Even Ian Malcolm, the original film’s biggest source of laughs, is more somber here, essentially haunted by his experiences on Isla Nublar and publicly discredited for being the only one to speak out about the incident while everyone else involved remained silent. Jeff Goldblum, as always, is great, relishing his ascendance into the true lead role, and moments such as his exasperated “I don’t care” while Malcolm’s girlfriend, Julianne Moore’s Sarah Harding, is excitedly talking about her findings stick out as true to the character, even if his once-eccentric personality feels wildly tempered from the first time we met him.
The rest of the cast is great, too, to varying degrees. Richard Attenborough’s brief time on screen is an obvious treat, and Pete Postlewaithe in particular stands out as the hunter Roland Tembo, a man so cool he manages to stand his ground against a Tyrannosaurus late in the film. As for Moore, the actress does what she can with the role, but Harding herself is somewhat undone by her hypocrisy. One minute, she’s lecturing the group on not interfering, let alone bend a blade of grass, but this speech comes mere moments after she herself decided to get up close and personal with a baby Stegosaurus, an act that almost cost her her life. It’s rather bizarre, and doesn’t do the character any favors.
On the other hand, Richard Schiff’s Eddie Carr, the team’s equipment specialist, is another standout despite having little to do until he comes to the rescue after the trailer has been pushed over a cliff by the two Tyrannosaurs. Even two decades later, Eddie’s death has stuck with me as unusually tragic, the character keeping his foot on the gas pedal of his car in an effort to keep the trailer from sliding back over the cliff even as the dinosaurs have ripped off the top of it to get to him. Juxtaposed against the darkly funny death of Donald Gennaro – getting plucked off the toilet – in the first film, Eddie’s death is the complete opposite, and a pretty horrifying ending for a character who did nothing to deserve it.
Arliss Howard’s arrogant Peter Ludlow also lends the film a good villainous human element. Ludlow’s decision to capture dinosaurs is driven by the desire to save his company, and though it’s a misguided choice, it’s actually a logical one, the man using what assets he’s been presented with to fulfill what was ultimately a corporate goal. Oddly enough, his plan was going fine until the interference of Malcolm’s group, with Vince Vaughn’s documentarian/activist Nick van Owen in particular being the one who really sets off a chain of events that led all the way to a T. rex being set loose on San Diego.
Nick is an odd figure in The Lost World. He helps free all the animals that destroy Ludlow’s camp and the equipment they could’ve all used to get off the island before bringing an injured baby rex back to the trailer, which only draws its parents attention, costs Eddie his life, and destroys his own team’s equipment, too. From there, the two teams join forces to get to a radio on the other side of the island to call for help, but because of his and Sarah’s actions in dealing with the baby, the adult rexes catch up with them all, scattering everyone, most of whom die when they flee into raptor territory. Even further, because Nick had earlier taken the bullets out of Roland’s hunting rifle while he wasn’t paying attention, Roland was unable to kill a rex when he finally got his one wish and was forced instead to tranquilize it, giving Ludlow the chance to capture the animal and ship it off to San Diego, where, of course, it got free.
What makes Nick such an oddity within the context of the film is that he never really suffers any consequences, and after the cliff sequence sits out all of the action before disappearing completely from the narrative once they’ve been taken by helicopter off the island. In a way, the ethical issues – if you want to call it that – surrounding his character are one of the few things in the film that still stick out to me simply because nothing ever comes of it.
Aside from Nick’s character, the movie isn’t without a few other issues. The aforementioned sequence where Kelly, Malcolm’s daughter, uses gymnastics to kill a raptor is undeniably egregious, and early on some misplaced humor doesn’t land, such as a cutaway gag to Malcolm yawning that undermines an otherwise effective, mood-setting opening scene.
Some characters do things that don’t make sense a well, like Harding keeping a jacket covered in the baby rex’s blood despite her background suggesting she should know better or Peter Stormare’s Dieter Stark needlessly wandering off deep enough into the woods to get lost just to go to the bathroom. And there’s a pretty odd plothole involving the crew of the boat that brings the adult rex to San Diego having been slaughtered – which is why the boat crashes into the dock – that’s never explained within the film.