I was going to give Jurassic World a pass. I really was. But, you know, it’s one thing to imagine being able to deny the glory of a dinosaur and another to actually watch dinosaurs galloping across fields in that trailer. Suddenly I’m screaming “I want that!” and apologizing to all of my co-workers. (Again.) Dinosaurs are just cool and I can’t explain why and now suddenly here they are again. I want to go to Jurassic World, the park. I want to watch the big snappysaurus eat a shark while I marnch on a $14 raptor-shaped rice krispie treat. (IRONY.) I want to have an apatosaurus look at me dismissively for a moment before going back to slurping in the river. I want to yell “You shouldn’t be!” at a stegosaurus.
I’ll get what I want, probably. Judging from the trailer, Jurassic World the movie looks pretty capable of showing me the small and large wonders of Jurassic World, the park. But here’s what I want to see in Jurassic World, the movie. (Or as we laymen like to call it, Jurassic World: The Park: The Movie.)
1. Underwater dinosaurs.
I’ve wanted this since the first movie, really and it’s about time the franchise got around to featuring this awesome little corner of the dinosaur world. Sea creatures were the stuff of nightmares back then. Look at all these terrifying sea creatures that weren’t even dinosaurs! How can a Jurassic Park possibly get away with not showing me swimmysauruses and still call itself a comprehensive entertainment experience? Sure, the snappysaur (whatever it’s supposed to be, a pliosaur or mesosaur, maybe?) up above looks way too big for its lake environment and sure, making marine dinosaurs is probably difficult when it would be so easy for them to slip into the ocean and terrorize cruise ships (FREE BUFFET) but on the other end of the scale: all dinosaurs are cool. This logic is, I know, unassailable.
2. Pterodactyls should roam the planet.
Speaking of forgotten corners of the dinosaur species, where are the flying dinosaurs? The pterodactyls and pteronodons and things? Give them feathers or realistic proportions, I don’t care, just give them to me. Better yet, have them roaming the planet because how would you cage up such creatures, anyhow? They’d get out somehow, breed, then after a while spread to the nearest mainland and start a’chompin’ there.
We saw them in Jurassic Park III, as well, and I like the idea that the mistakes seen in the previous movies have essentially made flying dinosaurs part of the planet’s current range of life. They’d eat fish and occasionally your dog… Probably LAX probably has to shoo them from Los Angeles air space from time to time…. One of them roosted in La Brea Park for a few minutes and someone Instagrammed it and it’s since become a meme… I love the idea that beyond a specialized theme park, some dinosaurs are just inescapably here now, and we just have to deal with the annoyance.
3. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
I’m not saying it has to be obvious, but the reference should be there because…come on. (Also it looks like one of the park techs in the trailer has dinosaurs on the edge of his console, so…)
4. Jeff Goldblum needs to make a cameo.
Maybe Dr. Ian Malcolm buried the hatchet and made a funny introductory safety video for the park, complete with his trademark laugh. Maybe he gets to testify before a congressional committee on the need for genetic creation laws. Maybe he runs an occult bookstore on St. Mark’s Place now. Maybe he just lives alone in the Pacific Northwest making knots all day. I don’t know. All I know is that the above needs to be somewhere in Jurassic World. Preferably all over it.
5. Kill Chris Pratt’s character.
Look, it’s not that I don’t love the enjoyment that Chris Pratt brings to this earthly plane of existence but it’s not like his character’s existence is going to be key to the making of more Jurassic Park movies. You can’t kill him in the Lego movies, you can’t kill him in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you can’t kill him in Parks and Recreation. (Gods, that would be a bleak storyline indeed.) But you can kill him here. So kill him! Let us know that messing around with dinosaurs comes with serious consequences. Make it a shocker for the audience. Our hero! Gone! Dammit, Jurassic World, this is no longer a laughing matter!
6. Have the magic word be an actual password in Jurassic World: The Park.
I like the idea of a twisted tribute to Dennis Nedry, corporate espionage artist and all around jerk, hiding in the movie somewhere. Maybe “please” is a legitimate catch-all password login for Jurassic World’s systems. Or maybe “nedrysucks” or “wevegotdodgsonhere.” (Although the knowledge that we had Dodgson there was probably lost once Nedry’s face got eaten.) A reminder to the lifers at Jurassic Park/World of how close they came to complete disaster.
7. An incisive and exciting look at how first world culture is so consumer-driven that it is considered monetarily worthwhile to develop and perfect the technology of bringing back entire extinct species of fauna for our personal amusement, circumventing all moral objections.
And how even the wonder and outrage of bringing dinosaurs back to life can be boring and feel comfortably safe after the idea has been in existence for only a single generation.
Or maybe the movie will point out that the efforts behind Jurassic World are akin to NASA in that the tech and research that created dinosaurs for amusement had a lot of secondary benefits to important fields like human medical care.
Either way, Jurassic World has an opportunity here to depict some fascinating and common science fiction themes and apply them to the world as we know it today. It can be more than just hybrid dinosaurs and thrilling chases, film-makers. Remember that!
Chris Lough would go to a real life Jurassic World theme park. No question.
Please don’t perpetuate the idea that marine REPTILES and flying REPTILES were dinosaurs. They were not. I know you’re going for an amusing tone for this article, but it’s already a rampant misunderstanding for the layperson. Can we please have the article be accurate.
Sorry to be “that guy”
I think the shark-eating sea beast was probably meant to be a Liopleurodon, though if so that’s an awfully small enclosure for it.
I’m grumpy that their stegosaurs still look pre-Robert Bakker, though.
Where’s the furry or feathered dinos?
8.
I’m going to say I want to see a TEAM of diverse scientists/problem solvers again, instead of just one white guy and his pack of dino hounds. Sigh.
Chris Pratt trying to get a dinosaur to do a dance off.
It would be funny if Malcolm came back gave a big speech on not fooling around with nature, not playing God, chaos, etc then a big snout appeared and gobbled him ala Samuel Jackson in ‘Deep Blue Sea”.
@7 Darn it Skylark I wanted to make reference to that as soon as I saw this article, especially seeing Samuel J above. I scanned through the comments to see if anyone else mentioned it and there you are at the very end.
– skyward scream – THIBEDEEEAAAUUU!!!
I was gonna suggest someone making a big dramatic speech about how they’re ‘gonna get through this, gonna stick together…’ while standing next to a big ol’ pool…
beat…
and nothing happens.
Here’s an easy cheat: if it swims or flies for a living, they’re not dinosaurs. Mosasaur (as this critter seems to be) is a big aquatic lizard. Not a dinosaur.
9.

The cool thing about dinos is all we don’t know about dinos. There is now, for instance, some question as to whether Spinosaurus was actually our first swimming one–at least semi-aquatic.
But let’s face it–any park that can bring back extinct creatures via DNA isn’t going to limit itself to strict dinosaurs –so let’s see the whole rich panoply–why not? Marine reptiles, flying reptiles, feathers and no-feathers, cynodonts, glyptodonts, mammoths, kaprosuchus, entelodons, , cave-bears, etc. (sure, some might have to wait for a sequel, but still)
That said, I’ve got lots of trepidation about the whole “hybrid-dinosaur” thing.
#2, or a variant thereof, was what I was hoping for as soon as I heard the title- because a global dinosaur presence is the only thing that would justify the constant patter in all the movies about how humanity is overstepping their bounds.
In the book of Jurassic Park, a large pack of raptors has swam to the mainland at the end. In the movie, in their absence, all the concerns about breeding dinosaurs and the like is simply misplaced, because there’s no part of their unexpected breeding capacity that plays into the disaster- it’s just old fashioned greed and sabotage of the fences. There’s an abundance of life forms that only exist with human aid, and ascribing extra moral import to one class of them because they have big teeth is silly.
But- if they aren’t just on the island anymore, that’s very different. A story where our self-constructed ecological apocalypse includes genetically engineered monsters from the realm of storybooks is one with plenty of opportunities for clever commentary, location shots that make more sense than the Rex in San Diego, and so forth.
But a park with an even meaner dinosaur sounds a little derivative
Really? All the other Jurrasic Park movies had a hidden message.. The hunters ALWAYS would die, while the enviormentalists would live. We certiantly can have just a movie about Dinosaurs.. It doesn’t always have to be an eco friendly movie, on how humans are selfish and ruining the planet.
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I saw the commercial for this over the holiday and my reaction was “Jurrasic Park – again.” There’s nothing in this that stands out as being different than the original. The scientists are a completely confident that their controls and safety plans are perfect. Said scientists are wrong. Very wrong. Corporate executives are greedy and completely insensitive to the risks to human life. Dinos chase people. Some escape, some don’t (usually including said corporate executive). Only the skeptics can see the real dangers and therefore save the day.
If this movie is going to be something other than a Jurassic Park with better special effects and new dinosaurs, they need to emphasize that a lot more. Otherwise I’ll pass.
@12: Fully agreed, they’ve been missing the real meat of this franchise from the very beginning by not investigating a world where dinosaurs have escaped captivity, and are now carving out a niche in the at-large ecosystem.
You could have the same thrills as we find chewed-through villages and chase down carnivores, fun as we try to stop apatosaurs from trampling spas, politics as we try to deal with pteradactyls chasing small planes and getting hit by 707s.
How is goofy hybrid monster movies better than that? (Unless it whispers in Chris Pratt’s ear at the very end.)