Given the movie industry's fondness for legacy characters, Sam Neill and Laura Dern's absence from the first two entries in the Jurassic World series seems particularly strange. After all, other familiar faces from the Jurassic Park franchise have featured heavily, including the likes of Jeff Goldblum and BD Wong. As such, Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler's omission from the reboot has raised understandable eyebrows from the devoted fanbase since the 2015 revamp.
Both Neill and Dern were central characters in Steven Spielberg's original Jurassic Park movie. As the curmudgeonly Dr. Grant, Neill formed the emotional core of the movie, along with child actors Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards as Tim and Lex Murphy. Dern, meanwhile, was a consistently heroic presence and remains one of the few characters in the series to successfully negotiate a velociraptor encounter. After missing the 1997 follow-up The Lost World, both actors returned for Jurassic Park III, although Laura Dern's Sattler took something of a backseat to the Isla Sorna-based action.
Having already been involved in a Jurassic Park follow-up, the pair's conspicuous absence from the Jurassic World series ahead of Dominion has been something of a mystery. However, the reasons for their omission may be much more prosaic than much speculation suggests. According to contemporary interviews with Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, the decision to leave out the original characters was made so that the new series could look forward, rather than back. As the filmmaker explained in a 2015 interview with CinemaBlend, "...Steven had a mission to make something new, and he really wanted it to be a Jurassic Park for a new generation. So that was always the mission..." This explains why Neill and Dern, at least for the early part of the new saga, were disregarded as key players.
Of course, this reasoning doesn't fully explain why other key legacy characters, such as Dr. Henry Wu and Ian Malcolm, would make a return. In the case of Wu, his character is perhaps the most essential to the overarching Jurassic Park story. As the scientific genius behind John Hammond's first failed Jurassic Park project, it makes sense that any attempt to revitalize the in-movie concept would call upon his expertise to help get things off the ground. While the extent of his role could be called into question, it's fair to say that any real-world plan as ambitious as Jurassic World would have him involved on some level. By contrast, both Grant and Sattler had an understandably negative view of the entire Jurassic Park vision, making their involvement in the InGen mission unlikely at best.
As for Ian Malcolm, his return to the franchise in Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom actually highlights why reintroducing Grant and Sattler seemed like a bad idea back in 2015. Many viewers felt that Malcolm's appearance, which played a prominent role in marketing materials for the movie, felt tacked-on and unnecessary, and essentially served as another example of the egregious fan service that many movie-goers have criticized other blockbusters (such as Star Wars) for in recent years. Filmmakers on both previous Jurassic World projects may have understandably felt that attempting to shoe-horn in Sattler and Grant on top of Malcolm may have been a bridge too far for even the most enthusiastic audiences.
All this means that Sam Neill and Laura Dern's appearance in Jurassic World Dominion is actually fraught with risk. It's vital that the movie gives these beloved characters something significant to do, beyond turning up for a few minor scenes as was the case with Malcolm in Fallen Kingdom. As their presence in the trailer indicates, Spielberg's proposed vision of moving past them for Jurassic World has been well and truly ignored. Whether this is a wise decision remains to be seen.
