The Lost World (2002)

Not the Steven Spielberg blockbuster, this Lost World is a splendid 2001 BBC TV dramatization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous adventure story. Bob Hoskins makes an unusually genial Professor Challenger, far less of a bully than Doyle's character, but his slightly stereotyped companions are nicely filled out by a solid cast. James Fox is Challenger's more timid but still covertly adventurous rival, Tom Ward is the mustachioed big-game hunter who faces an allosaur with an elephant gun, and Matthew Rhys plays the tagalong reporter hoping to impress his faithless fiancée.

As usual, the adaptation adds a woman--orphaned jungle girl Elaine Cassidy--to the expedition, and an interesting villain (religious fanatic Peter Falk) beefs up the travelogue by marooning Challenger's gang on the South American plateau where dinosaurs, cavemen, and Indians coexist eventfully. The Walking with Dinosaurs-style effects work well for the TV frame, but the real success is in integrating the adventuring with subtle eco-awareness, complex character interplay, and the reliable wonder of soaring pteranodons and carnosaur attacks. --Kim Newman Amazon.com

Not the definitive version, but not bad at all

The BBC's 2001 version of Arthur Conan Doyle's oft-imitated The Lost World is better than most (not saying much considering the low budgets and abysmal special effects of most versions over the past half century) but it still takes plenty of liberties with the source material. Bob Hoskins' irritable Professor Challenger and James Fox's Professor Summerlee (played as a sly impersonation of vowel-strangling art critic Brian Sewell) are faithful enough, but once again a new female character has been written into the story for purely demographic reasons in the form of Elaine Cassidy's daughter of Peter Falk's missionary, though this does at least allow the script some contentious throwaway discussion of Creationism vs. Darwinism to help stake its claim to a higher intellectual plateau than its cheap-and-cheerful rivals. But of course, it's the dinosaurs that people are really interested in. They're mostly to be found in the second half (the show was originally broadcast in two parts over Christmas) and if you can't quite help shaking the suspicion that this version was only produced was because the BBC still had all that costly computer software left over from Walking With Dinosaurs on their hard drives it's impressive enough to leave little ground for complaints even if it's not quite Jurassic Park standard. Indeed, it's in many ways the perfect choice for a BBC adaptation: part period costume drama, part nature and science documentary, and even if the definitive version has still yet to be made, this will do well enough in the meantime.
December 28, 2007

Highly Commendable

Wonderful special effects, a glorious location for filming (New Zealand) - Lord of the Rings trilogy filmed there as well. Some violence, obviously, but also an interesting - but wholly boring, to me - section on an Indian tribe vs. the veritable missing link of (semi-canibalistic) ape-men (they eat the tribesmen for protein). The interesting juxtaposition, however, shows how both species have value, and there is an argument on-screen about the treatment of the ape-men in particular, to let them live or to let the tribesmen kill them off, as our Professor Challenger is trying to arrange the protection of the species, for scientific value, but also is he interfering with the natural evolution of this place caught in a timewarp? As the other men of the expedition have pity for the ape-men, it is the adventurer/hunter who believes they should be killed, and hence the argument.

A really gung ho energetic cast is featured, that seems completely devoted to doing justice to the material, as well as having a good time. The only sour note among the casting is the inclusion of Peter Falk, as the religious zealot, as the part is a good one, bringing to bear one of the points of the film, creationism vs. evolution, however, he is such a "modern" type of character, or perhaps he is simply over-acting here: In either case, it is a relief his character is only a supporting role.

Of course, there's the obligatory addition of a pretty female to the cast, but the film veers off expected course here, as it doesn't make the younger men vie for her attention, neither do the older men treat her as a daughter. In fact, of the younger men, the adventurer is at first intrigued (more by habit, than anything else) then just as swiftly diverted by the presence of the Indian chief's daughter, while the journalist is protective of Agnes' virtue, but he's caught up in his romantic fancies of the woman he left back home (a good job by the actress playing Gladys, as in her brief scenes we see she is hardly worthy of this man's devotion and we only expect her to be married by the time he gets back). The excuse for the inclusion of the female, according to the documentary included on disk 2, is that in the time period of filming, to not have a female would have been ridiculous, completely ignoring the fact this story isn't taking place in modern times. In reality, the inclusion of a female presence in adventure films of any type genre is to show the male characters on screen in a heterosexual light. This is odd here, because the journalist and the adventurer are the only characters on-screen that have any chemistry with each other.

Over the scope of the film, all of the characters grow in knowledge: The skeptical professor learns the value of not clinging to hard facts as they might have turned out to be illusions, and the professor who has led the expedition learns that personal glory is less important than the individual search for truth and knowledge. The journalist realizes that taken from his natural city-bred environment he is hardly a wilting flower, and the adventurer learns to value something - and people - over the temporary satisfaction garnered from cheap thrills. The four men who began the expedition as strangers and even in animosity, have formed a lasting bonding and you can see that progression in the characters on-screen. That kind of investment in the characters, over the marquee value of special effects, is what makes this version highly commendable. July 26, 2007

Political Correctness Does Not Improve It

If you make a point of calling attention to the rampant anti-Christian bias in modern movies and television long enough, you will eventually encounter the only possible lucid counter argument -- not every fictional character is intended as a commentary; sometimes a bad Christian character is just an interesting character, nothing more. There are two responses to this, one general, one specific. The general one is, "Fine, explain why the ratio of 'good' Christian characters to 'bad' Christian characters works out to ZERO," and the specific one is, "Fine, explain why this particular racist, sexist, homophobe, liar, criminal, hypocrite, rapist, murderer, etc., needed to be a Christian, too." However, the basic point is a valid one; unless the author tells you (and tells you the truth) you have no way of knowing for certain...

with one exception. If a work of fiction LACKING an evil Christian character is adapted and an evil Christian character now appears in the finished work, you've got your anti-Christian bigot dead to rights with no possible excuse. That is the case with this lavish BBC TV dramatization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World". In the novel our heroes are betrayed and trapped on the inaccessible plateau by a couple of "villainous half-breeds" seeking revenge against Lord Roxton for his personal campaign against slavers; in this adaptation the betrayer is a crazed Christian missionary, played by Peter Falk, unable to face the reality of the existence of dinosaurs. Now I don't fault the screenwriter for wanting to tone down the strong smell of racism inherent in the original characterization but replacing it with anti-Christian bigotry is not an improvement. Nor does it make any logical sense. At least after their initial skepticism over the genuineness of fossils subsided, the response of creationists was not to question the EXISTENCE of dinosaurs but rather evolutionists' explanation for HOW they came to exist. Furthermore the response of Christians who now found their beliefs irreconcilable with evolution was not violence but rather apostasy. In short Peter Falk's character is nothing but a slander to Christianity that reveals something dark about the screenwriter and not the offended viewer.

If that was all that was wrong, one might pass over it; asking for the sort of sensitivity and respect the industry displays towards all other religions is a complete waste of time. However, the screenwriter insisted on ruining the ending as well. The other innovations are less damaging. The addition of the by now required female character is handled better than it usually is; and the inevitable shift in sympathies from the natives to the ape-men is only partially unjustified and that mainly by the idiocy of an ending:

After the return to England, after the escape of the pterodactyl our heroes INEXPLICABLY decide to LIE, to pretend it is all a hoax and that they have discovered nothing. The staggering stupidity of this is worth examining in some detail. First, our heroes have totally sacrificed their integrities, their reputations, and in fact their careers because nobody is likely to employ or fund reporters or scientists who have admitted lying or to believe them if they ever again claim something that's the least bit in question. Second, what has their sacrifice gained? The Lost World will now be left to the tender mercies of the natives, you know, the people who when last seen were enthusiastically trying to exterminate the ape-men and make use of the White Man's technology to become more efficient killers! Though the PC mindset is incapable of grasping the concept, as set up by the plot, the only way the primitive creatures of the Lost World could POSSIBLY have been preserved alive would have been for a bunch of imperialistically inclined Europeans to have INSISTED on it with the threat of military force to back it up after our heroes had convinced people they were telling the truth. As it was left by the screenplay, when scientists finally rediscover the Lost World, all they will find is a bunch of natives... with some GREAT stories about how their grandfathers wiped out all the monsters. July 26, 2007

Okay beginning and middle, but good ending

I read Doyle's "The Lost World" when in college, and have been waiting for a full-length movie adaptation of it since then. Finally, this adaptation came out, first on cable, and then on DVD. Seeing it twice, I was disappointed both times. First, the movie plot is nowhere near the book's plot. Extra characters have been included that should not have been, probably out of political correctness. Some of the special effects also looked kind of fake; for example some of the dinosaurs moved awkwardly. The only memorable part of the movie was in the end when Bob Hoskin's character lies to his scientific peers after realizing what they would do to his Lost World. I wonder how many natural explorers have done similar things in their careers? Overall, the book is more enjoyable than the movie. July 22, 2007

Good adaptation of Conan Doyle's classic

A very well made TV adaptation of Conan Doyle's 1912 classic. The plot (of the movie as well as the book) has Professor Challenger (Bob Hoskins) leading an expedition to an isolated region of the Amazon, where it is believed prehistoric creatures have survived. Conan Doyle had based his book on the travels to the isolated Roraima region (the border zone between Brazil, Venezuela and Guyana where flat top mountains named tepuis predominate) by explorer Everard Im Thurn. This miniseries was shot in New Zealand (standing in for the Amazon), and the movie deviates from the book in only a minor questions: having a female character in the expedition (played by the fine Irish actress Elaine Cassidy), and, more controversially, a different ending. But the movie is very well made, very exciting, as well as informative. March 6, 2007

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