The Lost World: Jurassic Park opened in theaters on May 23rd, 1997,
nearly four years after the release of Jurassic Park.
Since many sequels often come out within two years of their previous entry it might seem strange
that The Lost World took twice as long to make, especially after the huge success of the first film.
To get into our first fact and find the reason behind the four year wait
we’ll need to look back at the post-production process of Jurassic Park.
If you haven’t already done so, check out the first video in this series
about the fun facts of Jurassic Park by clicking on the YouTube card on the screen.
During post-production of Jurassic Park the ILM team was working on all the CG dinosaur scenes
and were sending copies of them to Steven Spielberg to review while he was in Poland filming Schindler’s List.
Spielberg said the experience was very bipolar because he had to split his attention between
a film about the Holocaust
and a sci-fi thriller about dinosaurs.
After finishing Schindler’s List he took two years off to recover, but Spielberg knew
the next project he would work on right after would be the next Jurassic Park.
While filming Jurassic Park, Spielberg thought the sequel’s story should be about what
happened to Dennis Nedry’s shaving cream can that contained the stolen embryos.
A bonus fact is that Spielberg showed the can falling into the mud because he wanted
the audience to be left wondering what happened to the embryos in order to set up a sequel.
However, when Spielberg learned that Michael Crichton’s book was going to reintroduce
the dinosaurs in a completely different way, he followed Crichton’s instincts instead
and changed the movie’s plot line to be similar to the book.
Spielberg wanted The Lost World to have a darker story, and in addition to that he also
literally made the movie darker by shooting a lot of scenes at night.
He went with this film noir look
because he thought since the audiences already knew what his 20th century dinosaurs looked like
he wouldn’t have to worry about lighting them as much as he did in Jurassic Park.
Spielberg wanted to direct the The Lost World because of how much he enjoyed making the first film,
but also because he thought audiences would demand a sequel after its monumental success.
Audience demand is also why he made sure to include stegosauruses in The Lost World
because he received many letters from kids that were sad they didn’t see their favorite dinosaur in the first movie.
"This is magnificent!"
Oh ya! Ooooh! Ahhhh! That's how it always starts, but later there's running and screaming
The baby T-Rex was a technical challenge for Stan Winston’s animatronics team
because they had to create a dinosaur that could act while being physically handled by the actors.
They built two baby Rexes and the one they designed for the trailer attack was a hybrid
of hydraulic systems and remote-controlled effects.
The other baby Rex that Vince Vaughn carried around was designed with only remote-controlled systems inside it
so the T-Rex could be carried around safely while it was performing.
[T-Rex roaring]
The two adult T-Rexes in The Lost World look very similar to the one used in Jurassic Park,
but the machinery inside the two new T-Rexes was completely redone for the sequel.
To give you a sense of scale, the first T-Rex weighed 9,000lbs, which is 4.5 tons,
but both T-Rexes in The Lost World weighed twice as much at 9 tons each.
Since they were so heavy it was more cost efficient for them to be kept in one sound stage
throughout the whole shoot, and all their sets were built around them.
The T-Rexes new machinery was heavy for good reason though because they were able to have
a wider range of movement and expressivity, which allowed them to give a more nuanced performance.
A new feature added to their performance capabilities
was being able to physically interact with the set and the actors,
so when you see a T-Rex tear apart the jeep during the trailer attack
or pick up an actor with its mouth it was actually the animatronic T-Rexes that did it.
[Sounds of trailer being pushed off cliff side]
"Hang on to something!"
[Collision sounds]
Filming the sequence when the T-Rexes push the trailer off the cliff was very complicated,
and the filmmakers went to great lengths to get the shots they needed.
For example, they cut holes out of the ceiling of the soundstage and used a construction
crane to hang the trailer on its end so they could film the actors inside the trailer.
For the exterior shots, the filmmakers got permission from Universal Studios to build
a cliff wall on the front side of the parking garage, and hung the trailer with a crane
while the actors were attached to a rope system and dropped out the bottom.
[Raptor screams while intense music plays]
Working in CG-heavy movies means that the actors often have their imaginations put to the test
since they can’t see who or what they’re interacting with.
For the raptor attack scene, Jeff Goldblum had ILM engineers rehearse with him
so he could see where the raptors would be in the scene
because during filming he wouldn’t see or hear them
and would have to throw himself through windows or hit himself hard enough with a door
to sell that the impact was made from the raptor instead of himself.
[Raptor screams]
[Window crashing sounds]
The T-Rex wasn’t originally planned to go on a rampage through the streets of San Diego.
There were two scrapped endings that had the survivors escape the island
by using hang gliders and then pteranodons would show up to attack them,
or the pteranodons would attack them as they were trying to escape by helicopter.
However, both of these endings were changed on a whim once Steven Spielberg thought that
audiences would rather see the T-Rex run amok in a major port city instead.
Leave a comment if you enjoyed the movie ending
or if you thought one of the other endings would’ve been better.
Some quick bonus facts for those of you that stuck around to the end
are about how the sounds were created for some of the new dinosaurs.
For starters, the Parasaurolophus sounds were made by recording cows mooing through a PVC pipe.
[Parasaurolophus roar]
The baby T-Rex calls were made from the sound of a baby camel calling for its mother
[Baby T-Rex roaring with a broken leg]
and the most interesting one is the pteranodon screech right before the credits roll,
which was made from the sound of dental floss being pulled through its plastic case.
[Pteranodon screech]
If there’s a movie you’d like to learn about next, please leave a comment below.
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about your favorite films.
[T-Rex roars]