Why Is It Impossible To Make Another Good Jurassic Movie?

Jurassic Park will forever be considered one of the greatest blockbuster films of all time. Steven Spielberg delivered a film that will live in the minds of movie goers forever. Though, with each attempt at a sequel to the beloved franchise, it seems making a good one is near impossible. With the introduction of the Jurassic World franchise, it's become even more clear. Jurassic Park will forever be the only good installment in the franchise. But why?

#jurassicpark #jurassicworld #nerdstalgic

Written by Adam Smith
Edited by David Sadvari

[favioferreira]

The original only had 15 minutes of dinosaurs on screen. The t-rex only appeared at exactly the midpoint of the movie, to the second. Meaning it wasn’t just dinosaurs that made the first movie great. It was so many things, and the dinosaurs were just the icing.

[thub]

There was an innocence in the first movie. Even though they knew that dinosaurs would be dangerous, the awe overtakes that. Every movie after is predictable. You knew something would go wrong and then the Dinos would start killing people off and then leave the end open for another. What killed it for me was bringing the military into it. Now it’s about the black market and underground trade, human clones, and weaponizing the Dinos. It’s taken such a turn that it’s too far off for me.

[anthonyspeta]

Horror is a genre that doesn't lend itself well to sequels. What makes the first installment fun is the characters slowly discovering the threat and them frantically figuring out how to deal with said threat. The sequels falter because once you know that the threat exists and how to deal with it, there's no danger, no fear, no horror.

[jarjarwalter]

It’s hard to fear the dinosaurs when they only ever kill bad guys.

[gplgs]

To me, every sequel to the original Jurassic Park has this sort of vibe that’s like the characters are saying “Sure, someone did this in the past and it led to numerous deaths and unimaginable catastrophe, causing the entire operation to be shut down without a fleeting hope of it ever working… but what if we tried it again?”

[mrquirky]

For me the two biggest problems with the sequels are:

1) The constant need to put children in the story just to add tension which is annoying because we know the writers aren't brave enough to actually kill them off. So we're stuck with a number of repetitive action scenes of kids being chased by dinosaurs, with the writers coming up with more and more unrealistic ways of them getting away (i.e. gymnastics kid).

2) Each sequel tries to come up with ways of having larger and larger numbers of dinosaurs roaming around but the only way they do it is by making the humans dumber and dumber to allow it. In the last movie, when they set all of the dinosaurs free to go live in the wilderness because they didn't have the heart to gas them all, I rolled my eyes so badly they almost fell out of my head.

For a film franchise about science, there aren't too many intelligent characters left in the series.

[jdchan]

"Jurassic Park raised questions about human-kinds responsibility and power, Jurassic world seems to think that power rests in dominance" Great line!

[Opus]

"Life finds a way."

But film studios won't find a way to make a better film than the original...

[TheGenTatsu]

I was born in 1983. So seeing this movie at 10 years old was an incredible experience. I fully believe that Jurassic Park is my generations “Jaws”.

[KAREKINFPV]

The issue was the original always focused on the dinos being scary enough by themselves. The new ones focus on an external enemy. Evil madmen, evil scientist, shock troopers.

[formerfilmstudent]

It’s a concept that only works once. Like most films, it’s a story that works well one time.

[noakai]

I feel like the later movies just kind of lost respect for dinosaurs, which is why the first one works so well. You spend a LOT of time seeing characters being in awe of and really, truly excited to be around dinosaurs, there's a genuine love for them in that. I think that connects to the part in all of us that went through that "dinosaurs are AWESOME" phase when we were younger. A lot of us grew out of it but we remember that feeling. The first movie captured that beautifully, and then it showed you the reality of what it would be like if they were still around. The movies after that, they feel like generic monster movies. You could replace the various dinosaurs with any generic monster and the movie would be exactly the same.

[theSTNG]

3:50 Alan and Ellie's relationship in the first film isn't just "inferred" by fans, it's an outright fact. The filmmakers didn't overplay the romance, but the signs are fairly obvious.

Friends don't usually tell each other they want to have their children. Grant even confirms his and Ellie's relationship to Malcolm whe he asks if she's available, just before the T. Rex attack.

[mireiacastello]

I think they made some massive mistakes with the direction they went in. Firstly, the idea that people would get bored of seeing dinosaurs (and demand more teeth) is preposterous. The second is, they made them into horror films rather than science thrillers, and stopped discussing big ideas, the philosophy and morality.
I reckon the best direction for future movies would be prequels, looking at how the original JP was set up.

[nathanong]

Jurassic Park treated dinosaurs with the same awe and respect that Steve Irwin would treat crocodiles that he found in the Outback, whereas all subsequent films (especially the new franchise) treat dinosaurs how a lion tamer treats circus animals.

[Luke_Go]

Words cannot express how I felt when I first saw a dinosaur walking.
Today's kids take such visuals as granted, but back when Jurassic Park came out, that was unheard of

[brimmywiththestimmy]

Well, the first flim was an intelligently written horror flim masked as a sci-fi, it showed us how beautiful and dangerous the dinosaurs were while also showing us the sensitive side of the animals.

Now it's just Fast and Furious: Return of the Raptor Fury.

[clarissawestbrook]

The first film was such a huge cultural phenomenon because of not just the dinosaurs but the characters, acting, direction, writing, story, plot, cinematography, score, setting, chemistry between the cast and its freshness ! It is super hard to recapture that magic the original Jurassic Park had in the 1990s. This was a very good breakdown of the franchise.

[gooseproductions]

The original trilogy even with Jurassic Park 3 not being the best has brought me so much more enjoyment then world has. I don't exactly know why I like them all but the first three just hit different

[Richard_Nickerson]

Calling The Lost World "loosely based" on the novel is an understatement. I actually prefer the second book over the first. The first movie, however, obviously remains supreme.