A Wrongfully Hated Movie!

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2017)

In 1993, Steven Spielberg's movie Jurassic Park premiered to overwhelming success. The film received 3 academy awards, and is now considered one of Spielberg's best films. With the success of Jurassic Park, there was obviously hype for Spielberg to make another movie. With that in mind, then came The Lost World.
While the original Jurassic Park film opened to great criticism and box office records, the second film in the series was universally bashed by everyone. Much like Spielberg's other sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, no one seemed to like it. Even to this day, I never understood why this film was hated. So let's dive into The Lost World Jurassic Park.
The story of the film goes like this. After a rich family comes across the island Isla Sorna, their daughter is injured after encountering a group of Compys. The new CEO of Ingen, Peter Ludlow, attempts to use this incident as help for his mission to bring these dinosaurs back to San Diego. However, John Hammond is trying to preserve the island from all intruders by rallying the support of public opinion. In order to do this, he is planning to organize a team to get a complete photo record of the dinosaurs. He already recruited Eddie Carr, the technician, Nick Van Owen, the photographer, and Sarah Harding, the scientist. However when he learns that Sarah is part of the team, Ian Malcolm joins the group only to bring back Sarah, who is already on the island. The team arrives on the island, finds Sarah, and find Ian's daughter Kelly stowed away on their trailer. The Ingen team arrives soon after and attempts to capture the dinosaurs. However, when Ian's group tries to help an injured baby T-Rex, the parents destroy their trailer and kill Eddie. The two groups meet up, and working together, head towards a communications center on the island. However, a pack of Velociraptors ambush the group and kill almost everyone, while the two T-Rexes continue to follow them. Once they escape from the island, a T-Rex escapes custody and runs rampant through San Diego. After the T-Rex is returned to the ship, it is sent back to the island. Overall, I like the story of the film. It has plenty of likable characters and the idea of preserving the island was good.
Most of the characters in the film are great. Ian Malcolm has a much bigger role and his dynamics with all the other characters are good. He has favorite personal line in the film: "Oh yeah ohhhh ahhhh, that's how it all starts. And then later there's running, and uh screaming." Both Sarah and Nick get some pretty good lines as well. The Ingen guys are mostly good, especially Roland Tembo. He also has one of the best lines in the film: "I've spent enough time in the company of death."
The special effects in this movie are just as good as the first film. There is a perfect mix of practical animotronics and CGI, and the T-Rexes get a pretty good amount of screen time. The Raptors going through the long grass picking guys off is great, as is the trailer hanging off of the cliff. In fact, the T-Rex trailer scene in the film might be one of the best scenes in the entire franchise.
However, there are two negatives that I have with this movie that keep it from getting a 10. First off, the scene were Kelly uses her gymnastics to kick the Raptor out the window is pretty stupid. The following line from Ian almost made it work: "The school cut you from the team?" Finally, the T-Rex San Diego scene is also pretty stupid. While the CGI in this scene is mind-blowing, the idea of the scene is very out of place compared to the rest of the film. Not to mention, it is very much ripping off King Kong.
Despite these few negatives, The Lost World Jurassic Park is a very underrated sequel that is very wrongfully hated. The characters are good, the story is different, and the special effects are fantastic. While not nearly as good as the original Jurassic Park, The Lost World is a very good sequel that, in my opinion, beats out Jurassic World. The Lost World Jurassic Park gets a 9/10!!!