Is anyone under the impression that Dominion will end the Jurassic Park franchise? It’s been stated, it’s been discussed, and it might even be that Chris Pratt and another couple of individuals might be of the mind that this will be the final chapter. But it doesn’t feel likely since unless the humans find a way to eradicate the dinosaurs for good, it does feel as though life is going to keep finding a way. It does feel as though folks are going to argue over this for a while until it’s determined to be true or false, but at this point, it does feel as though Universal has put too much into this project to just nix it without thinking up a way to keep things moving forward with a new story and a new cast. The fact is that everyone that’s in this movie, most everyone anyway, has put in their time and done what they could to make Jurassic Park and Jurassic World as exciting as they could possibly be, but the sequels have thus far made it clear that even if they aren’t that great, the story is going to continue.
There’s nothing to be too cynical about since the last several movies have been a lot of fun considering that they’ve taken the audience on a trip that goes back in time while remaining in the present. But the overall illusion is that Jurassic Park initially brought to life the past that human beings had never known when in truth it was essentially a monster movie that was dubbed a prehistoric marvel. Paleontologists and archaeologists all around the world have agreed that what was done with the Jurassic Park movies, and then Jurassic World wasn’t the birth of real dinosaurs, but of genetically-altered creatures that might resemble their prehistoric counterparts, but were far from the real thing.
But it worked, didn’t it? The creatures that have been present since the 90s have been able to get people into the theaters and sold untold millions in merchandise that are still popular today, sometimes as a nostalgic nod to how it all began. It makes a person wonder if Michael Crichton had any idea that this idea would blow up in this manner since, at one point, Jurassic Park was a novel that a lot of people still didn’t know about. But here we are decades later wondering if this is going to be the end when a lot of folks wondered back in the 90s if it was a one-and-done kind of movie. After all, the dinosaurs were mostly confined to the island, and it was assumed that even the flying creatures wouldn’t be able to make it that far. But then came the sequel, and a third movie, and the idea that we knew anything about what was coming kind of went tipping out the window. The third movie did kind of get a little nuts with the villainous dinosaur that killed a T. Rex and the sly, cunning velociraptors that set a trap for their human prey. In other words, the dinosaurs were allowed to get out of hand, as were the situations that the humans found themselves in.
And yet, things went forward after that as Jurassic World came out, and the attractions became bigger and better. They became so much better that the I. Rex was created and became a dominant, murderous force that upon escaping turned the paradise park into a nightmare for many people since not only did it know how to communicate with other dinosaurs, it knew how to communicate with raptors, which was a big mistake since it allowed the I. Rex to turn the raptors on their human handlers, which turned into a bloodbath. Well, not really, since these are the types of movies where the blood is minimal. But you get the idea that the people being attacked are being ripped to shreds. But after Fallen Kingdom, in which the dinosaurs were being threatened with an ecological disaster in the form of an erupting volcano, the moral implications that humans created the dinosaurs and thereby needed to be saved by their creators became the mess that Dominion sees humanity dealing with now.
And that brings us full circle to the point at hand, which is whether or not the story is going to end in a way that will make a definitive end, or if it will keep rolling forward. The current predicament doesn’t feel as though it’s going to be solved that easily, which means that dinosaurs are still a part of the human world when all is said and done, there might be room to bring another story forward if someone decides it’s worth the effort. But it doesn’t feel as though Dominion is the last that we’ll be seeing of this world, at least not in the long run.
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