Road To Rebirth: A Jurassic Podcast
It’s 2025 and we have a new ‘Jurassic’ film releasing! With original JP screenwriter returning to write the new film and Godzilla and Rogue One director Gareth Edwards taking the reins excitement couldn’t be higher so what better time to revisit where it all started. I will be taking a deep dive in to the original Crichton novels and all the films and tv series over the next few months leading up to the July 2nd release date.
Road To Rebirth: A Jurassic Podcast
The Lost World: A Novel (1995) with Guy Adams and James Lovegrove
I think genius of Michael Crichton lies not in his warmth but in his coldness – the clinical precision with which he constructed scientifically plausible nightmares that became billion-dollar franchises.
Speaking with authors Guy Adams and James Lovegrove, I explore how Crichton – the Harvard-educated doctor turned novelist – approached storytelling like a surgical procedure, meticulously researching cutting-edge science and reducing his sleep hours as deadlines approached. This methodical approach yielded novels with remarkable staying power but often lacking emotional resonance, making Steven Spielberg the perfect collaborator to inject heart into his intellectual exercises.
The ‘Jurassic Park’ we know and love represents this perfect symbiosis – Crichton's scientific foundation supporting Spielberg's emotional architecture. While the novel features brutal, extended death scenes described from the victims' perspectives, Spielberg knew exactly how to make these moments both thrilling and accessible. As Adams notes, "The fear comes from the absence of humanity," making Crichton's work particularly effective at creating genuine dread.
Our conversation delves deep into The Lost World – Crichton's only sequel – and how it explores themes of evolution, extinction, and humanity's capacity for self-destruction. With the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth directed by Gareth Edwards we speculate whether the franchise might return to some of Crichton's colder, more scientific sensibilities, potentially creating dinosaurs that feel genuinely terrifying again.
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This is just a warning to say that this episode features spoilers, mild language and lots of talk about dinosaurs. Now, if that's not for you, then drop what you're doing and leave now. Hello, and welcome back to Road to Rebirth. I'm Roland Squire. Each week in the lead up to Jurassic World Rebirth releasing this July, I'm sitting down with a guest to discuss an entry or aspect of the Jurassic franchise. Now, before I get into today's two interviews, I've got to share with you.
Speaker 1:We've had some fairly sizable Rebirth news, and that is that two-time Oscar-winning composer, alexander Desplat, will be scoring the new film. This is really exciting news after a few weeks of rumours swirling around about who actually would do it. But Desplat has worked with Gareth Edwards before on Godzilla, which is a thunderously amazing score in my opinion and borrows a lot of cues from the 1954 original Godzilla. He was down to score the music for Rogue One, but due to the trouble that film had in post-production, it never happened and instead was replaced by Michael Giacchino. Lots of Jurassic connections there for you. Fingers crossed that that doesn't actually happen this time. I mean, the video they've released is him scoring the film. So you'd think this film was pretty much locked in for the score to be recorded. But there we are. He's also scored the last few Harry Potter films and when you watch those films, when Williams doesn't score the Harry Potter films, it feels a bit flat, until, that is, desplat comes on board and we suddenly return to those lush scores and themes that Williams wrote. And it's interesting, looking at Desplat's filmography. He mainly does dramas, whether they be big budget or little budget, and things like the Wes Anderson films he's done. Obviously he won the Oscar for Shape of Water and for Grand Budapest Hotel, but Godzilla, when you look at it at his film scores it sticks out a little bit. So it's interesting what he's going to bring to this film. But he managed to honour John Williams very nicely with his work on the Harry Potter films, so I'm confident he's going to do exactly the same for this.
Speaker 1:Now onto today's episode Coming up. I've got the second part of my interview with James Lovegrove, but first I caught up with author Guy Adams to chat about his thoughts about Crichton. We've got so much to get through, so let's just dive straight in. Got so much to get through, so let's just dive straight in. Please. Welcome to the podcast, guy Adams. Hi Guy, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. Thank you very much, Roland. I'm very happy to be here. Shall I explain who I am?
Speaker 1:Yes, no, yeah, just for people who are not familiar with your work. Yeah, that'd be great.
Speaker 2:The vast majority out there. So I'm a writer. I've written far too many books. I've written far too many comics. I've written far too much audio drama. Yeah, I write a lot of special features for Blu-rays and Tiki Arrow.
Speaker 1:Sometimes Radiance, it's a thing, it's my sideline, it's my little hyper-focus obsession that I like to run on the side, wondering today whether we could talk about michael crichton and uh kind of explore a little bit more of his adaptations and film work, I suppose, but also his, his work as a, as an author. I was wondering what your take on crichton is, as an author yourself, I mean, I are you a fan of?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I'm a fan. I admire what he achieved, I think. Think Crichton was an amazing machine, a really well-tooled machine for crafting plot for television and film. Writers can often be really useless at monetizing themselves. They're terrible at monetizing themselves. They're terrible at having any confidence in themselves. These tend to be the the failures most writers. I think crichton excelled at both of those two things. Yeah, yes, yeah, art and assailable confidence. In fact, could not handle criticism at all, um so perhaps, and not quite as confident as he comes across, but but was certainly wonderful at monetizing his words.
Speaker 2:And if that sounds harsh, I don't necessarily mean it to. There's nothing wrong with being able to monetize one's skills. That's the dream, isn't it, for most people to be able to find the thing that they can do, and they can do happily, and be able to survive off it all. I'm not making a sort of snobbish judgment on that, but I think that that is his greatest skill and I remember he was, if he first started selling uh essays to fellow students really, um, harvard, I presume, because he went to harvard um yeah he.
Speaker 2:he wrote essays for the other students and would sell them to them so that they didn't have to do their own coursework. So from the off, you know, he's figuring out how to make money out of writing and paid his way through medical school by writing pulp novels and what most of us have. Certainly, my parents made a big fuss. I wanted to be an actor, actually, rather than a writer when I was young, but they made a big fuss about you know you need to have a proper job. You need something to fall back on. You know most parents dream of their children becoming something as secure and rarefied as a doctor.
Speaker 2:You know he's paying to become a doctor, as if that's the sideline, by writing pulp crime novels with John.
Speaker 1:Lange. Yeah, the John Lange.
Speaker 2:Which I haven't read, actually I don't know. I I sort of, I sort of imagine I probably quite like that, I like, I, I like the idea of crichton pulpier than crichton actually is.
Speaker 2:I think crichton's quite cold, quite yeah, yeah uh, I think you know, from a person taste point of view, what what crichton would benefit from, is, is, is more pulpishness, more, uh, you know, emotion and raw playfulness even perhaps. So you know it's, it's the that the strength of doing that I think is, is, is quite profound. Most of us, you know, we, we, I, I, I the amount of doubt I have every time I type a bloody line. It's infuriating. You know, I kind of know on a, on a, on a gut level, that I'm, I'm good at what I do. You know I can write, I'm okay. You know the effort it takes to sort of put that out into the world and to fight for it.
Speaker 2:You know to actually have the confidence, so I envy that hugely. I think that was a great thing he had yeah, there's a.
Speaker 1:Do you know cal new? There's a. Do you know Cal Newport? He's a science professor and author. He does lots of stuff on productivity, but he wrote one of his pieces that he wrote years ago was to do with the difference between somebody like Michael Crichton and John Grisham and taking, like Crichton, who was somebody who was constantly changing his, what he wanted to research or what he wanted to talk about, he needed his work to really further those ideas of his research or something that he's read and wanted to be involved in the adaptations of everything. Have control. He wanted to have control of his own work, whereas John Grisham is a writer to kind of seemingly a writer to um, alleviate the stresses of everyday life. He is quite happy to write a couple of books a year, have a few hollywood conversations and then live a nice peaceful life, whereas crichton is always looking to disrupt, I suppose, um kind of everything that he comes into contact with.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it feels like it does and and there's I can be I can be terribly guilty of, of trying to recognize sort of mental states in people. But his writing process of how he would do nothing but right and he would extend, no decrease the amount of sleep he had day after day so that he was getting balanced. When I had four hours sleep by the time he was close to to delivery. I can relate to that, being, um, I'm autistic adhd, so that means that when I have to come and create, uh, usually I need the the, the pure, terrifying scream of deadline to to get anything out of me. I need the panic. To get anything out of me, I need the panic, whereas we all know that actually you should just be wonderfully calmly writing a thousand words a day or two thousand words a day, whatever your comfortable output is, and never pushing beyond that, never causing the stress and just therefore always being really well-structured. But a man like Crichton who decides nothing else can happen. You know he eats the same food every day.
Speaker 2:He uh works seven days a week okay, however many hours a day, that then saying, extending until he's finished, that is someone that is that is utterly hyper, focusing on getting that book done. Yes, uh, and wrote very. Therefore, you know, is that nothing else exists except that book and then, as you say, probably goes back to what is really interesting, in which is whatever uh, latest article in in um scientific american or whatever that is, has tickled his synapses at that point. But I mean, it's very obsessive work ethic and work behavior. It is probably, you know, it's, it's the orange and the squeezer, isn't it? It's really just eviscerating himself to get the book out and then moving on yeah, is there any fun in that process?
Speaker 1:yeah, I wonder michael crone ever fun, that's mine, chris and and this is quite nice nicely makes me lead on and talk about his adaptations, because he was writing as an author and then, quickly after the release of Andromeda Strain in 1971, which was directed by Robert Wise, he then suddenly was propelled into Hollywood and was writing and directing almost instantly.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm going to do this now, I'm going to be a director, I'm going to be a writer for film, for a lot of his adaptations is what I spoke to James about a couple of weeks ago and the fact that he doesn't, he doesn't get humans, he it's, he doesn't, it's more, it's more what they can do for him, and so it seems like with his adaptations, he needs other people to come on and provide the human element. And the one that came after jurassic park, which was twister, which I've actually just watched this morning for the first time since probably about 1997 I I read that josh whedon was brought in um to, I suppose, add some humor and fun to the character's dialogue where josh whedon was your go-to person at that point for for really warm human ink.
Speaker 2:We don't look back on that and find that bizarre, but he was. Marvel used him for the same reasons. I always think it's interesting that probably Crichton that is cinematically most perfect is pairing with Spielberg, who is the heart on screen you'll ever see.
Speaker 2:It's wrong to say Spielberg's not cerebral. He's got a good brain on him, but he feels, uh, he is about the experiential creation of the story. It's not about the intellectual exercise of isn't that an interesting idea? It's about how? How do I now experience that idea? And crichton needed that so desperately.
Speaker 2:Your conversation with James. James, we're all friends, but before I sound like I'm dissing Lovegrove, I've not made an interesting point for me. He was talking about how, in the book, crichton's explanation of how dinosaurs are created is very scientific and quite you know and grounded. And then you get to the film and I think James felt it was. He didn't like the idea that Spielberg turned it into this snappy moment. That's an animated sequence with you know your cuddly doctor explaining to the kids how they made dinosaurs, whereas to me I think that's absolutely genius storytelling to take to take you know what, what could be very dense material and go I know how I deliver it. I'll deliver it as if it's a theme park, right, and and it's, it's fire the cartoon and boom. That's how we did it. Let's move on, because that's not actually the interesting thing. I don't care how you made dinosaurs, we just we want to see the dinosaurs.
Speaker 1:For me, that's, that's spielberg at his best, really yeah, I think, I think that's true and I think, yeah, that combination between spielberg and crichton worked really well and that's how twister came out of that was this can wanting to continue that relationship that they had and, obviously, er, that they wrote together as well, produced, you know, created together and you feel twister's got heart.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, I've not. I've never seen twister.
Speaker 1:Twister's one that's passed me by, but twister, take the crichton sort of science and give it lots of heart yeah, I think it's not based on a book, so it's not based on an original crichton book, but I think it's a really good depiction of a crichton story on screen. Yeah, twister does a good job of blending the science and the characters together and it's all. It's very that. His stories are very simple. They're always to do with money and science, and in twister you have one set of storm chasers that are very much the ones with no money, but they do it for the science. And then you've got the night crawlers, who are sponsored by a big tv company to go and chase the, the tornadoes, and they're doing it for the money and not the science. And so obviously we want to follow Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton and Philip Seymour Hoffman as well. What adaptations have you seen stand out for you for Crichton?
Speaker 2:Weirdly, I always quite loved the first Great Train Robbery. I wonder if I'd still like it now, I must admit. But I adored that film for years, when I was young, I think. Now I look at it and I I kind of squint at its use of its, its solitary female character, whereas when I'm at, when I was a kid, I wouldn't have known that.
Speaker 2:I'm just, I'm just staring at connery and particularly donald sutherland because I love donald sutherland. But you know, I liked, I liked the fun of that, the fun of the victorian heist. I think I for me, is is best when he is fun, when there is a sense of joy to him. And that's difficult because, as you say, it's, it's, it's not, it doesn't always come naturally. I don't think to him. I remember eaters of the the dead. What was the? The film was called eaters of the dead was it.
Speaker 2:It's um the 13th warrior yeah, yeah, yeah, which I was really excited about, and then I watched it and again it just feels flat, yeah, and actually crichton came on board to do the reshoots after test screenings weren't very good yeah, so he replaced john john mcternan there's the weird thing with um.
Speaker 2:Was it rising sun where? Yes, that's one one I've never seen, actually well, he distanced himself from that because he didn't like the fact the director of that. He felt that he was softening the anti-Japanese sort of stance of the story. Basically, it wasn't quite racist enough for it, he distanced himself from it. It's quite a bizarre line to take?
Speaker 1:And have you seen what's your take on, like terminal man or um westworld?
Speaker 2:well, terminal man is a rare case, I think, where actually it is pure crichton cold and yet crichton's not that involved in it, which is interesting.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's the I mean the idea obviously is his coins and that the the story is his crimes, but he wasn't particularly involved in the production of the film, uh, and yet it has that.
Speaker 2:Uh, there's a real quality to some 70s sci-fi where it feels like this sort of this dog whistle, whine, of really clinical kind of um, you know, the, the colors and the feel of the film are blues and cold and george, uh seagull, who's such a warm, avuncular former in this is is, is utterly against type, which, again, is that's really interesting. I I like it more than I, more than I understand why I can. I can think of lots of reasons why I shouldn't like it's. It's sort of austerity and yet it works. I think, I think, I think perhaps that's the key to to adapting crutch, and you've either got to just shovel in the warmth and the heart or you really lean into that scalpel edge of of cold and and create something that for an hour and a half really gives you a shiver yeah, that cold, that yeah, and the idea that the coldness is scary, and I think that is really prominent in andromeda strain.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's really interesting the way you don't have a villain that you can see but there is so much tension in that film and in that story that it just works. I don't think that would have worked in the 80s. I think it needed to be a 70s film. The fear comes from being the absence of humanity.
Speaker 2:I think these are stories he was perfectly built to tell. And again, if that sounds critical, I don't necessarily mean it to. We can't all be big bundles of emotional empathy. I don't feel he possessed much in the way of empathy. The response is he's had to a few things. His attitude towards critics and things like that is violent and quite violent times. You know, there's a real, there was a cruelty to, to crichton. So I I don't think he was a warm human and so I think, if, if, when he leans into that aspect, uh, that's always going to be storytelling. That's perfect for him. You know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to move away from the word cold, but it it's, it is a perfect. It is that the the overriding feeling I have. And so, as you were saying about the cinema, so much 70s cinema thrives off that I don't know what happened to us culturally, what lots of awful things happened to us culturally.
Speaker 2:So, come the 80s, we we wanted neon and glow and money I don't know the friends of Eddie Coyle pops in my head as an example of this. We're all the way from Crichton, but one of those, that sort of storytelling where you're actually pulled back from the people.
Speaker 2:You just watch them over there doing something and what they're doing isn't kind, it isn't good and you're not brought into them, You're not up here in that gang, but you are a chilly little fly on the wall. You know watching the awful occur. And I think, Crichton, you know there was a version of Jurassic Park. That is just an awful horror film.
Speaker 1:Yes yeah.
Speaker 1:Bleak, he takes a real well. Well, it's not pleasure, it's just in. The deaths in the book are all from the character's point of view and they're all extended where they suddenly realize where they went wrong in life and it's the fact that their head is in the mouth of an of a dinosaur and they realise that their life is at an end. And he extends those moments quite a lot in the book, particularly in the Lost World, lewis Dodgson, who gets carried away into the forest by an adult T-Rex to be fed to the young. And it is a really horrific ending to this character, even though he's the villain of the piece, I suppose. But it's just the extent that he goes to and, yeah, that cold distance that he has from those characters where he just plants himself in them and just imagines what it would be like to be eaten alive by three tiny t-rexes I accused him of having no empathy see how wrong I was which do you prefer and or do you do you love both as sort of separate things?
Speaker 2:where do you do you prefer that I think that that's.
Speaker 1:That's what's quite good about drastic park is that. I think that it's a good, as I I spoke to Derek last week. It's a good adaptation, but also a bad adaptation. It takes everything that you need from the book and adds everything that the book doesn't have. I think you can have both. I think you can enjoy both nicely. New film Jurassic World Rebirth will probably add in a bit more of that. Crichton coldness We've got Gareth Edwards on board as the director and he is a director. I think that comes out of his love of those 1970s science fiction thrillers.
Speaker 2:Monsters, I think is just superb. It's beautiful. The first godzilla film we did less so, but it feels very it doesn't feel entirely gareth edwards to me, but I may be wrong that it stumbles in places where I wouldn't expect him to do so, but that's, you know, he's working for a big studio, he's he's a lot of notes. What I'd quite like, um, what I'm hoping, is that this, this is a film that didn't get a lot of notes, or if it did, they were all from Scarlet Yard. I trust her on that. I mean, it's part of a huge subject that is the monstrous on film.
Speaker 2:But I think the skill of giving heft to the monstrous, giving you know my monsters, succeeds. You see so little of them, uh, and I'm not going to lean into the the cliche of, you know, the less you show the better, because that's it depends who you are, it depends what your talents are. You know, it's just very easy bullshit that one. Uh, it can be effective. Equally it can be pointless. But you know, he showed very little because he couldn't afford to. He was doing his own special effects on a laptop. But it creates this godlike sense of the monsters being so terrifyingly unassailable they are. They are properly remotely unknown.
Speaker 2:You know, when you're making a monster movie, I think the ability to turn your pixels into peril is quite key. We can enjoy the spectacle, and I think Godzilla often has spectacle. And Godzilla the beast has gravity, it has heft, it has a sinewy quality. At no point in the film did I ever feel fearful of the monsters on screen, and I'll be interested to see what we have here, because I think that's that's the real key to any jurassic park film is if you can try and find that balance. Where we're? You know, oh fuck, it's a diplodocus, you know, and I want, I want to be able to say that reading of a, you just have to put a qualification on this podcast for the stupidest sentence imaginable. You will now have to put that because I just said that.
Speaker 1:So you're going to come back in a couple of weeks and we're going to talk about the creation of monster movies and talk about Godzilla, jaws, alien. The Thing I was wondering, before we leave what you think the lasting legacy of Michael Crichton is.
Speaker 2:It's a really cynical answer. And that's just the sheer weight of product, and I'm thinking in cinematic, corporate terms here of franchise. You know, you think purely the sheer gravitational weight. That is ER, that is the jurassic park franchise, westworld. You know the other thing part that goes wrong these, these are a massive islands. I'm talking about wes craven in a, in an article at the moment, and you have this weirdness of wes craven managing to sort of go. I'll tell you what, what? I'll have two major franchises. I'll create two big islands in cinema. And I think Crichton has a lot Because all of those other films are successful and continue to roll on to be successful.
Speaker 2:We don't often talk about disclosure, but it's still making someone a lot of money somewhere. Probably. I presume it continues to pay for itself quite handsomely. That's not to be sort of sniffed at. Really.
Speaker 2:It may not seem like an artistic consideration, but if you just look at on the pure level of how many people working in this industry of have received regular paychecks thanks to these huge, huge sort of icebergs of commercial stuff that have existed because of crime, it's quite something, you know. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, I don't think so. I don't think so. Really, it's a different consideration. It's not the consideration most of us, sort of as creatives, would want someone to say.
Speaker 2:Perhaps I don't think he would mind it, though I think, for me to say that you know the wound slightly, but you know I. I think that's quite an achievement and I can't think of many writers that did it. So you know you could, you can steven king, but to have done it in so many different areas, you know medicals yeah, there is a monster movie franchise that isn't for kids, but skews family. You know all these different islands of stuff that are so different from each other while they may have this thread through them. I think that's quite something. Most people find one thing hit at it and if they're really lucky, they succeed.
Speaker 2:You know he succeeded in a lot of different areas. You know good for him. You know I'm good for him.
Speaker 1:If we shift and talk about the sequel, which is a big moment for Michael Crichton, this is the only sequel that Michael Crichton wrote, so that was released in 1995, I believe.
Speaker 3:He didn't want to do it initially because, as you say, he'd never written a sequel before. But I don't think anyone could deny how successful the film was and therefore the book would have been caught up in the slipstream had it not already been the first one in its own right. I think the case is that Spielberg wanted to make a sequel and so Crichton said I mean, mean, he's quite the same. A sequel was a very difficult structural problem because it has to be the same but different. If it's really the same, then it's the same, and if it's really different, then it's not a sequel. So it's in some funny intermediate territory. And, uh, I have to say that there is a sense of the lost world that she's not comfortable as comfortable with it as he was with the first book. It's, it's a. It's a very different proposition and, uh, there are, you know, dissimilarities, but it's interesting that you do. I certainly got the sense, reading it the first time around, that she wasn't happy with it and he was less short-footed with it than he was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's fair to say, definitely. I think it was something that was spielberg persuaded him to do, because he didn't want to do a drastic part sequel without michael crichton being involved and providing the the bedrock um narrative for him yes, you can see that in the in the movie spiel, spielberg has filleted the best bits out of the book and then added an awful lot else.
Speaker 3:I think we totally corrupted the screenplay and he did the first bit, and so between them they cundered up an awful lot more and again, you know, they've taken away the scientific arguments and the intellectual cut thrust but replaced it with certainly at times a very exciting film with one or two incredibly memorable sequences in it. But something has been lost along the way, no pun intended. At the same time, I think the film version is the better version of the book and maybe Crichton didn't want to write it another thrill ride in the mode of the Ricky, and Ricky, dressed Up, did what he wanted to do, perhaps in the knowledge that Spielberg would come along and Spielberg eyes it.
Speaker 1:It must be a very because it is a very different story. So we get away from that and I never get the idea of how connected the island that they go to is to the original Jurassic Park. It borrows its title from Arthur Conan Doyle's dinosaur story, the original literary dinosaur story. Do you think he's trying to make allusions to that in the fact that this, even though the dinosaur manufactures and is in gen again, but it almost has a feeling that this could be somewhere lost to time?
Speaker 3:well he said. I mean there are a couple of direct references because he talks about a paleontologist called john roxton who's named after a character in conan doyle of the lord john roxton. So a couple of casual mentions. My feeling is that, yeah, in the in the novel, this is a kind of a pre-range version of jurassic park. Yeah, it's like, uh, you know blue sky, thinking out of the box place where they could just tinker around and and see what comes out of it. But the uh I mean for those who don't know the lost world, the the arthur ken doyle book is is set on top of a plateau in South America that's been so isolated from the rest of evolution that dinosaurs still roam there, as do a sort of tribe of primitive ape men as well. It's a wonderful book, I mean. I love it.
Speaker 3:And it's the one that introduced the world to Professor Challenger, who's Ken Doyle's second known character. There is this enormous, booming bearded scientist, slash explorer, who just rides, rush on over everyone. He's rather wonderful. I think you're right. I think Crichton wanted to do that kind of what if they were just dinosaurs for no good reason? But let's just have some fun with these dinosaurs who've created their own ecosystem, who are just roaming wild and see what happens with that and and then put people into that and this time it's like Jurassic Park, but there are no guardrails, there's no security system. It's uncontained, it's unconstrained, it's much less safe and therefore for the readers is the greater potential for the dengue incitement and um diney chomping people what was your first reaction to, uh, the lost world coming out?
Speaker 1:did you read it all in one go?
Speaker 3:I not quite, but funnily enough, I reviewed it for the science fiction magazine interzone um, the late lamented interzone at the time and I was rather sniffy about it and I do regret that because having reread it recently uh, for this podcast I enjoyed it a lot more the second time around the first time around I was I said something like uh, crichton has to twist plot and motivation into pretzel shapes and although there is the occasional palm sweat moment, for the most part the t-rex chasers and raptor attacks and all-terrain vehicle crashes are lackluster and perfunctory.
Speaker 3:They're not because they belong but because they are expected. Um, and obviously that you know slightly negative review harmed michael crichton's career terribly and he never wrote it again and I do regret it. I do think I was wrong. It is as sequels go. I don't think he could have done anything different and I don't think he could have done it any better. I think the one thing I was disappointed by was the fact that he brought children into it again, because for me one of the weak points of Jurassic Park, the novel, are the kids. I would much rather they hadn't been there.
Speaker 1:Um, and they'll say it's at writing. Children, I don't think it's not.
Speaker 3:They have to be super smart, you know? And uh, you know, in jurassic park there's, I think tim is a sort of computer whiz and in lost world, army is the computer whiz. Yeah, and they are there to ask questions of the other characters so that they can be info dumped with all the things that we, as the readers need to know. Um, you're right, he's not good at them. And uh, and I think ian spielberg acknowledged that because in this in the book, there are two kids, kelly and arby, and in the film they get sort of uh telescoped into the one kid, kelly, who is Jeff Goldblum's daughter, which is nice, because it needs to give a slightly more plausible reason for being there, for stirring away and getting onto Idla, nidla or Sona sorry, the second island Whereas in the book I'm not quite sure why that would happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting the kind of way that he doesn't. Crichton doesn't like the idea of families and connected relationships. You know you get a relationship between harding, like sarah harding who's there, and it's hinted that they've had a relationship in the past yeah, yeah but again it's not as explicit as being the girlfriend which he's turned into for the film version and kelly is the daughter of ian malcolm, so it's whereas spielberg is all about family and family connections and the relationships, however strained they can be, um that's.
Speaker 1:That's not part of crichton's wheelhouse at all and you can also see that.
Speaker 3:Spielberg looked at the first film and thought everyone loves Bob Peck as Muldoon British Hunter, so let's get Pete Costlethwait as another British Hunter.
Speaker 1:He's out there my namesake actually, because he's Roland Tembo is what he's called that's it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know both yes, and both are great actors, both no longer women, but Pete Costlethate was great in the role as well. But also there were many more people, because there's a whole army of hunters in the film that are there essentially to be wiped out by the dinosaurs, and that creates more spectacle. And whenever I approach, let's say, a horror film, I always want there to be lots of parody, but I also want there to be lots of deaths, and if it's a turn, you've got a limited palette and you think, well, yeah, we'll see a few deaths, but let's go for a wholesale story, as Spielberg does in Marcel.
Speaker 1:What's interesting about the book? It's a much darker story to Jurassic Park in its areas, the idea that the heightened sense of danger that's around every corner the dinosaurs feel more brutal. You get the velociraptors who just eviscerate each other at any given moment. They're not fully integrated animals. They feel more like monsters, the velociraptors in both Jurassicassic park, but very much more so in the lost world and the novel deals with um, like natural selection and adaptation yes, and evolution as well yes, evolution is the big, is the big buzzword, rather than chaos theory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in, in, in in the sequel yes it's managed to survive and he's obviously been doing some reading while he was laid up in the Costa Rican hospital. Yeah, I know what I'm annoyed with now. It's evolution.
Speaker 3:I'm going to grow lots of lectures about evolution, even while we're being chased by dinosaurs. Well, I was going to say that not only are the dinosaurs more brutal, but the people are more brutal, because there is sarah harding on the way over on the boat over to to isla sauna. She's pushed off the boat by loris dodgson, who is the head of bios in the bible, uh, and she luckily survives and gets to shore and then later, when she gets a chance to kill dodgson, she doesn't hesitate but takes no words. She pushes him out from under the car, he gets picked up by a T-Rex, taken to the T-Rex nest and there the parent T-Rex lets the brood of younger T-Rexes just basically learn how to kill by practicing on Lewis Dodgson, and it's a very nasty scene. Generally, you get the feeling that this is nature in red and tooth and claw, both for the dinosaurs and for the humans as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if we were talking about Elon Musk, he feels like the Elon Musk of this book.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nedry went out to try and get him the embryos. He failed. He's not going to fail this time and they're going to get the eggs and I love all those scenes with the, the box that emits the noise to get rid of the dinosaurs, then they can go in and get it's very effective and yeah I think the first time I read it I I like you was, it was it's.
Speaker 1:It was just so down on everything. It felt like when I first read it I didn't get the excitement that I got from reading jurassic park or the wonder of the film in the lost world. It felt like a completely different beast. And actually reading it the second time, I've enjoyed it a lot more. There's there's elements that I can see within the story that I'm like why haven't they done any of these bits in the films? It's all, it's all sitting there. Yeah, and definitely Lewis Dodgson as this. He's the villain of the piece he's the Hammond of. I take it Hammond's the villain of the piece he's the Hammond of. I take it Hammond is the villain of Jurassic Park.
Speaker 3:You have to think that someone has to be, because the dinosaurs are actually made out of neutral. I wonder if the choice of Lewis Dodgson's name because it's a sort of amalgamation of Lewis Carroll, and which Dodgson was Lewis Carroll and that seems to be a deliberate choice, as though I know he's in the first book but in this, in in the lost world, he's there. This is sort of almost a fantasy, you know, like alice through the looking glass or alice in wonderland. This is a wonderland, but an incredibly dangerous one oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd never.
Speaker 3:I'd never have made that connection between his name and, yeah, I just it seems too old, seems too cracking, is too smart person not to realize. And yeah, I just it seems too old, seems too christian, is too smart person not to realize that yeah I haven't said which.
Speaker 3:In um uh rising sun, the main character is called john connor and I always wondered like, have you actually? Do you actually watch the terminating one? There's quite a well-known john connor who's been out. All you know it's that book from out in the sort of 90s, um. So I do wonder you know how plugged into popular culture Michael Crichton did, but I don't think he would have done Lewis Dobson's name by mistake.
Speaker 1:No, that feels like a deliberate addition and it's interesting that the world that they go into, the lost world, it feels like um arthur conan doyle's impenetrable and you just go. Why on earth would anybody ever make anything here?
Speaker 3:well, I think I mean that because the, the dinosaurs on the lasagna, are fated to die. Their lifespans have been artificially shortened um, uh, there's something about that. They're fed um, there's something about they're fed sheep dead sheep and that could create prions which, essentially, are going to kill them. And also the ecosystem is going to fail because there aren't enough herbivores to support the carnivores, so the carnivores are going to eat all herbivores and have nothing left to eat apart from each other, and it's all going to die out. So it is the sense that this is a mad dude world, and perhaps Christ might make me a point here about. We live in a mad dude world, and Lausanne is just a sort of microcosm of that and we are rapidly consuming our resources and we too will go the way of the dinosaurs.
Speaker 3:What if I can do a quotation here? Malcolm actually says something like I sometimes think that we're a kind of plague that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think maybe that's our function. Maybe every few dions, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, and there's a lot about natural selection as well. You know markham is also an expert on that and um, you know they talk about how darwin's theory of evolution um is fine up to a point that doesn't take into account the sort of there are other factors weighing in on it. Contemporary scientific thinking seems to be sort of trying to add to the whole theory that it isn't just about survival of the fittest but survival of the species that's capable of cooperation and acting for the good of all of society, rather than just who you can eat food, and I think that's an interesting thing. It sort of runs counter to the argument that the lost world the island presents, which is that we are the rapacity, will result in extinction. Ian Malcolm, when he talks about natural selection, suggests perhaps he may be the capacity to look after one another and work as a society, maybe what saves us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can see the difficulty that Spielberg had. Imagine being presented with the Lost World, the manuscript, and having to make that into your film Again, like Jurassic Park. But it feels even more so with the Lost World, the big ideas that Crichton is putting in, that you can't have an action film with these stop moments of malcolm talking about kind of the state of the world yeah you know, essentially telling the audience you're all going to die.
Speaker 1:You might not be eaten by dinosaurs, but you'll eat each other sort of thing yeah, you can have an action film that does that.
Speaker 3:But then that's the matrix sequence, where they stop and sort of have, and then everyone goes, no thanks. No, you're right, I mean, spillboat wants it. Basically, we've got a bigger budget. Um, the uh, computer graphics have improved by leaps and bounds already, so we can have many, many more dinosaurs and do an awful lot more so. So let's take elements like the baby t-rex with the broken leg and, um, the you know the, the super cool souped up land cruisers and or and the motorbike chase as well.
Speaker 3:I think there's motorbikes in there so, yeah, yeah, there's the motorbike that kind of at the big when they go through the hunter scene and they go through the legs of all the dinosaurs and stuff, yeah, yeah so he takes all the good bits, all the exciting bits, and he has to, by, you know, by reason of, uh, cinematic excitement, get rid of all the other stuff, because no one wants to hang around for that. Everyone wants to see dinosaurs chasing and chomping, and I mean scaring us and he also gets rid of.
Speaker 1:You know, characters also disappear from the lost world, you know, know. So we have Levine, who is, or Levine, I don't know which, yes, I'm not sure. So he's a very difficult character to like.
Speaker 3:He's kind of the Professor Challenger character. He's thrilled to be there, he's very excited, he loves watching the dinosaurs, with sort of very little sense of his own safety and self-preservation, and I think we, I think we are supposed to sort of feed him as the, as the the doer, the alan grant of this book, yeah, but, um, I think unfortunately he and ian malcolm, they both come off a little bit too arrogant and again they, they aren't likable. So it's hard to know who to root for in this, and perhaps that's why we have the two children, because at least we're safe with them. We know we want to root for the children because we want the children to be safe, and to a certain extent Sarah Harding as well is there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she kind of comes across as she's the character that I latched on probably the most of the book. She's resourceful, you know, no nonsense. Yeah, um, he's writing the lost world. Having seen jurassic park and knowing that it's jeff goldblum and a lot of writers, I'm thinking about darren brown.
Speaker 3:Um, darren brown, I'm thinking about dan brown and uh the davinci code, where um the character suddenly turns into tom hanks after the first, after a lot like harrison ford in the early books and and what's the same in fremming, you know, after john connery, with dames bond gave him a scottish father, just to cement the, to cement the scottishness of connery he doesn't feel the need to do that with ian malcolm.
Speaker 1:He doesn't. He still doesn't feel like jeff goldblum in the second one. I think he stuck to his guns in that he wasn't somebody that was going to be pushed into writing this story in the way that other people wanted him to write it. Um yeah which I, yeah, I, I, I respect. Do you think it's a necessary follow-up? Did we need a follow-up to jurassic park?
Speaker 3:I. I think Reavers wanted it and, as an author, crichton has to sort of accept sometimes that the audience are there to be entertained and you have to accept what they want and sometimes put that above your own needs and desires. I actually did it for the money solely and I think that he probably felt well, I can work out a way of doing a sequel that satisfies both me and what people expect of the sequel. I, I suspect, as I say, I think he did the best job he could under the circumstances and I think, I mean I think, the one thing the movie did, which was very much a sort of playing to the crowd, was then having the dinosaurs a dinosaur end up in san diego and a rampage through the streets there, uh, which is not in the book at all.
Speaker 3:It's uh, I think sort of spielberg wanted to see that and I think it's something that the sequels, the jurassic world sequels, have really needed, that why not just have dinosaurs become part of the fabric of civilization? And how he did this intrusion of wild madness into our lives, and I suspect Crichton would not have gone that far, and if he had to do it, he was asked to do a second sequel. I don't know whether he would have done that or not. I wonder if he might have, because a lot of his books are about sort of apocalyptic elements being introduced into our world and how we deal with it, from the Andromeda strain through to which is about a deadly might in space yeah, yeah, yeah next is about genetic modification and prey is about nanotechnology yeah, and all of these things, fantastic book I really like yes prey is great.
Speaker 3:That's one with the swirling cloud of nanites that basically just whittle you down to nothing. So I think you know he was. If one of the themes of lost world is is the potential humanity to extinguish itself, then a third jurassic park novel could have had dinosaurs ruling the earth, actually willing, yeah.
Speaker 1:And humanity, you know, running and beer or having to cope with this, yeah, they have the thing of the lost world, of the, the dx, which is the disease that the dinosaurs have, and they seem to be the mystery element of the lost world, like the mystery element of jurassic park is dinosaurs on the mainland of costa rica and they're spreading a disease to humanity. That seems to be what's going on and levine I don't know how seriously, but the end levine is decided. I don't know whether I feel very well when me and malcolm's telling him all about it and you know, you don't know how seriously, but at the end Levine is just like. I don't know whether I feel very well when Liam Malcolm's telling him all about it and you don't know whether he's just a hypochondriac. Yeah, you get the idea that maybe Michael Crichton would have gone down that route.
Speaker 3:And if they have this transmissible read that perhaps could wipe out 80% of the population, then we would be at the mercy of the dinosaurs who would proliferate and we would become their prey. That could be an interesting book. I mean I imagine that people have done books like that, but I think you know it would be. It would have been fun to have right and take how much have you?
Speaker 1:have you seen all of the?
Speaker 3:latest I've. I've always watched a dramatic part. I love them. The third one was okay, had moments and I think was it the third one that had the chameleon dinosaurs in it, or was that one of the Jurassic World ones?
Speaker 1:So the first Jurassic World had the, and that ties into the Lost World with. Again, that's something. Reading these books, having seen the Jurassic World films and the little elements that are taken out of the Lost World and Jurassic Park and put into those films, yes, yeah, the Carnotaurus is a chameleon dinosaur, and that's a standout moment from the, from the uh, from from the book, I think, and it's not quite it's not done to the same degree as in from jurassic world.
Speaker 1:It's such a fabulously creepy moment when they, yes, are switching on and off the light and they're trying to trick the animals into revealing themselves yeah the visuals of it would have been amazing yeah, you're right, I think the later movies are.
Speaker 3:They are sort of just trying to pitch in the carcass of the the crichton books to get bits here and there, which is which is fine. Um, I, I have enjoyed them, like I said, and I'm looking forward to the new one because I think, which has mutant dinosaurs in it. I think they've really done all talking. This one I I can't say I enjoyed the third jurassic world, maybe much. I can't mum them up about it. I'm just the concept is so solid and so strong.
Speaker 1:There's no reason why they just can't keep churning them out no, and it's amazing to think that there's just these two books that have now created, going to be seven films, and yet I still think there's more. The more I read Jurassic Park and the Lost World, there's still more to take from them. And yeah, crichton's ideas are very rich. And yeah, I am excited to see, kind of because it's David Koepp going back to writing the new film and looking at these books again and I wonder what he's taken from from everything. And looking at these books again and I wonder what he's taken from everything. It's a very exciting thought to see that maybe we're going to get closer to what Crichton would have done for maybe a third Jurassic Park novel or idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, at this point, dinosaurs must be everywhere. There's the technologies out, the genius out of the box, or whatever you want to call it. Pandora's box even open, there's no way we're going to get it all back in. So we have to now live with the new status quo, which is that there are dinosaurs out there and we might get eaten by them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's almost like a kind of zombie apocalypse idea, but dinosaurs rather than zombies. What's your dinosaur escape plan?
Speaker 3:I would live in Eastbourne. My zombie escape plan is to go onto the pier, close the gate and then hopefully you'll be safe. You can live at the edge and you can live off and fish. You can fish off the end of the pier and that way you'll be safe from zombies and, I would think, dinosaurs too.
Speaker 1:Well, fabulous. I'd just like to say thank you so much for today to talk about these two books and um. So what? What were you currently um working on at the moment?
Speaker 3:I'm working on a couple of um projects which I'm unfortunately I'm not allowed to talk about because they're still sort of. One of them is definitely happening, but it's a property that it's still uh. It's a video game. It's just been released and I'm not really able to talk about it, and the other is, uh, fiction for a very exciting worldwide intellectual property. It's a series of movies mostly I've been to novel sets in that world, but again it's just a fiction stage, so it's all a bit tentative at the moment. My next actual book is out in June and it's a retelling of the original Galactus story by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby featuring the Fantastic Four, and it's coming out more or less contemporary week, the Fantastic Four movie First Steps, which I think has Galactus in it. I've been a Marvel fan my whole life and it's been wonderful to hear Claire Land in that particular sandbox.
Speaker 1:Amazing, and where can people find you online?
Speaker 3:JamesLothgrovecom. Um, I also am on facebook and twitter, slash x. I'm not a great user of social media. Uh, I'm afraid. Um and my uh books are available in all good bookstores amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope we can talk once uh, the film, once the rebirth, drastic world rebirth comes out and we can have a little chat about that as well. But, um, I'd just like to say thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 3:It's been an absolute pleasure no, no, I've really enjoyed it. I've loved talking about these books.
Speaker 1:It's great for you to get on and likely I'm very excited my huge thanks to both guy and to j for those conversations and I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did recording them. It's been amazing speaking to so many knowledgeable people over the past few weeks and I can't wait to keep bringing these episodes to you. If you like what I do, please leave me a rating. Leave me a rating, follow me on Instagram, at roadtorebirthpod, or email the show at roadtorebirthpod at gmailcom with your thoughts about Rebirth or anything. Just let me know. Just let me know that you're out there. Anyway, until next week when I'll be sitting down with Caleb Burnett to talk about Steven Spielberg's the Lost World, jurassic Park, I'll say thank you very much for listening and goodbye.
