Spielberg’s Jaws begins with an evening beach party on the beach. The suspense is thrilling, and the result for Chrissie is tragic: eaten by a great white shark!
A picnic party on the beach also begins Jurassic Park: The Lost World, but this time, it’s suspenseful but not tragic.
The narrative begins on the beach of Isla Sorna when the Bowman family anchors their yacht for the afternoon picnic. They suppose the paradisical beach is secure, and they relax, dining on sandwiches and drinking champagne in crystal goblets.
Suspense builds, however, when nine-year-old Cathy walks off and finds some cute little green lizard. It seems friendly, but a compsognathus is nasty. More of the lizards appear. She offers a piece of her sandwich, but the critters want more than a sandwich. When Cathy screams, the idyllic mood crashes. Her parents and the yacht’s crew run frantically to save her. (It’s not shown, but we later learn she survived.)
See Stephen Spielberg. Jurassic Park: The Lost World (1997). The screenplay by David Koepp is based on Michael Crichton’s novel (1990), the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Lost World (1912); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkvVvHprsZI
The cast: Camilla Belle as Cathy Bowman; Robin Sachs as Paul Bowman; Cyd Strattmater as Diedre Bowman