by Billy Russell, Staff Writer

I know it’s not a particular original choice, but pound for pound, my favorite American filmmaker has always been Steven Spielberg.  I know.  It’s like saying your favorite basketball player is Michael Jordan.  

A lot of the time, his darkness is misinterpreted.  People see the tragic ending of A.I., in which the robot played by Haley Joel Osment becomes human by dying, as sweet.  Or the ending of Empire of the Sun, in which Christian Bale is reunited with his parents, as saccharine, despite the haunting, broken stare behind his dead eyes.

Sometimes, Spielberg will like to release two movies a year: A light one, and a dark one.  1993 had Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, both on opposites ends of his filmmaking spectrum.  Together, they fucking crushed the Oscars.  Jurassic Park took home all the technical awards, Schindler’s List took home all the prestige awards.  

After a long break, he returned to directing in 1997 and tried the same thing, even throwing in dinosaurs again, but the problem was…. Yeesh.  Neither movie was very good.

His “fun” movie of 1997 was The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and his “dark” movie was Amistad.  Amistad, to its credit, has a brilliant opening and the flashback sequence to the ship’s mutiny is harrowing, brilliant filmmaking, it’s just surrounded by such a boring movie everywhere else.

The Lost World is a mess in every conceivable way. Spielberg decided to go full Temple of Doom with this sequel and make it significantly grimmer.  It feels different, it looks different.  And that’s great!  I love that The Lost World isn’t a clone of the first movie; the plot isn’t about the park malfunctioning yet again.  Instead, it’s a jungle adventure film.  The first two acts are a tribute to King Kong, as our heroes, including Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), venture to Site-B of Jurassic Park, where the dinosaurs were bred.  Nowhere to be found is the high-tech glam of the original, instead it’s the wild nature, crawling with danger.  When the movie does move its action to some form of civilization toward the middle of the island, the infrastructure is crumbling and it looks damn near apocalyptic.

The last act is a tribute to films like Godzilla or Gorgo, as the mama t-rex rampages in downtown San Diego, searching for its child. I really like the idea of this, having a rampaging dinosaur in the city, like some B-movie given the gloss and budget of an A-picture, but it all just feels so perfunctory.  It feels like the movie already ended twenty minutes ago by the time we get here.

Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography, in its graininess, with exploding light blooms, compliments this film.  It’s opposite Dean Cundey’s no-less-brilliant aesthetic of the first film. When the rain is pouring and everything looks so bleak, you almost feel like all bets are off with this movie—especially when there are some gruesome kills, like a very nice man being ripped in half by not one, but two T. Rexes.

There’s a lot to like about The Lost World, but it never comes together. Not even close. It’s bad. It’s really, really bad.  When Spielberg directs something, he puts himself into it entirely, so when he hits, holy shit, he knocks it out of the park!  When he misses, he goes spiraling out of control, spins around like a top, lands in the dirt and, oof. It’s bad.

The analogy I like to use is this: Imagine a film as a meal. First Jurassic Park is a delicious pizza. The crust is perfect.  The pepperoni is fresh.  The cheese in perfect quantity.  This is the kind of pizza where you’re like, I’m going to make that my go-to place.  I’m gonna go there all the time!

With The Lost World, Spielberg was like, if you liked that last pizza, wait till you see this one! So, he got some fancy ingredients, he even got some truffle oil.  This pizza is gonna be amazing, he assures you.  But he didn’t preheat the oven, so the dough was kinda sticky.  The cheese he used worked for the last pizza, but it didn’t work here so it’s soggy.  And the top came off the truffle oil so instead of a nice drizzle, it came out in huge globs.

In theory, the pizza is delicious. In actual practice, it’s disgusting.

The problem with The Lost World is how stupid much of it is. A character we are assured is quite smart, a doctor played by Julianne Moore, talks about the amazing smelling abilities of the t-rex, and then walks around wearing a shirt covered in baby T. Rex blood.  

I also have a problem with the relentless cynicism of The Lost World.  I love me a cynical movie.  The problem is, I don’t really understand what The Lost World was so angry about.  Its rage felt unfocused and generally angry at and about everything. Jurassic Park had specific bones to pick about not taking proper responsibility for something, even when it is obviously dangerous, not unlike the lessons taught by Frankenstein. The Lost World just feels mad, it feels like general teenage angst, and you watch people get torn to shreds by dinosaurs, and none of it feels any fun.

The only storyline that works is Pete Postlethwaite as Roland, the hunter.  I would have watched a two-hour long movie about him hunting a tyrannosaur just to feel something, be it pain, joy or something he himself can’t even comprehend.  It felt like something Hemingway would have written, there was a complexity and nuance to Roland’s journey into darkness, and his own bullshit masculinity.  

Now that would have been a good movie.