The Lost World (1997) - by J. Molotov

The only reason I am even bringing up this movie is because it was raining AGAIN (this was during the rained-out June 2009) and I don’t have cable. So I was flicking channels and this monstrosity was on Telemundo. It doesn’t even matter that I was watching it in Spanish, it’s that bad.

First of all, you should know that I have probably seen Jurassic Park more times than any other movie. If you have ever been drunk with me at my house at like 2 in the morning, you’d know this, because for some reason at that point in the night I always think it’s a great idea to watch a 2 hour and 7 minute long movie about dinosaurs and seriously expect people to pay rapt attention to it. I haven’t tried to review it yet because it is too big, too close. I would end up writing a dissertation on it. One thing I have to say about Jurassic Park, however, is that a large part of its visual success was the sparing use of CGI.

In 1993, CGI was not yet being widely used in Hollywood. Its most prominent and proficient use at that point had been 1991’s Terminator 2. Many consider Jurassic Park to be the landmark film for CGI, after which special effects were never the same. It has gone on to increasing popularity and usage in film because it makes feasible the creation of images that would otherwise be impossible using other technologies. However, an unfortunate result of its proliferation has been that it has prompted many directors to take the cheaper and easier route of CGI and entirely ignore other technologies that still have merit. In Jurassic Park, Spielberg creatively combined many technologies to create his dinosaurs, with a vision toward portraying them as animals rather than monsters, including a CGI, animatronics (most notably in the form of a 20-foot-tall animatronic T. Rex), and even men in Velociraptor suits. And you know what, after 16 years, this movie still looks fucking fantastic.

The Lost World, however, only 12 years old, did not age nearly as gracefully. The use of CGI is far more widespread in this movie than in Jurassic Park, and it really suffers for it. Instead of being a new technology that could expand the capabilities of storytelling, CGI became the quick and easy way out. Whipping up some raptors on the computer seems so much sexier, faster, and less clumsy than having people dressed in raptor suits, but it resulted in the loss of immediacy, the loss of real suspense. The damn dinosaurs aren’t scary. They aren’t even in the same world as the people they’re chasing, and it’s obvious. The use of CGI wasn’t the problem, it was the inelegant use of it that resulted in a lack of attention to detail that went into making the first movie so convincing.

The use of this easy way out also resulted in the atrophy of other aspects of the film. The computer images moved to the forefront and everything else suffered, including the plot. The Lost World was a really good book. Of course it didn’t live up to Jurassic Park, but it was a totally justified and well-done literary sequel. The movie version is a train wreck.

P.S. At the end, a T. Rex attacks San Diego. No joke.