Jurassic Park: The Lost World (5 Stars)

It's good to see that the number of readers of my blog is going up again, over 1900 pageviews per month compared with 1700 in February and March. I'm seeing a correlation between my reading figures and the number of posts I make, which is very encouraging. This means that I have a large number of regular readers who keep returning when I write something new. If the readership figures remained constant whether I post or not it would mean that my traffic relies on random visits from people who have done web searches.

This is the second film in the Jurassic Park trilogy, once again directed by Steven Spielberg. It was only four years since the first film, from 1993 to 1997, but in those four years huge leaps were made in technology. This means that the photo-perfect computer generated dinosaurs in the first film could be made even more realistic in the sequel. Where mostly single dinosaurs or small groups were shown in the first film it was now possible to show swarms of dinosaurs. If you watch the two films in a row (like I did, yesterday and today) the difference is obvious.

The plot: After the destruction of the original theme park in the first film we now find out that there's a second island containing dinosaurs that is used for breeding only. After being abandoned for four years it's discovered that the dinosaurs are thriving in the wild, so they are to be captured and brought to America (San Diego) to open a new theme park. But things don't go as smoothly as planned.

The first film copied the formula of "Jaws", but the sequel follows the structure of "King Kong". I'm referring to the 1933 version, which was accurately recreated by Peter Jackson in 2005. This leads to the ironic situation that the 2005 King Kong film seems to be copying "The Lost World", but they're actually both based on the pre-war film. The film structure is simple. A team goes to a remote island and meets monsters. They capture one big monster and bring it back to civilisation, where it runs amok.

At first I preferred "The Lost World" to "Jurassic Park". Now, after watching both films many times, I rate them equally. Apart from the improved special effects "The Lost World" has more action, more gore and is faster paced. "Jurassic Park" spends more time on character development and subplots. Both films are brilliant, but I still think that "Jurassic Park" is better material to study in film school.

Click here to view the trailer.