The highest-grossing film of 1993 was an instant classic and is easily the best film in the franchise. I hope you already knew that. Crichton's 1990 novel sparked a bidding war, with James Cameron, Joe Dante, Richard Donner, and Tim Burton all interested in bringing dinosaurs to life onscreen. It's fun to imagine the films those guys would have made, but Spielberg's childlike enthusiasm and expert commercial sensibilities made the "Indiana Jones" director the perfect fit for the material. David Koepp's screenplay and the industrious ILM crew combined to create something truly special.
The inevitable sequel dutifully arrived on Memorial Day weekend. Jeff Goldblum is promoted to protagonist, a decision surely justified by the quirky popularity of the "Independence Day" star. A darker aesthetic "The Lost World" is a good movie, it's just not the beloved world-beating pop culture landmark that the first one is. It's probably in Spielberg's bottom-ten, as I suspect the DreamWorks cofounder was already thinking ahead to "Amistad" and "Saving Private Ryan". A relative lack of contentment with the finished film had the busy billionaire looking for a new director to take on a threequel in 1998-99(he would stay on as producer).
Joe Johnston, of "Jumanji" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" fame, got the job, and his FX background made sense in the "Jurassic" world. Michael Crichton's expensive services were no longer necessary, but new writers Peter Buchman, Jim Taylor, and Alexander Payne(?) struggled to deliver a script on time(it's been reported they never really did). The result was a stripped-down adventure with minimal foreplay. This movie is 92 minutes, including the credits. I appreciated that. Sam Neill and his fedora are back, presumably to evoke memories of 1993. "JPIII" did solid business, but isn't really respected.
Pratt
"The Impossible" director. I had fun.
This is the weakest film in the franchise. too much globe-trotting
