Steven Spielberg Explains Why His Sequels Are Inferior, Specifically ‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park’
We now live in the age of the sequel. If a blockbuster does well, then Hollywood studios immediately look to create a follow-up that somehow has to outdo its predecessor. During his 45-year career, Steven Spielberg has overseen four sequels, and he’s now explained why none of them have managed to match up to the originals.
Steven Spielberg made this admission during his recent discussion with the New York Times at the Cannes Film Festival, where his upcoming film The BFG premiered to rave reviews.
Speaking about how, despite his storied success as a filmmaker, he still lacks confidence every time he goes into a film, Spielberg then candidly added, “My sequels aren’t as good as my originals because I go into every sequel I’ve made and I’m too confident.”
A chat with Steven Spielberg at #cannes2016 https://t.co/U8PyD7vZrG pic.twitter.com/KZz5agTcwh
— New York Times Arts (@nytimesarts) May 17, 2016
“This movie made a ka-zillion dollars, which justifies the sequel, so I come in like it’s going to be a slam dunk and I wind up making an inferior movie to the one before,” Steven Spielberg continued, before he then rather emphatically concluded with, “I’m talking about The Lost World and Jurassic Park.”
It’s widely been acknowledged by movie fans and critics alike that 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park was a hugely disappointing follow-up to 1993’s Jurassic Park. Currently, the blockbuster sequel has a lowly score of just 51 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which is especially weak since Jurassic Park has a whopping 93 percent on the same website.
But The Lost World: Jurassic Park isn’t the only sequel to have blotted Steven Spielberg’s career. Like Jurassic Park, 1981’s Raiders Of The Lost Ark is widely believed to be one of Spielberg’s greatest films ever, which is reflected in its 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Steven Spielberg’s follow-up to Raiders, which came just three years later with 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom, was also met with a positive response, which, while not quite as vehement as the original, was still enough to score it 85 percent on the same site.
Rather than scoring an even more pitiful score, the third installment to the franchise, which came in 1989 by the name of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, went on to register 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and confirmed that the Indiana Jones trilogy was one of the best in cinema history.
All of this was somewhat undone in 2008, when just under 20 years after the release of its predecessor, Indiana Jones And The Crystal Skull was released and scored just 77 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Since then reviews for the film have only got worse, with fans and critics alike conceding that there are truly some laughably bad moments in the blockbuster. The most famous of which sees Indiana Jones survive an atomic bomb by crawling inside a lead fridge, which then blasts him dozens of miles away.
Rather worryingly for Indiana Jones and Steven Spielberg fans, especially when you take into consideration the filmmaker’s comments regarding his work on sequels, Spielberg was also recently confirmed to be reuniting with Harrison Ford for yet another Indiana Jones film, which is due to be released in 2019.
Steven Spielberg on why he thinks his sequels aren’t very good https://t.co/45KM9SLP0f
— JoBlo.com (@joblocom) May 17, 2016
Hopefully, Steven Spielberg has figured out a way to finally solve his sequel hoodoo, which has clearly plagued him throughout his career.
Before then, though, Steven Spielberg has a number of other films that he’s working on in a variety of different ways. These include promotional duties for the impending release of The BFG, as well as his adaptation of Ready Player One and The Kidnapping Of Edgar Mortara, which are both due out in 2018, too.
[Image via Universal Pictures]
