Movies are awesome

[andersonh1]

Recently rewatched The Lost World - Jurassic Park, and have come to the conclusion that it's my least favorite of all the Jurassic Films. There are two main reasons:

- the whole moral point of view that the movie takes, that it's somehow wrong to take these genetically recreated dinosaurs off an island and put them in a zoo on the mainland, is not one that I can agree with. No good case is ever really made for it, other than that the dinosaurs are thriving when they shouldn't and John Hammond wants to study them and learn why. And when our main characters sabotage the efforts to capture and remove some dinosaurs, we're supposed to side with them? Vince Vaughn's character of Nick Van Owen in particular is responsible for just about every death on the island through his acts of sabotage, but is never once held accountable for it. The narrative doesn't blame him, and none of the other characters hold him responsible. The film tries to make us root for some less than admirable characters and root against characters who really aren't doing anything other than wanting to build an exotic zoo.

- That leads me to point two, the sheer stupidity of several characters. Van Owen is one, but Julianne Moore's Sarah Harding is supposed to be this wildlife expert, who spouts fact after fact about animal behavior in multiple scenes. But she's dumb enough to take the baby tyrannosaur back to the expedition trailer and not expect the parents to come looking, and then she continues to wear a jacket with the baby's blood on it, despite telling everyone how good the tyrannosaur's sense of smell is. She preaches about leaving no trace, but does the exact opposite. She almost gets herself trampled by some Stegosauruses in her very first scene. I came to the conclusion this time watching it that I really can't stand her. She's one of the worst characters in the movie.

Now, do I still like The Lost World overall? Sure, it's well made, has some great dinosaur action sequences in it, and it's great to see Jeff Goldblum playing Ian Malcolm again. Pete Postlewaithe's big game hunter is the best character in the movie, and I'm glad to see him live through it. Hammond's nephew Peter Ludlow gets the fate of Dodson in the book, eaten by the baby Tyrannosaur, which is a bit harsh. The movie paints him as the villain, but his actions seem more than reasonable up until he has to be stupid in the last five minutes so he can get killed. I like Malcolm's daughter Kelly (step daughter presumably) and poor Nick dies heroically but in one of the more violent deaths in the movie, torn apart by the parent Tyrannosaurs. I like that the movie goes in a very different direction from the original Jurassic Park, so it's not a sequel that repeats the plot of the first movie, it takes the situation and characters to tell a different story.

[Sparky Prime]

What was it about Fallen Kingdom that he hated that much?

It mostly had to do with the internal logic of the film as I recall. I remember him describing a particular scene where they used the dinosaurs as a weapon... So there's this guy that points a gun at someone so that the dinosaur can follow the laser sight, and then they triggered an ultrasonic sound to signal the dinosaur to attack. And he was like 'why wouldn't you just shoot? What's the point of using a dinosaur instead of a bullet?' as well as limitations of an animal.