In the book, there's the part where the girl is getting attacked by compies on the beach. (which is the opening scene of the lost world). Why did Spielberg leave that scene out of the first movie and yet use it for the sequel? Maybe because the opening scene of the first movie has the worker getting mauled by the raptor and the girl getting attacked by compies would have just overdone it before the main characters even get to the Island. What are your thoughts?
In the original novel a single Procompsognathus attacked Cathy. In early drafts of the script, this scene was included, still with the single dinosaur - in one version, her father killed the dinosaur and left it on the beach, to return later with the/ a doctor to retrieve the body of the animal.
I think it would have been overkill as well. But also, the first movie never addressed the possibility of the dinosaurs getting off the island, so if they did have that scene on the beach, they would have had to add more scenes to explain it, which would have slowed down the pace of the movie. The second movie spent more time on that so it's a better fit there.
Yes, dinosaurs on the mainland would have convoluted the first film's story. The scene works well as the opening of
The Lost World: Jurassic Park, setting in motion, and speeding up, the events unfolding later in the film.
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tfilm78
8 years ago
That scene would have kicked off a sequence of other scenes that just delay the entry of the heroes, Grant and Sattler. Marty Gutierrez is set up to be a major character, but he just disappears for the body of the story, to reappear at the denoument. It made more sense for the raptor attack--which is in fact mentioned in the book--were the sole cause. It's also a good set-up for raptors later in the film. The Compys were probably left out because of the technical difficulty of creating them. Ironically, smaller dinosaurs are harder to create practically, because there's less space inside to hide all the mechanisms.
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