June 25: The Lost World

I had finished reading "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton a few weeks ago and had been itching to watch the movie, which I had actually never seen, and we finally found some time on Friday night to watch it. From the very first moments on screen, I was indignant--- the movie is all wrong!! All of the exposition to set up the movie is totally wrong. First of all, John Hammond is supposed to be dead. Secondly, Sarah Harding was not in California and flew to the Isla Sorna first-- she was supposed to be in Africa and arrived super late to the island. One of the main protagonists in the book, Richard Levine, did not even make an appearance (in addition to many other characters), and there were supposed to be TWO children, Arby and Kelly, neither of which were the children of Ian Malcolm! Every three seconds, I was saying, "In the book that didn't happen..." eventually resulting in my husband expressing his frustration at my constant interjections which then resulted in us erupting into delightful laughter. 

The movie wasn't bad (it was arguably quite good), but it definitely was not an adaptation of the book; it was only very loosely based on it. The worst offense, in my opinion, was having the T. rex end up rampaging in California-- the book definitely never had dinosaurs in America! 

Interestingly, Crichton never intended to write a sequel to Jurassic Park, but after the movie was so successful, Spielberg convinced him to write one, and wanted him to include Ian Malcolm in it (which delightfully meant more Jeff Goldblum!), even though Malcolm had died in the book. But according to an article in Time Magazine, director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp ended up discarding many of the novel's scenes and ideas, choosing instead to devise a new story while including the two ideas from the novel that Spielberg liked: "the existence of a secret island where the DNA dinos had been created, and a set piece where a T. rex tries pushing a trailer off a cliff after its babies are threatened by scientists."  And apparently, Crichton seemed to be understanding, once saying, "When I write, I have to have the book be exactly the way I want it to be, and that's that. The movie will be exactly the way the director wants it to be. And that's that."

It has been delightful experience to read and watch these Crichton creations, and I am looking forward to many more (apparently, lots of Crichton books have been turned into movies, I'm reading "Sphere" now; the movie adaptation stars Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and Samuel L Jackson, and though it has received mostly negative reviews I will definitely watch it.)

With delight,

♥Jamie