Four years after the original film, John Hammond (Attenborough) loses control of his company InGen to his nephew, Peter Ludlow (Howard). On the verge of bankruptcy, Ludlow intends to exploit dinosaurs from InGen's second island, Isla Sorna, with plans for a new dinosaur theme park in San Diego.
Hammond sends a team, led by the eccentric chaos theorist and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), to the island to document the dinosaurs and encourage non-interference, although the two groups eventually come into conflict.