The Jurassic Park franchise will always have a soft spot in my heart, and despite acknowledging its flaws, I really enjoyed Jurassic World for giving me a (brief) peek into what a working genetic dinosaur park might look like. But I’m considerably less hyped for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, following an iffy trailer and now the news that it’s intended to ‘merely’ be the middle chapter in a Jurassic World trilogy.
As a consequence, we’ve learned that the ending of Fallen Kingdom will directly set up an as yet untitled Jurassic World 3 (uh, or Jurassic Park 6 if you’re keeping count). The news comes courtesy of an interview with Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, who said the following:
“I remember telling Steven [Spielberg] even while we were making the first movie, “This is the beginning. Here is the middle. And here’s the end of the end.” This is where we want to go. I feel like that kind of design is crucial to a franchise like this if you really want to bring people along with you and make sure they stay interested. It needs to be thought through on that level. It can’t be arbitrary, especially if we want to turn this into a character-based franchise with people who you lean in to follow what they’re going to do.”
Character-based franchise my butt! This is a damn dinosaur-based franchise and they’d better not forget it – as charming as Chris Pratt is, I’m here to see Tyrannosauruses and Velociraptors. It’s disappointing to hear, too, as Jurassic World didn’t really have any obvious franchise hooks in it (though they were there if you knew where to look).
Perhaps anticipating criticisms like these, Trevorrow went on to point out that:
“At the end of this movie, it’s not a cliffhanger, but it’s designed for people to want to know what’s going to happen next, whereas the earlier Jurassic Park movies had pretty clear definitive endings. They were much more episodic. In working with Derek Connolly, my co-writer, we were also thinking about where it was gonna go in the future.”
I guess after Jurassic World exceeded all box office expectations, Universal were going to give the green light to anything gigantic, scaly and capable of ripping apart a jeep. Perhaps we should just count our blessings that they didn’t crowbar Jurassic Park into their increasingly wobbly looking Dark Universe, or we might be watching the Bride of Frankenstein tangle with a vampire Indominus Rex.
Wait. That actually sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it?
