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As the all-time highest-grossing movie worldwide, despite the re-release of Star Wars, Jurassic Park virtually demanded a Dinosaur Deux. Spielberg felt burned by sequels he had not controlled, especially those to Jaws, which Universal farmed out to other directors. Says Kathleen Kennedy, his longtime associate and one of the producers of Jurassic Park: "Steven still harbors a bit of regret about the way Jaws 2 and 3 turned out."
Spielberg came up with the theme of The Lost World at the end of a meeting with David Koepp, a screenwriter of the first Jurassic Park. As Koepp recalls, "Steven said, 'I've got it! I've got it! This movie is about hunters vs. gatherers.'" Out of that epiphany unfolded the story's central conflict about rogue businessmen who are breeding dinosaurs for profit--a most dangerous game that backfires. Spielberg suggested that Koepp watch the 1925 film of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which tells of an expedition to a South American jungle habitat where dinosaurs still roam, and Howard Hawks' 1962 Hatari!, starring John Wayne as a safari hunter on a game preserve. Says Koepp: "Hatari! probably influenced us more than any dinosaur movie did."
The director believes the sequel's humans are more complex, its dinosaurs more convincing. He's at least half right. The dinosaurs are really ready for their close-ups this time. They interact with their human co-stars very persuasively--mostly scarily, occasionally winsomely and much more often than they did in Jurassic Park. Whether the familiar stock characters who don't grunt, growl and roar are similarly improved is more questionable. But there's fun in familiarity, and a practical value in it too. These people don't distract us from the movie's real business, which is to wow us with the special-effects sequences that just keep on coming with pinwheeling intricacy and spectacle.
As much as he enjoyed getting back to work on a guaranteed summer blockbuster, Spielberg says, "It made me wistful about doing a talking picture, because sometimes I got the feeling I was just making this big, silent-roar movie." To the rescue came Steven Zaillian, the screenwriter of Schindler's List, who fashioned a workable script about the Amistad, a Spanish ship that brought abducted Africans to the U.S. in 1839 and provoked a slave revolt and a trial in which the slaves' case was argued by former President John Quincy Adams. Spielberg hadn't planned to direct again right after The Lost World, but "Steve's script sucker-punched me." So this February he began filming with Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman and Matthew McConnaughey.
Amistad's sober subject matter gives an added piquancy to the usual bustle and boredom of a movie set. A production assistant shoos nonactors out of a waiting area, saying, "Come on, guys, we need to clear these seats for the Africans so we can chain them together again." Spielberg chats with the official well wishers who flock to a movie shoot's first day. Katzenberg innocently asks the director if he's getting a lot done and receives an emphatic "No! We're already half a day behind." Later, Spielberg holds the script and cries out, to no one special, "Just let me finish two pages today!"