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The Lost World: Jurassic Park

But let's jump back two years to the summer of 1997, when the highly anticipated sequel to 1993's colossal hit "Jurassic Park" came out. I still remember the crushing bitterness I felt when my parents told me in June of 1993 that I could only see Jurassic Park if it was PG (hey, I was just about to turn nine and my parents were...well, a bit strict). Of course, that film was PG-13, as was its sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but as I was a few years older, I got to see it. And I was so psyched to see this sequel, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Jeff Goldblum and a boatload of dinosaurs (and how quickly they get off said vessel at the end).

Unlike with Star Wars: Episode I, I was more immediately aware of how bad the movie was. I loved the original, but there was a little less hype going into this second dino action movie that it became much clearer much sooner how little I was enjoying the movie. Though I admit to kind of liking the truly ridiculous sequence in San Diego, most of the build-up was slow, mean-spirited, and gruesome. Spielberg's talents are on display in the scene where Ian Malcolm and friends struggle to get out of a trailer that's hanging on a precipice, but that's also the scene where one of the genuinely nice people in the movie is brutally murdered while trying to save the good guys. It's hard to like a movie like that. Spielberg may yet find another of his films pop up here (one that's far more disappointing), but the first strike on his list came with The Lost World.


Godzilla

Yes, Godzilla. Yes, the 1998 disaster movie about the lizard gone nuclear starring Matthew Broderick. Yes, this is on the list. And why wouldn't it be? I still remember clearly sitting in the theater on July 4th, 1996, watching Independence Day, a movie that I loved...when I was 12. Now, it's a bloated and corny movie with some charm provided by Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum. Still, as a kid, it was all I could ask for.

So, when director Roland Emmerich came back with Godzilla in 1998, I was ready to see the movie as soon as possible. Though it certainly rips off Jurassic Park way too much (see the entire sequence at Madison Square Garden), I can tell you that I liked it more than The Lost World: Jurassic Park. True, my expectations weren't exactly the same as with an established franchise, but the disappointment I had about this movie being a little more corny, a little more one-dimensional, a little more bloated was still there. And, also: why was it raining so much?

On the big screen, at age 14, I can't say that I thought the special effects of Godzilla were so bad that we needed to have something obscuring it at all times. What disappointed me most was that the flaws of Godzilla were so pronounced that I went back and realized how apparent they were in Independence Day, which makes this entry doubly disappointing.

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