The Big Picture

Jurassic Park
set the franchise standard, but subsequent films struggled to find creative direction.
The series has explored all avenues, from a functioning park to genetically modified dinosaurs.
Universal is considering Scarlett Johansson for
Jurassic World 4
, but risks repeating tired concepts.

Once upon a time, there were dinosaurs. They died. Millions of years later, they rose again, thanks to John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) and his vision for Jurassic Park. The park died before it even opened, the dinosaurs didn’t. Years later, a new park was built, Jurassic World, and it opened. Then that park died, as did some parkgoers. The dinosaurs didn’t. Most dinosaurs did die in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but not the ones brought off the island to Northern California — they run freely. Or something. There’s also a child clone and some genetic modifications. Now, there’s a new entry on the way, a fourth in the Jurassic World series, for which Universal is wooing Scarlett Johansson. Should Universal really be going for a fourth Jurassic World? Whatever wiped out the mighty beasts all those years ago might want to consider a round two. No Jurassic World 4, Jurassic Universe, or even Paleozoic Playground.

Jurassic Park In Steven Spielberg’s massive blockbuster, paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park’s mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.Release Date June 11, 1993 Runtime 127 Writers Michael Crichton , David Koepp Tagline An Adventure 65 Million Years In The Making

‘Jurassic Park’ Starts the Franchise Off With a Big Bang
If you’re going to start a movie franchise, you certainly could do worse than Jurassic Park, the 1993 Steven Spielberg mega-hit that brought in over $1 billion at the box office. As a refresher, the film, an adaptation of Michael Crichton’s book of the same name, takes place on the fictional island of Isla Nublar. Business mogul John Hammond and his team of genetic scientists have populated the island with dinosaurs in the interest of opening a park. He invites a few people, including his grandchildren, to tour the park, but a saboteur shuts down the park’s power and security systems, turning the tour into an escape from the dinosaurs now running free.

The CG effects in the film used to bring the dinosaurs to life are a touchstone moment in the evolution of the industry, a seamless blend of live action and digital creatures sharing the screen. If that was all there was to the movie, it would still be a major step forward, but under the leadership of Spielberg, it became much, much more, with iconic scenes and camera shots, like the famed final scene with the triumphant T. rex. Spielberg did return to helm the first sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but that film didn’t have the magic of the first, and Jurassic Park III was weaker still.

2015’s Jurassic World reinvigorated the franchise, giving moviegoers the novelty of a functioning, tourist-filled Jurassic Park. That alone made the film interesting, but it went one step too far by adding a mutated dinosaur, the Indominus Rex, a fearsome predator capable of cloaking itself, opening the door for further “refining” of the creatures in the two follow-ups, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom with its Indoraptor and the Cretaceous/contemporary hybrid giant locusts in Jurassic World Dominion.

There’s No Place for a ‘Jurassic World 4’ To Go

The problem with the Jurassic Park franchise now is that there is really nowhere left for it to go. They’ve already gone down the genetically modified “super” weaponized dinosaur route, and the addition of a cloned human girl is somehow the most implausible element of all. Dinosaurs and humans now coexist, something the last film touched on already (ponder — were there really so many dinosaurs released in Fallen Kingdom that it’s now a problem to capture them all?). We’ve seen a working version of the park, so scratch that, and original characters have been brought back to mingle with the new, so the nostalgia card has also been played.

That leaves very little meat on the fossilized bone. A canned screenplay for Jurassic Park IV pitched a dinosaur/human hybrid, a hideous thing captured in concept art. It is a direction to head, but certainly not advisable. Besides, to some degree, that scenario has already played out on movie screens with Alien Resurrection (poorly) and The VelociPastor (absurdly). Good luck taking that concept up after that pair. Where else can the franchise possibly take moviegoers without becoming a parody of itself, a la Jason Voorhees in space for Friday the 13th entry Jason X? Maybe Jurassic Universe is a possibility after all. Or Planet of the Jurassic Park Dinosaurs, with a CGI Charlton Heston finding the banner from Jurassic Park on the beach at the end of the movie, crying, “You maniacs! You made the park! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

Related ‘Jurassic Park’s T-Rex Almost Killed a Crew Member — For Real When art (almost) imitates life.

The Jurassic Park Franchise Lacks the Creative Vision It Needs for Longevity

When the vision isn’t fully in the hands of the creator helming the project, it becomes problematic, and that has already impacted production on Jurassic World 4. Talks between David Leitch and Universal came to an amicable end only a few days following his announcement as director of the project, with the reason cited as Leitch’s vision for the franchise being irreconcilable with the studio’s plans. It’s an issue we’ve already seen with the MCU, where a director’s vision is forced to adhere to the formula feeding the overall narrative — it exacerbates the culture of being formulaic and safe. The Jurassic Park franchise is already in danger of becoming formulaic if it isn’t already. The success rate of older-running franchises isn’t exactly off the charts these days either, as the tepid response to last year’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts would attest.

To be fair, there is actually some hope for the Jurassic Park franchise. While some older-running franchises have met with diminished results, the past weekend has seen Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, part of the MonsterVerse franchise that started with 2014’s Godzilla, and the latest sequel to 1984’s Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, taking the top two entries at the box office on the 2024 Easter weekend. If you count the wild success of last year’s Godzilla Minus One, the latest in a franchise that dates back to 1954, then perhaps the future of older franchises isn’t all doom and gloom. The director that is now heir to the Jurassic Park throne, Gareth Edwards, is no stranger to meshing his vision within a framework, creating one of the Star Wars franchise’s best entries with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story while working within the confines of the Skywalker Saga narrative.

Some hope, sure, but far from a sure thing. Let’s face it: Jurassic Park is an older film franchise with nothing new to offer, one that’s asking directors to work within a preexisting framework, one becoming increasingly more preposterous with each entry, and a franchise that, even with the addition of Scarlett Johansson, is unlikely to ever reach the heights of the original or even Jurassic World. There is no justifiable reason for a fourth Jurassic World. Jurassic World Dominion may not have been the perfect ending, but it gave one, and the films have already shown us the problem with bringing back the extinct. So please, Hollywood, let Jurassic Park die. How about Jaws V instead?

Jurassic Park is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

Watch on Netflix