Jurassic Park gave us something we had never seen before: realistic dinosaurs interacting with humans. It also helped that the story was both fun and scary, and stands up to repeated watching. The sequel films all suffered from Idiot Plots. "Don't interact with the dinosaurs. Oh look, an injured baby dinosaur! Take it with us! Oh look... there's its parent and it's angry" Or "let's keep this extremely clever, practically invisible and giant dinosaur in an enclosure with no moat, and the only way in or out for staff is through a HUGE DOOR big enough for the dinosaur to get through. No, don't bother with little doors, nor a second door outside the first, just in case it gets through the first. And as for the final story? "Let's promise the public a world full of dinosaurs and humans living together, but give them a film about bugs" Tldr: stories where the plot only happens because of supposedly intelligent people behaving like imbeciles and stories about dinosaurs that don't include dinosaurs make for dissatisfaction.
2 years ago | 168
I think a large part was probably how original it was as well as the theme of the consequences of playing god that I felt the others never captured
2 years ago | 29
One weird thing that you should absolutely mention is how the sequels often try to capture the moment from the first film where they show off the special effects to the point where they forget that Jurassic Park is supposed to be a horror/thriller film. The "WOW" moment for the film gets sullied and detracts from the point where you're supposed to be scared as the movie tries to get you to admire the visual effects and remind you of the original movie. It's super weird...
2 years ago | 188
Every sequel made the characters just as naive as the first movie, despite the tragedies that have happened. With every new movie, it was harder and harder to believe these characters would actually return to the island
2 years ago | 18
Especially in world, i think that the dinosaurs having human-like personalities, acting more like monsters than animals, hunters than predators, villains than antagonists, deflates a lot of the majesty of WHOA A SAUROPOD. speaking of, that one full minute of watching reactions before we can see the sauropod was great.
2 years ago | 77
Honestly I think the message imparted by the end of Jurassic Park is wrapped up perfectly and with the exception of a those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it storyline, there just isn’t enough story to carry it forward. Jurassic World 2 and 3 were barely about dinosaurs and more just about greedy humans.
2 years ago | 60
We (the audience) are tired of seeing old franchises being “reimagined” instead of actually putting in the time, work and effort to imagine new stories, in new worlds with new characters, and new tribulations.
2 years ago | 73
Everything starts with the writing. Sadly scripts nowadays are commissioned and rushed with 6-8 week deadlines. Doesn’t create the stage for the best filmmaking. Pretty positive the 1st Jurassic took longer than 6 weeks to write. Also there are a lot of invisible writing fundamentals used in the first one that the others don’t use. Like wants and needs. For example Grant hates kids in the first JP but needs to learn to love them so that’s the invisible tool used. The new ones use none of those tools and that’s why they feel hollow w/o most of us knowing why
2 years ago | 125
Jurassic Park’s technology was groundbreaking at the time, and in many areas still looks great. The sense of wonder and scope was nearly unrivalled in film when it came out. The sequels haven’t done nearly as much to push technological boundaries, and all basically repeat the same story over and over again. “Some greedy asshole learns how to make dinosaurs, and turns it into an amusement park. Something goes wrong, people die, insert message about ‘just because you can doesn’t mean you should’ here.” It’s an incredibly difficult movie to make a sequel on in the first place, and as time’s gone on, what made the first film so magical has become harder and harder to replicate, because we see groundbreaking CGI and special effects pretty much every year.
2 years ago | 13
The first movie had great characters. That’s what the other movies are missing. Dinosaurs are cool but we need a strong human element to actually care. I actually think JP3 comes the closest and it’s definitely my second favorite.
2 years ago | 15
Charisma between the characters of the first keep me coming back every time. It doesn't mean they like each other, but the audience likes them, and more importantly, their interactions with the others.
2 years ago | 5
I think people enjoy the idea of “visiting a park” and the idea of live dinosaurs captures their imagination. The JP sequels (and the JW sequels) are usually about islands with abandoned dinosaurs and are far removed from the idea of a park guest experience. The structure of carefully constructed park turns to chaos by the end of the movie is more pleasing than chaos already existing on abandoned islands far away from people. It’s like making a King Kong or Godzilla movie in a city that’s already been destroyed.
2 years ago (edited) | 6
They didn’t expand on the concept and themes of the original (other than the lost word, maybe). They just recycled the same ideas over and over
2 years ago | 3
Jurassic Park had experts going out of their depth on the island and using their wits to survive. Conversely, TLWJP had experts knowing what they were getting into acting like idiots solely for the plot to progress. JPIII was a step back in a better direction by having laypeople acting like idiots (raising the stakes of Grant's return, because him having learned previous lessons doesn't matter if everyone else is making stupid decisions). I'm actually largely a defender of JPIII, especially how it progressed Grant's character arc, but the finished product is very sloppy because of BTS complications/rewrites. The World trilogy is a bit more complicated. I'd argue the first one largely landed with what it was trying to accomplish, and, if the sequels had been of its same quality, I think the trilogy would be remembered more fondly. The second and third World films just contradict the larger franchise too much. The amount of retcons and logical leaps in FK, while allowing for a very fun popcorn throwback to the very old Lost World kind of films, incredibly damaged the foundations of this series to where Dominion would have failed no matter what it did. Dominion of course managed to contradict the very central theme of the franchise of being unable to control nature by having a lady clone herself and change every cell of her body chronologically before Wu tried and failed to edit Indos and then having Wu do it to destroy the locusts (having the dinosaurs simply eat the locusts, as stupid as that is, would have been more in line with the theme). Dominion also managed to unlearn every lesson the franchise had learned up to this point. No character development, no engaging active villains, no new imagery (just ripping off old scenes), not differentiating the dinosaurs with unique setpieces the way FK did and not justifying the monster battle team up when JW put in so much effort to justify its team up, as contrived as that still ended up being. I don't necessarily ascribe to there being a celling in terms of what you can do with this franchise. As long as it hit the right beats of "Frankenstein science themes" and "characters intelligently growing from experiences on island," I would have paid to see 15 of these. Everything there was to enjoy just gradually was peeled back and off until you got Dominion
2 years ago | 10
They somehow thought that they had to make it bigger, but instead of doing it in a way that followed the original, they just lost their shit in the worst way.
2 years ago | 2
The first movie focused on building suspense, crafting likeable and entertaining characters whose fate you cared about, and was a novel concept brought to life on a scale that made it palatable. The sequels were spectacles: crowds of people fleeing pterodactyls and a mega-predator hybrid and Chris Pratt training raptors like they aren’t the vicious killing machines the original portrayed them as. The characters aren’t likeable, they’re just fodder for the Dinos to eliminate.
2 years ago | 2
I think part of the issue is that, like Jaws, what do you do with the concept past what the first did? More people in danger? More dinosaurs? It doesn’t help that the people in most of the sequels were cartoonishly stupid/evil.
2 years ago | 546
It's that move from a Horror/thriller story in the first installment, to action/thriller in subsequent installments that you also see in series like Terminator, Aliens, Pirates of the Caribbean etc. where the dread of "how do we survive" from the first film isn't recreated and instead it becomes a "how do we beat it" action film.
2 years ago | 1
Likable, MEMORABLE characters, the genuine sense of horror and diverse scenery (jungle, plains and buildings)
2 years ago | 1
The Closer Look
I'm working on a video on why the Jurassic Park sequels never lived up to the quality of the first film, and thought it would be cool to give you guys a chance to have some input.
Why do you think the sequels (including the modern Jurassic World ones) never lived up to that original film?
2 years ago | [YT] | 1,968