YMMV / The Lost World: Jurassic Park

The Movie

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: This film's apparent bungling of its Green Aesop and Designated Heroes can be somewhat reconciled if one views a secondary moral as: even well-intentioned actions can have disastrous consequences if not thought through. The main character is Ian Malcolm, who made a point about the nature of chaos and knock-on effects in the first movie. Hammond and Van Owen's actions are driven by good intentions and, in theory, relatively common for guerilla environmentalists: they photograph animals to gain public sympathy, released captured animals, cure ones injured by humans, and sabotage hunter's weapons. The negative consequences these actions had weren't intended, but at least somewhat foreseeable, which brings the first film's Aesop about nature being unpredictable full-circle.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Some fans believe that Tembo's failure to tell Sarah to get rid of the jacket covered in the baby T. rex blood was deliberate on his part; he was in fact counting on the blood to lure the T. rex parents to the camp so he can get the chance to kill the Buck Rex. He just didn't count on Nick sabotaging his bullets. When Tembo mentions that the T. rex "just fed", was he really referring to Eddie, as Malcolm angrily assumed, or was he alluding to the freshly-killed prey that the baby rex was eating a piece of earlier?
  • When Ludlow gives the order to shoot to kill the adult Rex, the creature that he has spent so much money and resources trying to get for his theme park. Is he giving the order due to a realization My God, What Have I Done?, and is genuinely trying to save lives after realizing his horrific mistake? His expression when Ian tells him "now you're John Hammond" and his thousand yard stare in the aftermath of the boat crash indicate that he actually is truly horrified what has happened. Or is he a selfish Corrupt Corporate Executive to the bone who is trying to salvage a PR disaster and save face for InGen? Him suddenly giving a damn about anything other than profit is a very sudden deviation of his character, given how dismissive he was to all of the deaths we saw earlier in the film.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Like Lex and Tim before, Kelly is this. Some like her for being one of the few sane characters and for being a Little Miss Badass by using her skill in gymnastics to kick a Velociraptor to its death, while others hate her for that very reason along with being a Kid-Appeal Character and The Load for most of the movie.
  • Nick Van Owen. For years he was firmly regarded as The Scrappy for being the face of the film's heavy-handed Green Aesop, and being indirectly responsible for every death that happens in the movie thanks to him setting loose the captured dinosaurs in the InGen team's camp (destroying all their communication equipment), then bringing the baby Tyrannosaurus back to his team's camp (leading to the destruction of their trailer, and Eddie's death), and then sabotaging Roland's gun (forcing him to tranquillise the male Tyrannosaurus instead of just killing it, leading to the San Diego incident). However, the years since have seen him pick up something a fanbase who admire his uncompromising attitude when it comes to dealing with Ludlow and his team, and for being an environmentalist who's willing to dirty his hands in order to stand up for his beliefs, instead of just standing around with a placard and chanting slogans.
• Broken Base: The climax with the Tyrannosaurus rampaging across San Diego is the most divisive scene in the movie. For some, it's considered the best part of the film for bringing something new to the franchise and the sheer spectacle of watching a dinosaur finally terrorizing people on the mainland. However, the scene has also been criticized for being too over-the-top and dragging out the climax of the film. The argument whether it should've been saved for a sequel tends to pop up a lot in these discussions.
• Contested Sequel: While the first movie is generally very well liked, opinions on The Lost World are all over the place, and it might have as many fans as opponents. The upside is that there are more dinosaurs, the action sequences are really exciting, and there's significantly less exposition and sentimentality. The downside is that the script is sloppy (topped off by Ending Fatigue), the general lack of awe and humanization for the dinosaurs (as when Grant in the original film reminded Lex that they're animals, not monsters—here, it's basically deconstructed with Ludlow stating that they're living patents/property with no rights), and the characters, especially the new ones, are divisive.
• Draco in Leather Pants: The half of the movie's Broken Base that is Rooting for the Empire is prone to this regarding antagonists Ludlow and Tembo. The latter is at least somewhat understandable, being a Noble Demon badass. But the male rex's rampage at the climax is entirely Ludlow's fault for his and his men's incompetence allowing him to escape in the first place. In Tembo's case, the fans' appreciation is more justified, Spielberg actually cut a scene from the movie where Tembo (with one hand literally tied behind his back) beats the shit out of an obnoxious guy who was sexually harassing a waitress in a bar because it made him too sympathetic, and arguably cooler than the protagonists.
• Ending Fatigue: Once the main cast gets rescued off the island, we see that InGen has successfully bagged a T. rex which makes the heroes feel they have ultimately lost. This seems like a decent drop-off point and Sequel Hook, but the film continues for another thirty minutes so the T. rex can terrorize San Diego for a second climax. As originally planned, the movie would have ended with the survivors getting off the island (as happens in the book), but Spielberg — figuring he wouldn't be up for another sequel to stage such a setpiece in — added the second climax.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Roland Tembo, a badass and cool Great White Hunter with principles. Coincidentally or not, he is among the only characters who doesn't do anything that would qualify as particularly stupid in the film, along with Eddie Carr (see below) and Ian Malcolm. Much like Bob Peck in the first film, Pete Postlethwaite's performance is a big contributor. Had it been anyone else, he would have not been as memorable or as distinct from Muldoon.
  • Out of all the handlers of Malcolm's group, the only one who doesn't seem to get any flak is Eddie Carr, due to him being one of the only logical people of the handlers, and his death scene, where he doesn't run from the T-Rexes and tries his best to save the group.
  • While many franchise fans are very fond of the first Tyrannosaurus from the first, fourth, and fifth films; many hold the family in high regard. The buck in particular is fondly remembered for racking up the highest kill count for his species in the franchise and his glorious Papa Wolf inspired rampages.
  • Dr. Robert Burke for some, simply due to a having a macho beard, being a reasonable if somewhat inept paleontologist who just happens to be working for InGen and not making any particularly stupid decisions other than not recognizing that the Tyrannosaurs would follow them.
• Epileptic Trees: A sadly now defunct Brazilian fansite proposed that the Spinosaurus in the third movie stowed away on the boat and is the reason for the massacre there, before returning back to Isla Sorna. Putting aside the logistics of this, there were also fan rumors of deleted scenes stating there intended it to be raptors that were later killed by the Tyrannosaurus. However the shooting script and early drafts make it clear there were no other dinosaurs on the boat and the buck Tyrannosaurus was responsible for the deaths on the SS Venture.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Roland's parting words to Ludlow ("I believe I've spent enough time in the company of death.") are particularly sad once you know that Pete Postlethwaite battled his testicular cancer for over 20 years. He died in 2011.
  • Ludlow cites SeaWorld's success as one of the reasons to display dinosaurs in San Diego. Flash forward to a decade worth of sea mammal abuse controversies, up to being forced to discontinue the captivity of orcas altogether, and citing the park to justify anything now sounds either downright asinine, or, well, evil, which is fitting.
  • After Ludlow attempts to set up camp on a game trail, Tembo chastises him in a long speech that he caps off with "I have been on too many safaris with rich dentists to listen to any more suicidal ideas, okay?" This line hits a bit harder in the aftermath of the death of Cecil the lion, a beloved African lion in Zimbabwe who was killed by an American dentist as the result of a big game hunt.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Camilla Belle would later encounter more prehistoric animals, but with more positive results.
  • The Velociraptors ambushing and killing the unsuspecting hunters wandering in the long grass brings in mind of Pokémon to modern audiences, especially with the line "Don't go into the long grass!"
  • Any scene between Nick and Sarah, given Vaughn and Moore's roles in Gus van Sant's Psycho remake the following year.
  • For Black Comedy fans, the fate of Dieter Stark, likely reduced to Ludicrous Gibs by the compies is this regarding the infamous woodchipper scene from Peter Stormare's previous film, Fargo. Spielberg even joked that Stark's/Stormare's fate was deserved for this very reason (as well as the fact that Stormare's characters from both films were complete jerkasses).^note Even better, fellow Fargo actor William H. Macy would be in the very next film and the main plot in both movies are set off due to him attempting to con someone.
  • The Bakker Expy, Burke (whose first name also happens to be Robert), gets eaten by a T. rex. This prompts the real Bakker to call his rival Dr. Jack Horner (who was a consultant on the film and staunchly advocates that T. rex was a scavenger) and gloat "See? I told you T. rex was a hunter!"
  • The "Elvis" gag in a movie about dinosaurs is a lot funnier come the 2010's now that one artist specialising in them is Tom Parker, who shares his name with his manager
  • Malcolm scoffing at Eddie's Lindstradt Air Rifle only to be told that it's basically a One-Hit Kill weapon and should be handled with as much care as any other gun at the absolute least due to it firing neurotoxin-loaded darts at just under the speed of sound that fatally drop their victim (or him, if he accidentally shot himself in the foot) before they even realize they've been hit. Fast-forward twenty-five years and not only is he putting a lot more faith in a similarly designed if upgraded tranq rifle but he's handling it in a way that almost guarantees he or someone in his immediate vicinity would catch some Friendly Fire if not for Owen relieving him of it.
  • Again, Malcolm sardonically joking that Eddie's high hide puts its occupants at a convenient biting height, which never gets demonstrated in this film, then touting the Biosyn sanctuary's similarly designed observation platforms as a safe refuge in Dominion over a decade later only for them to be a "convenient biting height" for something the size of a Giganotosaurus.
  • Richard Schiff would be better known to gamers for playing Odin in God of War Ragnarök, and given what a despicable piece of work he is there, there's some humor to be seen if you think the Allfather gets torn apart by the tyrannosaur parents.
  • A trophy hunter who goes dinosaur hunting. Sounds familiar?
  • On the subject of Follow the Leader, two years after this film and its tie-in video games were released, Savage Quest hit arcades, which allowed you to play as a T. rex on the hunt for its stolen offspring. Basically, it's the events of the film from the moment the baby rex gets kidnapped plus the tie-in game's play-as-the-T. rex levels.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Just here to watch the T. rex rampage through San Diego. All the marketing focused on that rampage.
• Karmic Overkill: Many felt this way after seeing the way certain members of the "villains" get killed, like Ajay, Dieter or Ludlow. Even if most were jerks and animal abusers, they hardly deserved deaths as horrifying as those.
• Magnificent Bastard: Roland Tembo is a badass Great White Hunter who, having hunted the most dangerous animals on Earth, decides to culminate his career by taking down the greatest predator on Earth: a Tyrannosaurus rex buck. Acting as The Heavy for Peter Ludlow in the dinosaur hunting expedition and ensuring his incompetent, greedy boss stays well away from the operation, Tembo baits out a Tyrannosaurus couple by using its baby as bait. Even when a gaggle of strangers free the baby and confiscate his ammo, Tembo saves their lives and still manages to bag the adult Tyrannosaurus in the end. Arguably the sanest and most rational character in the movie by the end, when Ludlow tries to offer Tembo a job as cheap compensation for the loss of Tembo's friends, Tembo politely tells Ludlow to shove it.
• Memetic Mutation: "Don't go into the long grass!", especially when paired with Pokémon jokes such as using the scene as proof Professor Oak wasn't kidding when he said tall grass was dangerous.
• Narm:
  • Ian shouting "SA-ra" like he's doing a Christopher Walken impression.
  • Aside from being rebellious towards Malcolm here and there, Kelly seems fairly mature. But, then there's an out-of-nowhere moment while they're in the wilderness, where she whines "Carry me" to him, the way a 4-year-old would.
  • Sarah whispering "Oh no," when she wakes up and realises the blood on her vest from the Junior rex has led the parents straight to the camp. It's Oh, Crap!, but it also sounds like she's only just realising that she should have gotten rid of the vest several hours ago.
  • The first half of the trailer scene is a masterclass of suspense and tension. The second half then turns it up and it becomes borderline silly — particularly when the heroes all almost fall off the rope they're clinging to, twice, in a way that would obviously kill them in real life.
• Never Live It Down: Detractors of Nick van Owen really hate him due to the belief that he caused practically all of the deaths in the film, both on Isla Sorna and in San Diego, via releasing all the dinosaurs in InGen's camp, bringing the baby rex back to the trailers...and finally sabotaging Roland's gun and leaving him unable to kill the T.rex attacking the joint camp. While the first two acts are very much Nick's responsibility, and while messing with Roland's gun was an incredibly misguided thing to do considering their present situation, Nick had no idea that Roland shooting the T.rex would be so vital; and it's worth noting that several of the mercenaries were firing their own guns at the rex without any apparent effect, and the rest were fleeing for their lives without even trying to fight back. In addition, Roland was the one who captured the baby rex in the first place, thereby angering its' parents; and as for the San Diego rampage, it was Ludlow who made the decision to bring the T.rex back to the mainland, even though he should have cut his losses at that point, and InGen who messed with the tranquillisers that caused the bull to run amok.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This is not the first live-action appearance of Stegosaurus and Compsognathus in the franchise. Both species made an Early-Bird Cameo in Jurassic Park: The Ride, which opened at Universal Studios Hollywood a full year before this film in 1996. Additionally, Compys were supposed to appear in the first film and scenes featuring Compy models were even filmed for the scene where Rexy escapes her paddock.
  • On top of that, both also featured in the original novels. (Technically it's Procompsognathus in the novels, but they fill the same roles and are virtually identical — one of Burke's lines even acknowledges this by flubbing the compy's name as Compsognathus triassicus, combining the genus of one with the species of the other.)
  • In terms of aesthetics, at least, the Roland Tembo character takes a lot of cues from Dr. Snare, a non-canon character from the Jurassic Park Series 2 toy line.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Mamenchisaurus only appears during the scene where InGen is rounding up as many dinosaurs they can find. It hasn't made a single on-screen appearance since then.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: This movie saved Malcolm from being The Scrappy for some people. While he is still a divisive character overall, here he is more levelheaded and less of a smart-aleck after his experiences in the first movie, and he is also a Papa Wolf over the safety of his daughter. He's also one of the few characters to respect how dangerous the dinosaurs are.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Camilla Belle plays the young girl Cathy in the opening of the movie.
  • Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) gets eaten by T. Rexes.
  • In a Freeze-Frame Bonus, future horror filmmaker and actor Eli Roth appears as an extra reading a newspaper in the subway sequence at the beginning of the movie.
• Rooting for the Empire: Furthering this film's status as a strange kind of forerunner to Avatar there is a segment of its fandom that actively roots for its villains.
• The Scrappy: Poor movie Sarah falls into this thanks to her wildlife expertise being an Informed Ability and her most badass moments from the book being left out.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Except for its final two scenes, The Junior rex is very clearly an animatronic.
  • When Roland and Ajay are at the Tyrannosaurus nest, Junior looks up at them, then the perspective changes to the humans and its head is down eating, but when it cuts back, its head is still up.
  • In the scene where it destroys the conference tent at the InGen camp, there's a clipping error with the CG Triceratops' tail.
  • Sarah has to duck to avoid getting hit by a Stegosaurus tail early on. Unfortunately, there's a puddle nearby that fails to reflect the tail.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Some people, like James Rolfe, find that the last third of the film (where the T. rex attacks San Diego) is more faithful to the idea of an American Godzilla film than the actual American Godzilla movie that came out the following year.
• Squick: When the male T. rex bites down on Ludlow's leg, a dry snap/crack can be heard.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • The InGen corporation is portrayed as evil because it wants to recapture the dinosaurs from Isla Sorna to recoup its losses from the first film. While they were pretty ruthless, as well as massive Jerkasses with the exception of two (hunter Roland Tembo and his friend Ajay), their argument that the dinosaurs are their rightful property does have merit. When the protagonists accuse them of destroying the island's 'natural' environment, the Corrupt Corporate Executive points out that they created the dinosaurs and introduced them to the island in the first place, meaning they are just an invasive group of species. The heroes have no response to this. This is one of those cases where what's right legally may or may not be what's right morally, but it's certainly not as cut-and-dried as Malcolm's party (or his detractors) likes to present it. However, Spielberg expects us to see the InGen team as objectively evil and Malcolm's team as unquestionably good, ruining any opportunity for nuance. That said, the InGen group being horribly abusive in their capture methods of the animals and completely ignoring the danger of bringing such creatures into a populated area does swing favor away from their side.
  • Malcolm himself comes across like this. Unlike the other "main" protagonists, he is understandably terrified and almost certainly suffering from PTSD from the previous film's events, yet none of his "friends" or even his girlfriend take him seriously, despite him having very reasonable fears about the island, as most of its inhabitants are either prehistoric predators, or walking territorial tanks. This is especially evident with the rexes, as Malcolm only survived his initial encounter through sheer luck that Rexy didn't bite him in half. One scene that sticks out is when he's trying to convince them to leave, Sarah just loudly talks over him, and seems to think escaping a dinner with his parents is a good example of when Malcolm has failed to "rescue" her to justify staying on an island full of what are essentially monsters. This all leads up to Malcolm's group essentially causing the deaths of many people through ignorant or just plain stupid actions, such as Nick taking the shells from Tembo's elephant gun just before a T. rex attacks and Sarah not getting rid of a jacket covered in the Junior rex's blood, on an island full of things that mostly hunt by scent.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Some viewers have noted the oddity that some characters just disappear from the movie once they all get off the island; particularly Nick and Roland.
  • Ajay was pretty much a non-character after his introduction. His role in the story becomes so minimal later on that he gets very little dialogue, and it's very easy to forget that he was Killed Offscreen during the "long grass" sequence.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The film is radically different from the plot of the book. Many fans would have preferred if the film had stayed closer to the book's plot and had Lewis Dodgson and Biosyn as the film's villains.
• Too Cool to Live: Eddie Carr. He's a tech expert who brings with him, among other things, a never-compromised high hide and an instant-action poison dart gun. When Nick and Sarah go to release all the dinosaurs from the InGen camp, he wisely sets up the high hide instead. He also quickly thinks up and executes a plan to save both the trailers (with their communications equipment inside) and his colleagues, just minutes after encountering the carnage wrought by the Tyrannosaurus family. Sadly, he gets gruesomely killed for his troubles, his equipment is either abandoned or destroyed, and after a few comments by Ian and Roland, the film basically forgets all about him.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Roger Ebert noted in his review that Pete Postlethwaite was the only cast member who "seem[ed] convinced that he [was] on an island with dinosaurs, and not merely in a special-effects movie about them." As such, everybody roots for him.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • As Kelly is seeing Malcolm off, she denounces the babysitter he's hired as a "troglodyte" for not owning a Sega console. Both CinemaSins and The Agony Booth have pointed out how dated this line is.
  • On Isla Sorna, Ludlow is talking about why having the new Jurassic Park in San Diego is a good idea and mentions the Chargers football team, which has since relocated back to Los Angeles.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Peter Ludlow is framed as a cold hearted business man who doesn't care about the Dinosaurs as living creatures, nor seemingly the lives of people, but many feel he doesn't deserve the film's attempts to frame him as a Hate Sink. He is the one who suggests working with Malcolm's team, shows empathy for the loss of the men on the expedition, and at worst acts Affably Evil to people like Malcolm before the trip to the island. Him ousting John Hammond from the company, while a bit harsh, has some business sense to it and the movie makes it clear it was done legally, and the Dinosaurs are the company’s property. While he has a terrible idea for continuing the park, the fact his death is framed as heroic makes it hard to see him as being a bad person when you get down to it. At worst, he can be a bit money focused, but he still risked his life to travel to the island, showing he is dedicated to his goals, and when the groups camp gets damaged, he drops trying to capture Dinosaurs and instead focuses on getting the team off the island. Combined with everyone in Malcolm's crew save Malcolm being Unintentionally Unsympathetic to some, Ludlow doesn't really earn the movie's villainous portrayal, nor his gruesome death. It doesn't help that the scene that showed he was the person who broke the leg of the baby Tyrannosaurus was deleted (instead making it seem like an uncharacteristic Kick the Dog moment on Tembo's part), which if nothing else would have at least made his death at the baby's hands a more clear-cut case of Laser-Guided Karma. This is probably why the LEGO adaptation actually makes him more clearly evil, with voice lines about how only a few in a thousand people dying to sauropod slides is "within safety margins". His return in the Redemption comic series (decanonized by later films), also turns him into an outright monster who'll kill countless innocents to get revenge on the Hammond family.
  • Dr. Robert Burke is made out to be an incompetent asshole who deserves to become Tyrannosaurus chow for his failure to predict that they would follow the group. Leaving aside the fact that would never have happened if Sarah had thought to get rid of her blood-soaked jacket, everything else shows Burke to be a perfectly reasonable guy who's quite competent at his job. His only crimes are not being as good of a palaeontologist as Sarah, and working for the wrong crowd (well, that and him not realizing that the snake which slithered into his shirt wasn't actually venomous, but it's hard to fault him too much for that when he was trapped in a cave, in poor lighting conditions, with a hungry superpredator inches away).
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: John Hammond is supposed to come across as a benevolent old man who just has the dinosaurs' best interests at heart ^note  and even this aspect is ultimately subverted due to him selling out to Masrani Corp., but it's pointed out within the film that he's knowingly bankrupting a global conglomerate which no doubt employs thousands of people to do so, for a problem Hammond himself created in the first place because of his pride. Also, given the implications that he's in poor health, his sudden conversion to environmentalism seems more like a rather selfish deathbed confession than a real act of altruism.
• Vindicated by History: For some people. The film was initially overall well received, but only a short time afterwards was heavily criticized for the plot and characters. For years it was seen as a pretty poor sequel and, while Jurassic Park III was seen as worse, it remained a relatively popular opinion that The Lost World was a bad film. Starting around the time of of Jurassic World though, people began to change their tone about this film, largely because it had a more ambitious and interesting plot than 'something goes wrong in the park and dinosaurs run amuck', while still keeping the themes of the first film. By the time of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, some people had greatly warmed up to The Lost World, with those people feeling that it was better than any of the sequels that came after it and was simply a victim of being in the shadow of the first film.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Has the same effects team as the first movie with several more years of experience and refinement with a higher effects budget. What do you expect? For many fans of the franchise, this is the best looking of the whole series.
  • The full size Tyrannosaurus rex animatronics sport more detailed skin, greater mechanical power, and finer movements than the original. The result is a pair of machines who could operate in torrential downpour and inside a waterfall, physically tear apart a car, and lift up actors by their legs to yank them through the air without hurting the stunt actor.
  • The CGI also is widely regarded to have held up even twenty years later. Stand out scenes that are well regarded often include the tall grass attack, the trailers being attacked and knocked off the cliff, Eddie’s death, game trail dinosaur roundup which has dinosaurs in broad daylight that ages far better than the first film's, and the buck T. rex having a rampage across San Diego after breaking out of the boat. The Pteranodon that closes the movie is also very well-done with its bird-like movements and the light going through its wings years before subsurface scattering was perfected.
• The Woobie: The baby Tyrannosaurus. It is a newborn who is only days old, and while in what it feels is the safety of its nest, it gets dragged out (we never see how this happens) and at some point during this, its leg is broken. Following this, it is abducted yet again and taken even further away from its nest, not knowing that the humans doing so are helping it. Shortly^note  as in within 24 hours, at most after being returned to its parents, it is torn from them once again, while it and its father are taken miles away from their home.

The Video Game

• Hilarious in Hindsight: This game involves a Logo Joke of DreamWorks Interactive both at the beginning and at the end of the game. 19 years later, DreamWorks Animation, which split from DreamWorks SKG and has similar logos, would be bought by the same company that owns Jurassic Park, Universal.^note DreamWorks SKG is also partially owned by Universal via Amblin Partners Adding to the hilarity is that DreamWorks Animation produced a Jurassic Park animated series, whcih premiered in 2020, complete with it's own Logo Joke.

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