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.

Nazis Make Great Villains

A Case Study

Those evil bastards, usually but not always necessarily German, make an easy villain for your story. Whether your story takes place from 1933 to 1945 or really anytime after that, making your villain a Nazi gives your viewers an instant rooting interest in your heroes and a hate for that villain. Here are four examples where this works:

A) Red Skull

Captain America's archenemy, Johann Schmidt was a Nazi general and confidant of Hitler who originally wore a red skull mask while coming into conflict with his adversary in publications during World War II. Both characters were put into suspended animation/publication limbo, though, with Red Skull being revived by and later head of terrorist organization HYDRA. Later, after rapidly aging, dying of old age, having his brain placed in a cloned body of Captain America, and abandoning his Nazi philosophy, he was exposed to his favourite poison, the Dust of Death, and his face was turned into the literal version of his once-mask, the Red Skull. Skull, is still pretty much a Nazi, though, once and forever, and is even shunned by other villains such as Magneto (a Jewish Holocaust Survivor).




B) Tyrannosaurus Reich

Tyrannosaurus Reich is a villain of short-lived superhero, Major Bummer, a slacker mistakenly imbued with superpowers by a pair of aliens. T. Reich was pulled to Earth through an interdimensional portal. His dimension: one of Nazi dinosaurs. His abilities include human-level intelligence, tyrannosaurus-level strength, the ability to manipulate firearms, and being epic.




C) Swarm

Swarm is a Marvel comics villain who most often fights Spider-Man. He's no ordinary man, though. No, he's composed of bees. He has a body of bees. Bees. But not just any ordinary bees. No, Nazi bees. Let this sink in. Bees. With Nazi sympathies. Nazi bees.




D) Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

These B-movie-style films are both globetrotting and set in that period of action & adventure film strips, the 1930s. What perfect adversaries for our Dr. Jones then, then our beloved Nazi villains? Who else would you rather see than Nazi interrogator Toht have their face melt off? Austrian collaborating scientist Elsa Schneider, maybe, but she would have to settle to falling into her death down a chasm. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom said, Nazis, no time for love, and instead featured a Thugee death cult.

Needs More Goldblum: Jurassic Park

Here Goldblum is a rock star mathematician-- sorry, chaotician-- and he owns the part. Doffed all in black, pants and button down, and topped with a leather jacket is the rock star. And for the intellectual (and shades of nascent hipster) are a pair of black-rimmed glasses. Brought to the island as one of three subject matter experts that the InGen board of executives wants to sign off on the viability of its adventure theme park dinosaur island, Goldblum's Ian Malcolm drops the knowledge on chaos theory and unpredictability:

Life, uh, finds a way.

Ian Malcolm is too a brash young punk. When not making quips about massive piles of triceratops shit and hitting on Laura Dern's paleobotanist character, he's losing his leather jacket as he sits in an automated Ford Explorer in the rain, showing off his short sleeves and his thoughts on water ripples. Then when Sam Neill's paleontologist protagonist decides to use a flair to get the tyrannosaurus rex's attention away from the kids, Malcolm has got to do it too, to lesser, more foolish and more impulsive effect.


After the dinosaur has thrown Malcolm into a thatched hut, collapsing it in the process, he spends the remainder of the film injured. But he's still rock star enough to have tourniquetted his own leg when his injured body is first found. He also spends the remainder of the film with his shirt ripped open, his chiseled body spilling out his shirt like a pulp hero, his rugged handsomeness that of an Edgar Rice Burroughs character. Yet this clashes with his injured status, which leaves him in a prone state, his damsel in distress sitting aside like the ravished, scantily clad exotic girl of a pulp cover or like Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hut.

If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territory, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously.