Summary

• Jurassic Park sequels failed to replicate the appeal of the original movie.
• Recurring characters and references to the original movie held back the sequels.
• Jurassic World 4 should drop existing characters and strike out on its own to revive the franchise.

Now that Jurassic World 4 is happening, the franchise can finally become the series it should have become after Spielberg’s original 1993 blockbuster. Jurassic Park was a huge box-office success upon release. Based on the bestselling novel by Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park tells the story of the eponymous doomed theme park. While both the book and the movie featured dinosaurs rampaging through an unopened theme park and characters evading them over a few gripping days, Spielberg’s movie was a lot less cynical and brutal than the original book. Its success set up a franchise that remained profitable for decades.

However, the subsequent Jurassic Park sequels and the later Jurassic World trilogy both failed to replicate the appeal of Spielberg’s original action-adventure/sci-fi/horror hybrid. Even though Jurassic Park’s perfect ending provided all of its character arcs with a fitting conclusion, the movie’s sequels proceeded to repeatedly bring back characters from this original installment. The Lost World: Jurassic Park saw Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm return while Jurassic Park III included a comeback for Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant. The Jurassic World movies brought back all three of the original movie’s leads, but this didn’t improve the trilogy’s uneven story.

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park Should Never Have Had True Sequels

The original blockbuster didn’t benefit from direct follow-ups

While the movie saw Spielberg return to the director’s chair, The Lost World: Jurassic Park ​​didn’t benefit from its status as a direct sequel to Jurassic Park. Its most inspired sequence was an unsettling opening scene wherein a small girl fed tiny dinosaurs, not realizing that they would soon start to swarm like piranhas and attack her. This sort of scary, inventive, original adventure horror was why viewers wanted a sequel to Jurassic Park, but the rest of the movie was dragged down by fidelity to the original movie’s characters and Crichton’s sequel novel. Jurassic Park III was even worse.

While adding Dr. Ian Malcolm, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Grant to Jurassic World: Dominion's cast of characters didn't work, bringing back Grant on his own in Jurassic Park III remains the franchise’s worst decision. This role retconned the original movie’s happy ending by revealing that Jurassic Park’s Sattler and Grant broke up after the credits rolled, only to then plant Neill’s character in an uninspired jungle adventure that didn't even utilize him well. The Jurassic Park sequels, and later the reboot trilogy, never justified their constant references to the original movie and reliance on its lore. Instead, this held them back.

None of Jurassic Park’s follow-ups came close to replicating the original movie’s magic, with every new installment instead stretching the original movie’s premise further and making it more far-fetched in the process. The Lost World: Jurassic Park’s T-rex arrived in San Francisco somehow, so the 2015 reboot Jurassic World had to top this with a genetically engineered super-dinosaur, the Indominus Rex. This silliness had to be outdone in the sequel, so viewers got a bizarre human cloning subplot in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. That sequel ended with dinosaurs unleashed on human civilization, making Jurassic World: Dominion's story outright absurd.

Jurassic Park & World Have Franchise Potential But Are Better Without Strong Connections

Bringing back recurring characters limits the potential of this franchise

Jurassic World 4 is currently being written by the original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp. This movie has the potential to revive a bloated franchise, but only if it is a big, scary, fun, adventure-centric dinosaur movie that doesn’t rely on any direct connections to the original movie. The Jurassic Park sequels didn't improve the original characters or story, while the Jurassic World trilogy made things worse with nostalgia bait. What began as cute nods to the original trilogy in 2015’s Jurassic World became entire sequences dedicated to referencing the original movie’s storyline in Jurassic World: Dominion.

The story of Jurassic World 4 should hold on to the franchise’s main draw, its dinosaurs. However, the new movie should otherwise strike out on its own, dropping the rest of the recurring characters, settings, and plot beats that viewers have already seen this franchise recycle repeatedly. Without the original movie’s cast or any of the new characters introduced in the Jurassic World trilogy, Jurassic World 4 would feel more high stakes since viewers wouldn’t know who was and wasn’t likely to survive. This was a part of what made the original movie work, but it was lost in the follow-ups.

Jurassic World 4 Still Risks Falling Into The Same Franchise Trap

Jurassic World 4’s sequels shouldn’t rush to bring back its characters

The reports about Koepp’s script suggest that the project would represent a “New era” for the franchise, meaning Jurassic World 4 is unlikely to bring back existing characters. However, this isn’t necessarily guaranteed to work. After all, if Jurassic World 4’s fresh take on the franchise proves successful and viewers want more from the series, then this new iteration of the franchise could ironically face the same sequel problems as Spielberg’s original movie. Jurassic Park 4’s new era dropping Spielberg's original characters won't matter if they are then replaced by new, equally indestructible heroes.

The main issue that most of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies struggle with is the tone of their family-friendly adventure horror genre. Like 1999’s The Mummy, Jurassic Park introduced a large cast of likable characters only to kill off many of them before the credits rolled. However, like The Mummy, its sequel was a lot slower to kill off returning characters, since viewers were now more invested in their fate and this adventure horror series wasn’t as harsh as an R-rated series. This conundrum is part of why adventure horror franchises rarely enjoy lasting critical success.

What Will Jurassic World 4 Actually Be About?

The story of David Koepp’s sequel still isn’t clear

It is not yet clear what Koepp’s Jurassic World 4 script will be about, although there are a few hints. Koepp’s Jurassic World 4 will reportedly be a complete reboot with neither Jurassic Park nor Jurassic World characters likely to return, which bodes well for the likelihood of a continuity reboot. If Jurassic World 4 has no returning characters, the series could ignore the events of earlier movies and go back to Crichton’s original novel or ignore the Jurassic World trilogy and keep the events of the Jurassic Park trilogy canon.

After all, although the Jurassic Park movies had their plot holes, they were a lot more consistently grounded than the Jurassic World trilogy. Ignoring the Jurassic World movies would mean undoing the existence of the Indominus Rex, human clones, and a world where humans and dinosaurs co-exist globally. This would mean that Jurassic World 4 could return to the comparatively grounded, small-scale survival horror of Spielberg’s original movie. In the process, the Jurassic World 4 could potentially save the legacy of the long-running blockbuster series.

The Jurassic Park movies can be streamed on Hulu and Max. The Jurassic World trilogy is available on Prime Video.