Might as well go full movie themed this week and discuss Jurassic Park. It’s a franchise that, much like so many other movie series out there, should have ended with the first movie. The follow-ups have not added much worth to the setting and story, as the first movie pretty much put everything into one nice package.
The demand for more is not exactly the problem here, but how the movies themselves are ultimately formed up. The lack of scientific accuracy is a non-issue with these particular dinosaurs, as they’re cloned hybrid monsters to begin with, modeled after how the perception of the dinosaurs were. For some, it still gets weird to think that dinosaurs had feathers. What is the problem with these movies is that they’re not terribly interesting or well written. Lost World is the most interesting one of the four sequels, despite putting a new island in. The setting makes it interesting if for nothing else, a good juxtaposition to mirror against the first movie.
However, there’s an element in Jurassic Park that has loomed behind its story for years now, and with the World that’s being realised; genetics. One of the first Jurassic Park III script suggestions were about some kind of SWAT team using modified Velociraptors that would behave like dogs and had been trained for operations. This didn’t come to pass with with the third movie, which honestly was for the better. As much hate as JPIII gets, it’s more or less a side-story as Trespasser was. Which in itself is pretty telling, concerning both JPIII and Trespasser had similar story premise. You can’t tell the story of people being stranded on a dinosaur island too many times over.
Then again, Lost World told the same story as some of the comics and sequel games were going for, where dinosaurs were being lifted off the island and being taken elsewhere. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom uses this same premise, and is as much a remake of Lost World as World was of Park. It’s like they aren’t really keen on trying think of new ways of utilising the islands themselves properly, but concentrate on the same themes and topics that most Jurassic Park has already explored. Even the hybrids dinosaurs from the World movies was already an old concept, as the Jurassic Park: Chaos Effect toyline had nothing but hybrid dinosaurs. It’s rather clear that someone at Universal loves the idea of spreading the dinosaurs across the world and using in warfware in a time where a drone strike is one of single most effective method currently used next to information warfare.
As discussed with previous entry about Star Wars, there is no room for phenomena movies any more. Jurassic Park was most definitely one of them, with TV specials, hardcover making-of books, comics, toys, candies, games on multiple systems and God only knows what else. All of this was possible only because it’s a great movie and everybody wanted to cash on in its wake. Special effects are by the numbers with nothing special to tell about, and when special effects have become not only mundane, but expected, the story and actors need to be exceptional. Something neither World movies, and arguably none of the sequels overall, have managed to do.
The reasons why Jurassic Park as a franchise has been in constant decline are many, mostly the same ones as with Star Wars. Maybe Jurassic Park doesn’t lend itself to wider variety of stories to be told, and despite the original was partially a monster movie, that was its least of roles. However, we’ve seen people being dumb and chased by dinosaurs multiple times over now, do we really need another movies of people yelling and screaming as a Raptor runs and claws them? Well, clearly the movie directors of the past two movies wanted to throw in lots and lots of visual references to the past movies to the point of Fallen Kingdom replicating scenes one-to-one for the sake of nostalgia. Having a dinosaur winking at the crowd that it was faking its tranqed state was pathetic at best. We can always go for nostalgia when trying to have a consistent new brand, right?
There are stories that you can find within Jurassic Park, but these stories would be less about the monster horror these movies tend to go now. Jurassic World should have been a movie about building the new park, how the idea came together, how exactly Masrani came into buying Hammon’s legacy and InGen, how the dinosaurs were re-captured and penned up, what were the setbacks, how were they able to build it and so on. Have the movie end with Jurassic World a park opening up, with promises of greater futures. You can have those chases and moments of terror just as fine without taking anything from it all the while having something new. Then again, re-opening the park on the original island was explored in the Topps Comics, so maybe just remaking everything from scratch or making a new park somewhere else in the world would have been the better option.
Unlike with Star Wars, the only real reason why new Jurassic Park entries are made is because its still reasonably lucrative. At least Star Wars had a whole galaxy to explore and stories to set in there that would allow a worldy series be set in. Jurassic Park has become a fascimile of itself in franchising. Ian Malcom’s speech about stamping and selling things for profit without first considering what people have in their hands resonates throughout the every merch based on these movies, even the first one. This isn’t to say that merchandising is bad in itself, just that are these movies anything else at this point but cash cows for extended materials to be sold?
I can’t but to live in hope that the next movie in the franchise will aim to have a script that’s not stupid and about dinosaur horror. Long shot hopes, I know, but the franchise has run its course. If we’re going to have dinosaurs roaming the Earth and used as bioweapons, we’re finally in Saturday morning cartoon area and there’s no return from that. I always wanted a Jurassic Park cartoon, so maybe there’s something in there. Have Owen lead a group of Dinosaur Savers to oppose the evil terrorists who use dinosaurs for evil. Go balls deep into it all and disregard everything else. Cut the last thin line the series has been teetering on.
Aaltomies 