After Jurassic Park's success, both Spielberg and an enormous number of fans put pressure on Michael Crichton to write a sequel. The author had already written plenty of books but he'd never taken a stab at a sequel before. It was a quick turnaround and right as the novel was published in 1995, production began on the film version. Having actually read the novel long before I saw The Lost World I went into this film with high expectations. Crichton did a phenomenal job on his first ever sequel and unfortunately the expertise in story telling and building upon Jurassic Park didn't carry over to the film.
I don't have too many specific issues with The Lost World. The largest gripe I've got toward this film is the screenplay written by David Koepp. The reason Jurassic Park succeeds so well is because its working with just enough characterization to make its characters human and genuine without ever going overboard or losing focus on the film's true direction. Koepp has a shared writing credit with Crichton on the original film but worked alone on the sequel. Seeing such a success followed by a failure leads me to believe that the duo was able to strike up a really perfect working relationship. Crichton's novel has much more character depth and development but that's the language the medium speaks. Working with a screenwriter like Koepp forced Crichton to choose exactly what character traits were important enough to make it into the film, which descriptors would truly drive these characters home, etc. Koepp then made sure that the film kept a brisk pace and would play well onscreen. It's actually a great idea for a writing team especially since Crichton's novels are already written in such a cinematic fashion. Crichton's heart definitely wasn't in the idea of adapting the sequel novel for film based on the reason he wrote it in the first place. So the job fell solely on Koepp who approached the material in much the same way he did Jurassic Park. Except this time he didn't have a wall to bounce ideas off of and the film runs into problems that its predecessor was able to avoid. Koepp oversimplifies the characters so much that we really don't care about any of them. They end up playing genre roles rather than being actual people. Sure the film moves along briskly and has far more action than the first but because we don't care about the people that the action is happening to, all that falls on deaf ears.
Getting away from the film's writing, the other big issue is its heavy reliance on CGI. There's less of a marriage between practical FX and digital ones in this film and due to the higher level of dinosaurs in the film, any and all flaws become much more apparent. It hardly looks terrible but I truly feel that comparing the FX of Lost World to Jurassic Park is a bad idea. I think the first film did it better and even the four years of CGI development wasn't enough to allow this film to rely as heavily as it does on them.
I think my ultimate issue with The Lost World though resides in its spirit. This isn't an adventure film, it's an action film. The wonder that emerges from watching the Brachiosaur stand on it's hind legs to reach the highest branches of a tree or a baby Velociraptor pushing its way out of an egg has been almost completely done away with. The image above shows the closest sequence in film that has this kind of adventurous spirit. And after about forty seconds it turns into a CGI filled chase sequence that loses all the wonder it started out with. It' definitely the pressure that gets put on a sequel to outdo the original but unfortunately The Lost World ends up playing out like a film created solely to sell tickets.
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The list is an absolute good. The list is life.
Steven Spielberg did not want to direct this film. The filmmaker doubted his maturity level and saw the film as too important for him to leave his mark on. He tried to pass the project onto a number of other filmmakers including Roman Polanski who's mother was killed at Auschwitz, as well as Sydney Pollack and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese was actually attached to direct the film for some time before Spielberg's conscience got the better of him. Spielberg believed he'd "given away a chance to do something for my children and family about the Holocaust" and using Cape Fear as a bargaining chip, was able to re-establish his place at the film's helm. His final push to direct came from the rise of neo-Nazism after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the growing numbe of Holocaust deniers. Already having gotten more in touch with his faith while raising his children, Schindler's List may have actually come at the perfect time for Spielberg. He pushed Jurassic Park to the top of his priority list knowing he wouldn't be able to move to a new project for a long time once Schindler was completed.
Moving into production Spielberg left no stone unturned to make sure audiences felt the personal and political weight the story carried for him. He sought out a number ancestors of the Schindler Jews to play roles in the film. The script itself boasts 126 speaking roles and over the course of shooting over 30,000 extras were hired, many of which were Holocaust survivors themselves. The film's producers were tasked with finding as many of the people portrayed in the film as possible after Spielberg conceived the idea of the film's epilogue.
I realize that's a lot of trivia but I think it's incredibly important to know how personal this film was to Spielberg. Looking back on his career prior to Schindler's List it's hard to believe that he'd even be capable of a film that took on this type of subject matter. Even his most personal films up to this point had been lighthearted if not adventurous. Schindler's List is not only one of the most important American films ever made but also a clear turning point in Spielberg's career. A point where, save for a few films, many of his projects became much darker and more serious in nature. What's amazing though is despite the film's heavy nature it's still incredibly watchable. Spielberg has this incredible ability to make cinematic masterpieces from even the darkest material and never pulling punches. Schindler's List never lacks in its ability to wrench the heart and it does so often.
My favorite thing about this film is the way that Spielberg decided to shoot it. He partnered with Janusz Kaminski (the cinematographer Spielberg now works with exclusively) and told the film's story the way that history does: in black and white images. Like photos from books or a museum, Schindler's List presents a story told in timeless fashion. Using handheld, almost gonzo techniques, the film looks more like a documentary than a prestige picture and because of this doesn't have any kind of time stamp on it. Watching this film with no knowledge of the few famous faces within gives no sign of what year it was created and it makes the material presented all the more powerful. You can't pull out bad CGI from the 90's. You can't pull out that famous single that was all the rage when the producers were trying to figure out how to market the film. Schindler packs so much more of a wallop because of all these choices. I truly feel its one of his most "Spielbergian" films. By that I mean there's nothing diluting his creative process. There are no crane hots. There are no silly action scenes. This film is pure Spielberg and paired with the fact that it's undoubtedly his most personal film, Schindler's List is one of the most important films out there.
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I had the immense pleasure of being able to see this film in a theater very recently. Spielberg decided to honor the film's 20th anniversary by giving it the 3D treatment and letting people spend way too much money on the glasses that make the film viewable. I never saw Jurassic Park in theaters. When the film came out I was only four or five years old and my parents would never have deemed this film appropriate from my fragile mind. My love for this film is attributed entirely to the medium of VHS. Because of it, this film lived in every single one of my friends homes as well as my own. It was our go-to movie as kids (and it still is whenever I need a nice pick me up). And more often than not, the adults would end up stopping whatever they were doing to sit and watch with us. I wore out my copy. Then dvd's were invented and my love for the film was rekindled. I didn't think I could enjoy it any more than I had been. Then I saw it in theaters.
Now because I never saw experienced it thusly until now (and even if I had I can't imagine I'd be focusing on the same things I am now) so I have to assume that some work went into the sound mix. If not then wow because I have to tell you: If you haven't seen Jurassic Park with theater quality sound, you really haven't seen it. It changes the entire experience of the film. When the T-Rex first escapes it's paddock, it goes from thrilling and enjoyable to absolutely terrifying simply because of how intense the sound mix is. When that dinosaur roars you feel it in your blood. You feel it in your bones. And if you really focus you'll see that you're desperately in need of your mommy.
I talk about Jurassic Park a lot in my everyday life. It's a film everyone has seen and most people enjoy so it's a great conversation piece. But rather than relating my favorite scenes to people I usually only bring the film up to make one point. The CGI is out of this goddamn world. This film was released in 1993. The true digital pioneers that worked on this movie changed the way that films are made. Sure, at times Jurassic Park looks a tad dated but I fully believe that the scene that that spawned the above still is not one of them. And though Spielberg's approach to this style of filmmaking ended up coming from a place of desperation rather than intent, his methods have been emulated since in only the best heavy CGI films. The methods I'm referring to are creating a hybrid of practical and computer generated effects. For every instance of a computer generated dinosaur in Jurassic Park there are double the number of animatronic or claymation creatures helping actors have something to act off of or giving DP Dean Cundey a focal point and in so doing, giving the digital fx developers a sense of how light and color will play on the surfaces of these dinosaurs. Without this understanding and relation to environment, CGI effects fail. Perhaps not as much nowadays where the power of computer imagery is absolutely astounding (and whole films are made with them) but for the decade and a half after Jurassic Park, filmmakers and studios tried to cut corners and doomed their projects in the process.
Jurassic Park's other success as a film is that its got great characters. Sure it's a monster movie. Sure it's a disaster movie. Certain characters need to be played. But Jurassic Park manages to ride an extremely fine line in storytelling. We see and learn just enough about these people to know that they are in fact real people rather than positions that were filled. And yes there's definitely a few dud moments. The kids get a tad annoying but on the flip side, some of the film's best scenes wouldn't be what they are without them. And seeing the film in theaters twenty years on was awesome when it comes to the hacking and dated technology of the film. Everyone had a nice appreciative laugh. "It's an interactive CD-Rom" is my particular favorite of these.
Admittedly I'm extremely biased. I love this film. For what it's worth I find it to be one of the most exciting and enjoyable films ever made. But I think it's earned it. With a perfect mixture of well done special effects, fresh and simple storytelling, and a director who understands exactly how to mix all these things together, you've got the perfect adventure story.
And before I wrap up I need to figure out how on earth John Hammond saying "Dr. Grant, my dear Dr. Sadler. Welcome to Jurassic Park" makes me almost cry every single time I watch this film. It's a mystery to me. But a mystery I'm fully intent on analyzing for the rest of my days.
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