Gareth Edwards’ Jurᴀssic World Rebirth will move the sci-fi franchise in a new direction after the disappointing conclusion of the preceding trilogy, and the way it’s hitting the reset ʙuттon confirms a major problem with how Jurᴀssic World Dominion ended. After the original Jurᴀssic World breathed new life into the island park loaded with genetically-modified cloned dinosaurs, the franchise meandered its way into integrating dinosaurs into the world away from the islands that the Jurᴀssic Park movies were set on. The final result was the loose suggestion that dinosaurs would be integrated into the global ecosystem.

Jurᴀssic World Rebirth is set five years after the events of Jurᴀssic World Dominion, and follows a new cast of characters without the franchise’s former star Chris Pratt. The Jurᴀssic World Rebirth trailer revealed that the new cast find themselves on a mysterious third island near the original Jurᴀssic Park, seeking to extract DNA from the largest dinosaurs left on Earth. While the Jurᴀssic World trilogy made the world of Jurᴀssic Park bigger, it appears the new movie will do the opposite, and in the process it’s confirming a major problem with how Jurᴀssic World Dominion ended.

Jurᴀssic World Rebirth Is All But Ignoring How Jurᴀssic World Dominion Ended

There Is No Official Retcon, But It’s Not Being Acknowledged Either

Jurᴀssic World Dominion ended with dinosaurs coexisting with humans in the world, formally centralized on a dinosaur sanctuary, but with nothing preventing them from intermingling with the rest of the global ecosystem. The movie implies that dinosaurs will gradually become a common element in the world, like any other rare animal, but very much encountering humans on a regular basis. Jurᴀssic World Rebirth is undoing that angle by jumping forward five years to a world in which dinosaurs have been unable to survive anywhere except a few equatorial climates that accommodate their bodies.

While there is no official retcon of the ending of Jurᴀssic World Dominion, the fact that dinosaurs have been quarantined by nature into environments where they don’t often run into human beings accomplishes the same thing. It’s a clever way to take the franchise back to its roots, in which a few humans encounter dinosaurs in an isolated environment. The dinosaurs in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth may be different, but the original concept of the franchise will be restored.

Jurᴀssic World Dominion’s Ending Didn’t Work And Put The Franchise In Check

The Core Concept Of The Franchise Was Essentially Nullified

One of the biggest problems with the ending of Jurᴀssic World Dominion is that it essentially ended the franchise. With dinosaurs integrated into the ecosystem, it becomes extremely difficult to continue the narrative as it has existed since the beginning of the franchise. The entire point of the Jurᴀssic Park series is about the consequences of tampering with nature, and each subsequent movie is driven by the characters’ desire not to unleash dinosaurs upon the world, knowing how dangerous they are. With dinosaurs fully integrated into the world, the story is complete.

That’s the logic behind the тιтle of Jurᴀssic World Rebirth, and its status as a reboot of the franchise. While it will sort of be retconning past canon of the franchise by revealing a third island where research took place (originally the research and cloning took place right on Isla Nublar), the sequel is doing what’s best for the longevity of the franchise. Knowing how much money each movie has brought in regardless of reviews or ratings, it was inevitable that the franchise’s keepers would find a way to keep it going.

Dinosaurs Joining Our Ecosystem Is A Concept Jurᴀssic Park Should Revisit Eventually

There Is An Interesting Story To Be Told With The Right Amount Of Attention

Although Jurᴀssic World Rebirth will return the franchise to its island setting full of isolated dinosaurs, there is plenty of potential for storytelling in a world where humans and dinosaurs coexist. Jurᴀssic World Dominion has already provided a glimpse of what that could look like with illegal dinosaur breeding, but there are many more stories to be fleshed out regarding the impact that wild dinosaurs would have on the environment, the global economy, and even politics. Jurᴀssic World Rebirth‘s pharmaceutical-driven plotline inches towards that, but leaves plenty of meat on the bone for future installments.

The catch in pulling that off is to provide enough distance between Jurᴀssic World Dominion and a new story. Dominion still managed to rake in $1 billion, but in the process registered an abysmal Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score of 29%. A new exploration of dinosaurs and humans coexisting would be something that comes much farther down the road than in Jurᴀssic World Rebirth or its sequels, or perhaps even in some sort of spin-off franchise.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes