Pros and Cons of The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Con - The movie goes downhill with the T-Rex getting loose in San Diego and doesn't recover

Pros:

Cliff sequence

The San Diego sequence is transparently ripping off King Kong, but...at least it's not more characters wandering through the woods for two hours

Cons:

Sarah and Nick should at the least be portrayed more morally ambiguous, let alone treated as heroes

That gymnastics scene is the dumbest scene in 5 movies

Roland is overrated. He's basically just another Muldoon

Making Malcolm the lead was a mistake. He doesn't even really feel like Malcolm anymore

Too damn long

Cons

Gymnastics interlude

dog eating humor

not so subtle "be a responsible parent" message--Jesus Christ, give us a break with the insincere moral lessons

trailer attack goes on too long


some cost cutting of dinosaur scenes

unexplained Venture attack

too many night scenes

Pros:

--great dinosaur sequences--round up and raptor attack especially

--dinosaurs are center of story this time and given much more personality.

--reformed Hammond is more interesting than obsessed Hammond in the first movie


--Pete Postlethwaite (fortunate that they cut the scene which made him out to be the savior of Africans, unfortunate that they didnt include the scene to explain how the t-rex baby got injured since it made him look like an asshole-and he just leaves the movie after his Indian guide friend dies--lame)

--Jeff Goldblum - he gets to play leading man and has some good lines

--Vince Vaughn - interesting supporting character though just vanishes without explanation

--black/ironic humor --like Sarah petting the baby stego but almost getting killed by the adults, the paleontologist who is afraid of snakes and gets chomped by the t-rex, or the asshole guy who gets attacked by the mini dinosaurs, or Eddie getting ripped in half and shared between the two tyrannosaurs, or the ending bit where the baby kills Ludlow. That was genius. Great use of CGI in that.

--Good different Williams score

Pro - More Jeff Goldblum. That's enough for me.

Pro
- I really liked the professional & mostly capable mass bounty hunter angle, reminds me a little of Aliens & its ship full of mercenaries.

Con
- Entire final act in San Diego. Michael Bay Transformers styles.

Cons:
No credible characters. Two are simply throw away characters of the Frank Burns-Dr. Smith sort, simply cardboard cut outs for the audience to hate. Watching them portrayed can only make someone think that the person describing them is a delusional liar. They just don't come across believable. The other characters are also one dimensional.

No credible motivation: Which is mostly why the characters are not credible. Of all the alleged motivations throughout the movie, both in peace (before meeting man eaters) and war (after meeting man eaters),  none of the motivations are credible. No "survivalist" character is going to rescue a baby predator child of a house sized man eater and carry it around and wait for the inevitable. This movie may have more examples of completely ridiculous and non credible motivation in all the characters than any other movie in History.

I, for one, could do without the idiotic dinosaur in the back yard skit. An action movie needs well timed and good comic relief. This wasn't it.

Unexplained situations. As for the ship, I figured most of the crew scrambled to life rafts or just plain into the water and tried to find makeshift rafts. Hopefully, they were picked up later. The logistics of the situation would probably mean only 2-4 would become T Rex meals, maybe a few more dead from other wounds.


Pros:
Not many pros, but overall, it was good action. Thrilling. Ridiculous example of "non credible characters in incredible situations" as opposed to the superior "credible characters in incr.edible situations". But still a thrill ride.

The scientist for the bad guys was a good touch, and one of the few credible characters in the whole work. He should have had more screen time before he met the snake. And I'm not sure a naturalist would have panicked so much from a snake after being chased by a T Rex.

The friend of the great white hunter was one of the better characters. Again, the movie bores us with the one dimensional hack characters too much, and sacrifices the good ones too early. We really don't care what happens after the best characters are wiped out. That makes the rest of the movie an ordeal we just watch to make the others watching with us happy.


Second weakest of the series. Not as poor as Jurassic World, but still only 4/10. The high octane non stop action made it lively enough to keep from being 3/10