Lost on the way to see the Brontosaurus
01/11/2002 . Source: Mark R Leeper 

Mark Leeper explores the BBC's miniseries adoption of the Lost World, and finds it is the best of a not-very-good lot of adaptations of Doyle's great adventure novel of a forgotten plateau with prehistoric man and dinosaurs. The dinosaur re-creations are effective, but there are major discrepancies from the novel.

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THE LOST WORLD
A film review by Mark R. Leeper

It is not like the last decade did not have several adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD. There were at least three, having John Rhys-Davies, Patrick Bergan, and Peter McCauley play the burley Professor George Edward Challenger.

But after the BBC finished their "Walking with Dinosaurs" with very realistic dinosaurs, I suspected that the next natural thing to do with this technology for creating lifelike dinosaurs was to juxtapose them with humans.

No respectable non-fiction presentation could do that. One would have to do a classic story in which humans interface with dinosaurs. There is only one, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's THE LOST WORLD. (Note, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH does have humans in viewing distance of an ichthyosaur fighting a plesiosaur seen from a distance, but these are not really dinosaurs and it is only one sequence.)

So once again the Doyle has been adapted.

BBC ,in cooperation with the A&E cable network, has brought us a new version about 165 minutes long. The special effects combine CGI and full-scale models to give us state of the art visuals and dinosaur images that look realistic and fit our current paleontological knowledge.

This is the best version of the story we are likely to get for a while. Willis O'Brien who created the effects for the 1925 THE LOST WORLD and then was heartbroken when lizards were used in the 1960 version of the film would have been very pleased to see this version.

Doyle might have been a little less pleased with the liberties taken with the plot.

Bob Hoskins plays Challenger, a scientist with the reputation for being a crackpot. He outdoes himself when he claims that on his last expedition to South America he found a remote place where dinosaurs still live.

The Royal Society is skeptical but fits out an expedition of four led by Challenger and the bland intellectual Summerlee (Edward Fox), a skeptic who has no patience for Challenger's claims or eccentricities. There is also game hunter Lord Roxton and news reporter Edward Malone. The expedition finds the plateau where Challenger saw the dinosaurs all right, but their means of exit is destroyed and they have to face the now all too real dinosaurs that Challenger reported seeing.

None of the cinematic versions of the novel have been really faithful. The new version only roughly follows the Doyle and creates two new major characters. Agnes Clooney, raised in the jungle near the site of the plateau has lived in the jungle all her life and will act as a guide at the plateau.

Theo Kerr (Peter Falk) is her uncle, a Bible-thumping missionary at odds with Summerlee over the issue of Creationism and Evolution. While the triangle of Challenger, Summerlee, and Kerr contest science, a romantic triangle of Clooney, Roxton, and Malone sprouts.

The novel is "revised" throughout. In the novel Challenger is the most irascible character with a reputation for violence against newspaper reporters like Malone. Hoskins loses this dimension and seems to be the most pleasant and amiable of the expedition members.

The story stars as great fun, though in the last hour the writing is disappointingly pedestrian.

Among the modifications from the Doyle is the effort to humanize the sub-human ape men on the plateau. In the book they were cruel killers who entertained themselves dropping their enemies over cliffs. That aspect was considerably toned down for this TV version.

This is the longest version yet made so there is more emphasis on South American color than there was even in the novel. The special effects are certainly what set this version apart from previous cinematic adaptations of the novel. Still, the dinosaurs are not quite integrated with the people. When we see an entire dinosaur, requiring CGI, it cannot quite interact with the people superimposed in the scene.

It was much like early Ray Harryhausen rarely had the creatures he created interacting directly with people. When need be, he could have cowboys lasso a dinosaur, but such effects were used sparingly and it showed.

In this LOST WORLD we see even less such interaction. People will be chased by a dinosaur that looks realistic, but in a different plane from the people. Admittedly, in the 1950s it was very easy to describe what was wrong with the special effects of a film. In the 21st century complaints with the special effects are more abstract and harder to explain.

But some limitations are still obvious to the eye.

This is probably the best version of THE LOST WORLD since the 1925 version. It will probably be a while until a better version is made.

I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.

Mark R. Leeper

Copyright 2002 Mark R. Leeper