The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) Remastered 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review

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After Jurassic Park's wild success, which netted Universal Studios a billion dollars and re-redefined the summer blockbuster, a sequel became a foregone conclusion, assisted by author Michael Crichton providing new source material. Launched in 1997 to fierce opposition from heavily promoted titles such as Dante's Peak, Men In Black, Batman and Robin and Speed 2: Cruise Control, The Lost World: Jurassic Park ultimately edged them all despite reviews not proving quite as fawning as before.

When Jurassic Park's founder, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), sends an expedition to a previously undisclosed island dinosaur facility to study the inhabitants who now roam free, the mission soon becomes complicated by the intervention of InGen's new owners, who are hunting and capturing the animals for a new scaled-down Jurassic Park in mainland San Diego.

The stunning success of its predecessor no doubt emboldened Steven Spielberg to take things to the next level with The Lost World: Jurassic Park - a noticeably more confident (some might say indulgent) effort, which for better or worse deviates significantly from Michael Crichton's source material in pursuit of big popcorn moments. Having proved themselves, ILM and Stan Winston Studios pushed the envelope with much more dino action; however, with the sense of wonder unable to be replicated, The Lost World is played almost purely for thrills. Less a finely executed story in favour of a rollercoaster ride. It's a classic example of giving the audience what they want, but not what they need.

As with its predecessors, Universal is now offering a newly remastered 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray steelbook set which bundles the three films in the original Jurassic Park trilogy, which updates the initial 2018 release. So how does it fare this time around?

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Video

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.851:1 in the Rec. 2020 color space, finished with dynamic Dolby Vision and static HDR-10 high dynamic range formats and encoded with AVC H.265 compression.

For this newly remastered 4K presentation, Universal has returned to the same negative scans that were completed roughly a decade ago (which were admittedly very good for their time) and has added a few modest visual improvements. These include enhancements to color grading and gamma level shifts, and slight reductions in colour oversaturation that likely better reflect the original photography. For those who can take advantage of Dolby Vision dynamic metadata, there's also a subtle (and I emphasize slight!) improvement on that front.

Unfortunately, it's not all good. Frustratingly, several shots have been selected for an egregious application of digital noise reduction, which come and go without rhyme or reason and mushily reduce visible detail. Notably, this was not an issue in the previous edition.

I well imagine that depending on differing sensibilities, some fans may favour the previous edition for its slightly more authentic sensibilities, whilst others might look more favourably on visual consistency. For me, much like with Jurassic Park, this new release is the best version of the film currently available, even in its clearly compromised state. For this premium format release of one of the most successful cinema franchises of all time, it could have, and should have, been much better.

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Audio

The Lost World: Jurassic Park is presented in a newly remixed Dolby Atmos object-based container.

Long hailed as a demo-worthy 5.1 mix since its laserdisc debut, this new Dolby Atmos track elevates proceedings to a whole new level. In the absence of significant improvements elsewhere, it may prove to be the selling point for many fans.

Just as it did all those years ago, The Lost World begs you to pump up the volume, with an extremely aggressive mix that now benefits from true object-based height directionality that firmly grounds the viewer in the environment. The surround channels are kept active throughout, and really spring to life to support some of the dense jungle scenes. Bass activity is deep and booming, and aids the more action-oriented visuals. The delightfully ominous effect as the SS Venture approaches the San Diego pier is a true guilty pleasure.

Overall, this is a really stellar track and unquestionably improved.

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Extras

Whilst there's nothing new or upgraded here, Universal has again bundled together pretty much every bonus feature ever assembled, from the first Laserdisc onwards. Let's jump in.

First up are parts four and five of the Return to Jurassic Park documentary, which total around 40 minutes, including contemporary (circa 2011) commentary from star Jeff Goldblum, director Steven Spielberg, and producer Kathleen Kennedy.

Under the Archival Featurettes heading, we have preservation of The Making of The Lost World, which was created for the 1998 laserdisc release. Running a total of 50 minutes, offers a lot of behind-the-scenes on-set footage, and revealing looks at the Stan Winston puppetry and the significant advances in CGI, which allowed far more of the dinosaurs to be produced digitally.

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The Original feature on the making of the film is a slightly elongated EPK short, and pretty pointless at roughly 13 minutes. The 13-year-old me would have watched this over and over. The Jurassic Park phenomenon is a vintage interview with the now deceased author of the original novel, and how the story underwent many different iterations. The Compie Dance Number is a 2-minute gag by the animators at ILM in response to screenwriter David Koepp's challenge that the next evolution of animation would be to make people believe the dinosaurs could dance. It's cute. Next is ILM and The Lost World" Before and After Visual Effects, which is a fairly lengthy look at the original in-camera plate photography before and after the digital dinosaurs have been composited in.

Finally, we have the original Theatrical Trailer presented in basic standard definition quality and two Deleted scenes including the internal machinations of InGen's boardroom (glimpsed in the trailer above) and an extended but unnecessary introduction to gamehunter Roland Tembo.