While the Jurassic Park franchise doesn’t need a reboot, the series does need to revisit the killer conceit that Jurassic World: Dominion all but ignored. Jurassic World did a good job of reigniting interest in the Jurassic Park franchise when the reboot was released in 2015, but this was largely due to the movie sticking close to the formula laid out by Steven Spielberg’s original 1993 blockbuster. Like the original Jurassic Park, Jurassic World’s plot concerned a theme park whose dinosaurs broke free and wreaked havoc. While Jurassic World’s setting was a more futuristic, fully functioning park, the basic beats of the plot were familiar to franchise fans.
Even the blockbuster’s dénouement echoed Jurassic Park’s original ending as the heroes ended up safely evacuating the island, leaving the remnants of the amusement park to its prehistoric inhabitants. However, much like Spielberg’s own Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World was seen as a disappointment by critics, 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom didn’t know where to take this plot next. The uneven outing saw the heroes of Jurassic World save the island’s dinosaurs from a volcano, get mixed up with villainous big game hunters, and end up at an auction where the dinosaurs were sold to arms dealers.
Jurassic World Dominion Wasted Fallen Kingdom’s Best Sequel Setup
There was also a subplot about human cloning, but this wasn’t the strangest element of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s story. That came with the sequel’s jaw-dropping closing montage, which revealed that dinosaurs had been freed from captivity and were now roaming the earth alongside humans and animals. This was a twist packed with plot potential. Unfortunately, Jurassic World: Dominion largely disregarded this entire concept in favor of a strange spy movie wherein the franchise’s heroes rushed to obtain an all-important secret pathogen.
Now, Jurassic World: Dominion’s wasted storyline needs to be revisited by the franchise’s next installment. Human society adjusting to living alongside dinosaurs is a fascinating idea, but Jurassic World: Dominion instead opted to focus more on a cloning plotline via its exploration of the Maise Lockwood character and her eventual escape from captivity. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s ending set up the perfect story for the third movie when the sequel revealed that the dinosaurs were now out in the open worldwide, so the creators should have stuck with this premise instead of offering viewers a bizarre mash-up of Fast and Furious and Jurassic World. Another movie with new characters could get a lot of mileage out of dinosaurs running loose on Earth.
How The Jurassic Park Franchise Can Reboot Dominion
Jurassic World: Dominion skipped ahead four years after the ending of its predecessor and, in doing so, missed the most interesting part of this franchise’s story. Thus, a new, rebooted Jurassic World movie should go back to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom‘s ending and continue from there. Since this movie could take place after Fallen Kingdom but follow the story of different people, the reboot wouldn’t necessarily have to retcon anything from Jurassic World: Dominion. Moreover, dropping the recurring cast members who were set up in earlier movies could prove to be a great idea for the series at large.
One of the biggest problems with Jurassic World: Dominion was its massive cast and its absurd survival rate. The original Jurassic Park was surprisingly ruthless for a relatively family-friendly blockbuster, with a lot of likable supporting characters dying before the end credits. However, when Jurassic World: Dominion united the cast of the original Jurassic Park trilogy with the human heroes of the Jurassic World movies, the sequel ensured that it had almost a dozen main characters, none of whom could be killed off without irritating fans. This meant that there were almost no stakes to the action of the sequel since nearly everyone survived its story.
How Jurassic World 4 Can Avoid Dominion’s Mistakes
Jurassic World 4 needs to return to the franchise’s horror roots with a darker, more focused storyline. Like the original Jurassic Park, Jurassic World 4’s plot should center on a small group of survivors stranded among marauding dinosaurs. Since the ending of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom depicted dinosaurs roaming free across the globe, this sequel could take place in a crowded city, a quiet resort, an office block, a national park, or any number of other settings. If the setting is self-contained, the movie could be a siege story wherein the characters try desperately to keep the dinosaurs out of their homes.
If Jurassic World 4’s setting is somewhere more expansive, then the movie’s tension could come from the fact that nowhere is safe for the characters. In earlier Jurassic Park movies, the struggle to get off the island was hard, but the heroes always knew that they would be safe once they escaped. However, since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom flooded the entire world with dinosaurs, Jurassic World 4’s heroes could travel from a remote mountain range into a quiet suburban neighborhood into a busy metropolitan city, only for them to discover that each new location is filled with dinosaurs.
Jurassic World 4 Should Change The Franchise’s Genre (Back)
Like Spielberg’s earlier blockbuster Jaws, Jurassic Park has horror movie DNA in its adventure story. The ending of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom established a nightmarish reality for the characters of the franchise wherein every day carried with it the risk of encountering a prehistoric monster. Unfortunately, Jurassic World: Dominion completely jettisoned this aspect of the franchise’s appeal by making its hero an indestructible superhero and setting its story years after dinosaurs were unleashed, thus ensuring life had returned to relative normality. Jurassic World 4 must reverse this mistake.
Jurassic World 4 should be the most horror-focused entry in the franchise since Spielberg’s original movie. The reboot should see its heroes battle all manner of dinosaurs on a slew of unlikely locations and, like a good zombie movie, viewers should never feel like any new setting is safe from this encroaching threat. Meanwhile, the presence of new characters in the movie’s lead roles should leave viewers with no idea who will and won’t survive, thus raising the stakes even further. With the changes, this reboot could save the Jurassic Park franchise even though Jurassic World: Dominion squandered a perfect sequel setup.
