The Jurassic World saga has enjoyed a mixed reception from both fans and critics, yet the films' biggest weakness may be their failure to capitalize on the series' best story idea. Building from the foundations of 2015's Jurassic World, the movies continued to find box office success with follow-ups Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. However, from a narrative perspective, the modern trilogy actually wasted the Jurassic franchise's best story device before the concluding chapter's eventual 2022 release.
After Steven Spielberg's original 1993 smash hit, Jurassic Park has become established as one of the biggest properties in the modern movie industry. While The Lost World and Jurassic Park III saw dwindling returns, Jurassic World reignited interest in the series, with the fourth, fifth and sixth installments collectively grossing well over $3.5bn at the global box office. Yet, while the impressive financial return of these films has been undeniable, the general consensus agrees that the overarching story has left a lot to be desired. Though there are many explanations for the eventual narrative direction, another part of the Jurassic property provides a glaring contrast and hints at what could have been.
Released alongside the cinematic Jurassic World trilogy, the animated spin-off Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous has been a comparatively low-key success for the Jurassic IP. Following the adventures of six Jurassic World guests who get stranded on Isla Nublar during and after the events of the 2015 movie, the show offers further island-based adventures while introducing iconic dinosaurs like Bumpy and the ferocious Scorpios Rex. Yet, while the show has enjoyed limited success on Netflix, its compelling story and charismatic characters prove that the wider Jurassic World series would have been far better suited to following a smaller, more self-contained arc. By contrast, the sprawling, highly-convoluted plots of the main Jurassic World trilogy – epitomized by 2022's Dominion – prove that expanding the series' scope beyond the original island setting actually deprived cinema-goers of what could have been some of the best silver-screen dinosaur action since Spielberg's original.
Camp Cretaceous Would Be Better As A Movie
One of the main problems with the Jurassic World series has been the increasing implausibility of its main story. While the idea of a fully operational park in the 2015 film was a thrilling update on the original Jurassic Park premise, the two later installments increasingly relied on a series of unbelievable plot developments, resulting in dinosaurs somehow successfully spreading across the entire world, in conjunction with genetically modified super-locusts. While the action has been consistently spectacular, the story has stretched credulity to breaking point.
By contrast, Camp Cretaceous offers a stripped-down, leaner premise that, while effective as an animated series, could have been an even more interesting direction for the main films to follow. The prospect of six stragglers left behind in the remains of a broken, lawless, yet previously operational Jurassic World could have made for some of the series' most haunting visuals, allowing the franchise to branch off into a genre more akin to survival horror than eyebrow-raising science-fiction. This in turn would have allowed the series to successfully reinvent itself – something sorely needed after Dominion's critical failure. Although the existing Camp Cretaceous series does take the story in a different direction, it feels like a wasted opportunity compared to what's been put on the big screen.
If the Jurassic Park franchise is to have a successful future, it's essential that it embraces change. After a promising start with the flawed but entertaining Jurassic World, the final two movies in the saga simply didn't deliver enough originality to succeed on their own merit. Had the films used Camp Cretaceous's clever premise and transposed it to the big screen, Jurassic World could have delivered the spectacular dino-centric action audiences crave in a familiar setting while also taking the series in a bold new direction. Unfortunately, given the end of the series and wider Jurassic World series in 2022, this now looks like a major missed opportunity.