure” that entails, to the miraculously still powered communications room left from InGen’s previous occupation.  With several scares along the way, our core heroes are able to radio for a helicopter and leave.  As they do so, they see InGen loading a Tyrannosaurus Rex and its baby onto a boat.  Thus, Drs. Harding and Malcolm scramble to the San Diego dock where the freighter is due to arrive, getting there just in time to see it smash into the harbor because the dinosaur has somehow eaten everyone aboard.  They find Peter, who tells them where the smaller one is, which they plan to use to lure the big one back onto the barge.  So, yeah, dinosaur car chase.  Anyway, they succeed and we last see them sleeping through the news report with Dr. Hammond talking about his intentions for the island.

Speaking of sleeping, I wonder if Steven Spielberg dozed off while shooting The Lost World: Jurassic Park?  I did not do so while watching it, but I wanted to because it seemed to trade plot for action.  My apologies, but this does not make for the most compelling cinema for me.  This is why I sort of glossed over sections of the story because they are filled with set pieces that drag on seemingly only because they want to stretch the tension as much as possible.  It takes hubris for experienced filmmakers like Spielberg to do things this way and just expect it to be successful.  Then again, who am I to say anything since this one, like others in the series, made hundreds of millions of dollars.  All the same, hubris is a good word to use to enter into the Catholic portion of this review.  It is clearly a theme, but more of a background one, unlike its predecessor.  In Jurassic Park (1993), Dr. Malcolm reminds Dr. Hammond that dinosaurs had their chance.  There are some theological problems with that statement, if nothing else suggesting that they had some kind of agency in their destruction.  Nonetheless, the theory is a sound one in terms of these ancient creatures having had their time on Earth, and then God having different plans for His creation.  I sometimes hesitate to put His plan into such stark terms because I love God, and sometimes see it as my job to defend Him.  While blasphemy needs correction, God will love us all the same no matter my efforts.  In this light, it is blasphemous to suggest, as InGen tries to do, that they are the creators of a species, or that they can control them.  On the one hand, you could view it as God being the ultimate Creator since He created all those people responsible for InGen.  On the other, the bigger problem is the pride that they have in playing God.  Biblical history, and many other past events besides, are rife with examples of the bad things that happen when we start meddling with forces beyond our station in life.  Some things are just better left to God, and add this movie to the rest of these instances of people finding out this truth the hard way.

Since I have done the more recent ones in the series, I thought it would be nice to go back to an early entry like The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  As it turns out, “nice” is not the correct word.  If you love dinosaur action, then this is the movie for you.  If you need something meatier, no pun intended, I would pick a different film.