Complete madness! What a disaster! (Major Spoilers)

Rating: 6/10 (8 December 2001)

What happened here? Let's take a little review, people. The Lost World (novel) began with a man named Levine who took a trip with Diego to Isla Sorna. Diego is killed, Levine is trapped on the island, and Malcom and a group of people go to rescue him (and maybe do a little studying while they're at it). BioSyn sends out their best (Dodgson, King, and Baselton) to get eggs from the nests of various animals. Malcolm explains in depth more on Chaos Theory and other known phenomena, people get eaten. Not too different from the first one, yet it sustained its own storyline and turned out to be an excellent book (like all of Crichton's sci-fi thrillers). Now let's look at the movie. The Lost World (movie) began with a little girl on a beach who is attacked by a herd of Procomsognathuses. We never see her again, but I guess taking this scene from Jurassic Park the book and putting it into The Lost World the movie makes it all right. Then, we find Ian Malcolm who has "been summoned" by Hammond (who, by the way, should be dead). He finds out about Site B, Isla Sorna, and also discovers his girlfriend is there. He takes the team for InGen and goes on a "rescue mission" (thus Hammond accomplishes his original goal). There, another team from InGen (Who is BioSyn? In fact, who is Dodgson, King, and Baselton?) arrives to take the animals back to San Diego, where the first Jurassic Park compound built by Hammond is (What??? When did Hammond make this???). Running, screaming, gory bloody death scenes. Then all of a sudden the T-Rex is in San Diego (he gets the chance to devour David Koepp, the screenwriter who plays as "Unlucky B*****d". Oh, well. He screwed up the book... maybe Crichton liked seeing him chomped) running around pointlessly. They get the T-Rex back to the island, happy joy joy. Hold on a moment, John Rooksby, you obviously have never read the book. If they made this movie ANYTHING like the book, then it would have been EXCELLENT. Spielberg and Koepp had no apparent reason to destroy such a remarkable tale as this. Maybe there was too much intelligent dialogue in the book, or there wasn't enough blood, or there wasn't enough death and murder. Give me a break. There is no need to see the most brave man be worthlessly ripped in half by two T-Rexes like a piece of ragged meat. There is no reason that fifteen to twenty people should have been eaten by raptors in the field when nothing like that happened in the book (actually, yes, King was killed in the field by raptors, but who's King?). There is no reason for the T-Rex to have been brought to the mainland (the results would have been much more disastrous, don't you think?). The "comical" witticisms don't make you laugh. They make you wonder just how stupid these people are. For instance, Malcolm, Harding, and some photography guy that Spielberg and Koepp threw in as a new character for no obvious reason are dangling from a rope over a cliffside under a huge trailer. Eddie Carr asks what they need. "Rope," they say. "And three double cheeseburgers with everything on them." "No onions on mine." What the heck is up with that? And who is this Kelly girl? Where is Arby? Last I knew, Kelly was a student of Doc Thorne (but who is he?) and didn't even know Malcolm, much less is she his African-American daughter. Let's face it people. This movie got really screwed up somewhere, and it doesn't deserve to be called Crichton's work. If you want something with action and blood and death--fine, watch this. If you want something intellectually stimulating and action-packed at the same time (who could forget the moment Doc went out to that garage with the camouflage dinosaurs (wait, what are those?) hunting him?), then read the superior book. It's a good thing Jurassic Park 3 was made more like the first one. At least people were serious about the situation in those two movies, and not making corny jokes about the dead or dying people.