Let’s get this out of the way straight away: the Jurassic World movies are simply awful. But hey, at least those films are ruining the franchise with new characters rather than dragging in all our beloved heroes from Jurassic Park.
Oh wait, that’s no longer true.
According to Deadline, the folks behind Jurassic World 3 are bringing back the original Jurassic Park lead trio of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum. And it won’t be for tiny fan service-y cameos like Goldblum’s appearance in Fallen Kingdom either as director Colin Trevorrow says all three will have “sizable roles” in the upcoming sequel.
Look, there’s an ungodly amount of issues with the Jurassic World films but adding Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum to the equation isn’t a solution.
There are two major issues with the two Jurassic World films we’ve gotten: the internal logic has so many holes it’ll give you trypophobia and the new characters suck.
Part of what made Jurassic Park work so well was the plausible logic that made the suspension of disbelief quite easy. But Jurassic World threw all that out the window in favour of lazy plot contrivances, like how the film’s plot only works due to the horrendously incompetent security guards.
And let’s not even get started on what on earth happened in Fallen Kingdom because trying to make sense of the clone girl storyline and some of the character decisions (why on earth would you hold an illegal dinosaur auction IN YOUR OWN HOME?) will require more brain cells than what humans are born with.
Then there are the new characters introduced in Jurassic World, who are not only unmemorable in their characterisations (which border on problematic at times and not because one of them is played by Chris Pratt) but don’t get any meaningful character development either despite being at the front and centre of two films.
Bringing back Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum suggests that the filmmakers are playing the “this is what fans want!” card rather than putting in the work and coming up with a script that irons out all the aforementioned built-in flaws.
And then there’s the whole issue of the large cast of characters. The Jurassic World films had enough trouble properly servicing its own casts (if you want to even call it that), how on earth will the next film do justice to the new characters AND the original heroes?
This feels like nothing more than stunt casting and it’s a bandaid solution at best.
But look, maybe the filmmakers may surprise us. Jurassic World 3 isn’t out until June 11, 2021 so there’s time to fix things. Just don’t hold your breath.