Podcast: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

It’s our follow-up to “Academy Award nominees appearing in cash-grab sequels,” as we follow Batman Returns with The Lost World: Jurassic Park, featuring Academy Award nominee Julianne Moore!


Several years after the events of the first film, the almost unrecognizable Dr. Ian Malcolm heads to a second, "lost" island where the dinosaurs have flourished in isolation to find Sarah (Moore), his dino expert girlfriend. For no reason, his 12-13 year old daughter tags along. But the environmental observation is ruined when a team of EVIL poachers appear, ready to embark on a plan fifty times dumber and more irresponsible than Jurassic Park's "clone dinosaurs and then make people buy plane tickets to come and see the dinosaurs."

Featuring an all-star supporting cast (Vince Vaughn, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Stormare) and one of the best action directors ever, the film still manages to be pretty terrible, thanks largely to a script that makes characters actively sabotage their own survival for little to no reason and behave in incredibly dumb ways whenever the script demands.

Some Notes:

• We go on several rants this episode, but this film is so full of things that make no sense there's a few we didn't even get to, such as: Why did the scientists even make raptors or Compsognathus ("little turkey dinosaurs")? Just make glamour dinos! Triceratops, Stegosaurus, T-Rex, etc. Especially don’t make a bunch of carnivorous dinosaurs nobody wants to see!
• Another thing, how does this small island support so many dinosaurs? While we don’t know exactly how many calories a T-Rex or a raptor need to survive, chances are it's a lot, and once the island's native monkey population is gone, and dumb mercenaries have all been eaten, how will they survive? How will the herbivores survive once they strip the bark off all the trees and don’t have anywhere to migrate?
• There is a lot of talk about pooping and/or peeing in this episode. We consider this the movie's fault.

Direct download.