The Lost World: Jurassic Park

As soon as I hear the opening notes of John Williams’ iconic Jurassic Park score I can’t help but smile and be transported back to the mid 1990s and to a time when Jurassic Park was pretty much all the boys my age would talk and think about. I experienced the Jurassic Park smile recently when I re-watched the sequel to the 1993 film for what must be at least the eighth time. The smile stuck with me for the opening hour and a half as I reminisced about when I’d first seen the film and remembered what was coming next. Some of the things that made this sequel good are still evident but unfortunately so are the aspects that made it bad.

Four years on from the Jurassic Park Incident as it is now know, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is assembling a team to explore, catalogue and protect the Dinosaur inhabitants of a second island, close to the original known as Site B. For this mission he recruits a reluctant Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a man who has been publicly and academically chastised for talking about the Jurassic Park Incident. Malcolm is understandably hesitant about mixing with Dinosaurs again until he learns that his girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) is already on the island. So, he travels to the island along with equipment specialist Eddie (Richard Schiff), photographer Nick (Vince Vaughn) and a stowaway to rescue Sarah but not only come up against Dinosaurs but the InGen Corporation who want to further exploit the animals for profit.  

Alien 3

"Don't be afraid. I'm part of the family"

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is back in stasis aboard the Sulaco when a fire causes the escape pod to separate from the ship and she crash lands on Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161, a penal colony inhabited only by men. Ripley’s fellow Aliens survivors all die in the crash, leaving her alone and stranded in the prison. Unfortunately for Ripley and the prisoners, an alien face hugger was on board the pod and has also survived the crash.

While I’ve been watching the Alien franchise for the first time over the last few weeks I’ve been told by numerous people that Alien 3 was by far the weakest of the series. So far, I’d have to agree. The film entered production without a completed script and the messiness of the film is some testament to that. It feels as though the film doesn’t know what it wants to be. It is less scary than even Aliens but has a bit more of a dramatic quality than Alien. The film also appears to introduce a comic element to the series but this fails miserably. The story feels incoherent and the characters are barely written. In both previous instalments the large cast always felt well written and as though they were rounded characters. In Alien 3 the majority of them appear to be just cannon fodder. The only new character that I cared a little about was killed off within the first half.