The Lost World

There have been many adaptations of Conan Doyle's The Lost World.  However, most people are only aware of two of them: the 1925 silent move, which featured Willis O'Brien's stop motion dinosaurs, and Irwin Allen's 1960 colour version, which, sadly, features photographically enlarged lizards masquerading, very unconvincingly, as dinosaurs.  Indeed, even you haven't seen the 1960 film - which still turns up quite frequently on TV - you might  well have seen the dinosaur sequences, which have been used as stock footage in many subsequent films and TV series.  Apart from these two films, some people might recall the two part BBC adaptation of 2001 or the 1998 Canadian TV series.  But there have been several lesser known versions, including a 1992 film which relocates the action to Africa - it also spawned a sequel the same year titled Return to the Lost World - and the subject of today's random movie trailer, this 1998 version, which was presumably designed to cash in on the 1997 release of the Jurassic Park sequel which had stolen Conan Doyle's title.

Like the 1992 films and the Canadian TV series, I've never actually seen this version.  Few people have, it seems.  Updating and relocating the action to 1930s Mongolia, it's only 'name' actor is Patrick Bergin, playing the perpetually mis-cast role of Professor Challenger.  Judging by the synopsis on Wickipedia, like most other versions, it takes considerable liberties with the source material, (most notably the introduction of a female character, Conan Doyle never seemed big on female protagonists).  Of course, any adaptation of the story ultimately stands or falls by its dinosaurs.  On the basis of what we see in the trailer, the dinosaurs here a combination of life size puppets for close ups and fairly crude CGI for the rest.  An improvement on those bloody lizards from the 1960 version, but still not up to the standard of special effects expected by post-Jurassic Park audiences.

Being an aficionado of the 'lost world' genre of film, particularly those involving dinosaurs, I've seen quite a few and, going by the trailer alone, it seems that this film suffers from the same problem as most others of its ilk.  Namely that it seems to treat its subject matter as primarily an adventure story, with the dinosaurs as window dressing, an afterthought almost.  The 1960 Lost World is typical in this respect, with the dinosaurs merely a plot device to get the protagonists to the South American plateau and pretty much simply a background peril thereafter.  Indeed, you can't help but feel that they might as well be hostile natives, stampeding elephants or an avalanche in terms of their role in putting the main characters at risk.  The perfunctory nature of the dinosaurs in the 1960 version (lizards with stuck on frills and horns) just makes this all the more obvious.  But I've strayed from the subject of the post - the 1998 Lost World.  What more can I say with only this trailer to go on?  Well, it at least has better dinosaurs and looks better shot than the 1960 version.  If only it was as easy to see as that film, though....