A Worthy Sequel To Its Revolutionary Predecessor

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2013)

I don't care! I just don't care if Steven Spielberg himself grew disenchanted with this sequel while filming it because what he ended up putting on screen is still, in my opinion, a worthy follow-up to its revolutionary predecessor. Its inevitable comparison to Jurassic Park is its biggest downfall but The Lost World: Jurassic Park remains a highly satisfying successor to the original that offers its own set of thrills & entertainment that simply work.
Set 4 years after the events of Jurassic Park, The Lost World follows Dr. Ian Malcolm who, after meeting with John Hammond, assembles a team to set off to the Site B island (where dinosaurs are allowed to roam freely) in order to get back his girlfriend who's already there to conduct her research. Once on the site, his team discovers that they're not the only one as another team from InGen arrives to take the dinosaurs back to the mainland but once again, everything soon spirals out of control.
Written by David Koepp & directed by Steven Spielberg, The Lost World takes the viewers back to the world of living dinosaurs, this time filling the screen with more dinosaurs, many more body counts & even bigger entertainment. The direction retains Spielberg's ability to provide a sense of wonder & amazement but it also goes a bit far than required this time as a few sequences look ridiculous. The screenplay is downgraded too with more emphasis on action than story or characters yet it works for the most part.
Coming to the technical aspects, Production design team does a fantastic job in recreating the same world we witnessed back in 1993 and the set pieces are wonderfully detailed too. Cinematography makes more dynamic use of camera than the first one due to more action, plus various sequences benefit immensely due to the energetic camera-work. Editing never lets the pace settle down n unfolds the story briskly while John Williams once again chips in with a thrilling score that exquisitely captures the different tone of this chapter.
What Jurassic Park brought on screen during its time of release was something never done before, never seen before & never experienced before, at least not in such realistic manner. It was a landmark moment in cinema history that opened up many new territories previously thought to be unattainable through existing filmmaking means. And what this sequel lacks is that same level of freshness for much of the picture is simply a rehash of the original and tries to make up for what it lacks by amplifying its action, at which it succeeds.
Coming to the performances, the cast comprises of Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Richard Attenborough, Pete Postlethwaite, Vince Vaughn & others, with all doing a good job in their given roles. But just like the original, it's the dinosaurs who rule this film since almost every sequence featuring them is a delight to watch. Visuals & Sound is state-of-the-art stuff like before and the film brims with plenty of jaw-dropping sequences that exhibit the remarkable skills of Spielberg when it comes to larger-than-life action moments.
On an overall scale, The Lost World: Jurassic Park gets a lot of flak for following a formulaic route as well as its lack of interesting human characters but for any dinosaur aficionado like me, it delivers everything that was expected from it. Whether it's the scenes involving the two T-Rex or Velociraptors or Stegosaurus or Compsognathus or that infamous San Diego mayhem, there's almost nothing that I don't like about this sequel for it stays true to the spirit of the original and is just as entertaining as Jurassic Park, if not more.