Commercial for Kodak’s tie-in The Lost World competition - can you find ‘the lost roll’.
Evolution of the Jurassic Park logo - Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park III, Jurassic Park 3D
Jurassic Park: The Lost World was released just as the internet was starting to become a viable marketing resource for studios. To take advantage, Universal created an ‘InGen Intranet’ to promote the film online, and while it looks archaic by today’s standards, it was at the cutting edge at the time.
“Men who tamper with the laws of nature do so at their own risk.”
A selection of trailers and TV spots for The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
The match cut that introduces Ian Malcolm in The Lost World: Jurassic Park is not just a neat gag, but a comment on blockbuster cinema that sets the tone for the rest of the film.
The Lost World opens with a rich family holidaying on Site B. Their fun is interrupted by a dinosaur attack on their daughter and the sequence ends with the girl’s mother screaming as she discovers her wounded child.
Spielberg then match cuts both visually and audibly, moving from the mother’s screams to the sound of a subway train screaming past a yawning Malcolm.
The Lost World is a dark film about men abusing the natural world (i.e. the dinosaurs) in order to make money and gain power. Spielberg draws a parallel between the dinosaurs and film, using them as symbols of cinematic spectacle, and suggests that you can have too much of it, that the cycle of hollow blockbusters has robbed spectacle of its magic.
The yawn match cut establishes this disillusionment with blockbusters (The Lost World was sandwiched between Schindler’s List and Amistad, with Saving Private Ryan following shortly after), conveying a boredom and also a disgust - we have become so de-sensitised by screen spectacle that even the sight of a young girl being attacked elicits only yawns.
