Needs More Goldblum: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Goldblum's Ian Malcolm, "scientist" (he's apparently referred to as more than once), returns for this sequel, this time as a headliner. The first time we seem, a jump cut presents him standing, still the man in black, in front of a tropical setting. Overlapping his image is a mother's scream from the prior scene of a dinosaur attack. Goldblum stoically yawns as the tropical setting is just a billboard in a subway station. And it's revealed that those clothes aren't all black, but rather dark brown tones. And even more colour will be introduced to his wardrobe later.

Goldblum is more than action man here, having ditched the glasses and sporting a perma-five o'clock shadow. When he gets to Dinosaur Island, he even sports action jeans. Clearly, he is a changed man. Luckily, he still sports some of his trademark wry wit, although not as much when he was the part-time comic relief character of the first film:

So you went from capitalist to naturalist in just 4 years. That's something.

Malcolm in this film is sort of defined by relationships with two characters. First off, he has a sassy black daughter. If we remember correctly from the first film, there was a throwaway line about Malcolm collecting wives. And here his sassy black daughter says,

You like to have kids but you don't want to be with them, do you?

The second character is a girlfriend paleontologist played by Julianne Moore. This makes The Lost World: Jurassic Park succeed just by making me imagine Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore having sex. It justs feels so right (I'll be having sweet dreams tonight).

Don't want to slight the Malcolm character too much as the film does make out to be a bit of a badass. First off, he survives a velociraptor attack (along with Julianne Moore and sassy black daughter*); velociraptors being the baddest motherfuckers ever. Secondly, after a tyrannosaurus rex has chased and trapped a bunch of humans into a waterfall cave, eaten one guy, and seemingly backed off, someone yells, "It's coming back." But instead of the T-rex, it's Jeff Goldblum. Who's king of the dinosaurs now, bitch? Yeah, Goldblum, that's who.

*Now that I think about, and without rewatching the third Jurassic Park film, the only velociraptor deaths that occur are caused by the tyrannosaurus in the first film and the gymnastics-wielding sassy black daughter in the second film.