How Should the Franchise End?

Well, how do you think?
My only thoughts are rather silly, almost like planet of the apes, where nature takes back what is theirs. Except less hyper-intelligent animals.

"From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate, and drank, they were doomed."

No

I think it would be a good move for the Jurassic World trilogy not to end in a manner that's too similar or outright identical to the Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes series. Pretty much as soon as minor plot details emerged for the sequel, comparisons were made to the Apes series. To me, there is a problem with this because the first film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, still had an undercurrent of darkness and foreboding especially with the hint that the Simian flu was about to go global.

Jurassic World didn't really end with any clear indications that terrible things of that scale were coming. Yes, Wu and the embryos had gotten away, but the film still ended on a note of awe and wonder - Rexy roaring over her island domain. And maybe they can do something like that with dinosaurs starting to integrate themselves into the wider world, but would present it in such a way that would be incredibly difficult and disconcerting for humanity but not the end of the world; life finds a way (ideally in my opinion).

This is the way that would please me and be poetic. No fanservice, no kiddy crap, no happy endings, but harsh reality.

The first 90% of the film can be lead-up to this conclusion, however it's achieved. There are some last lines of dialogue and music. But then:

Dinosaurs are roaming in the woods. We see couple of minutes of them acting natural, you know living among themselves. There is no music, just sounds of the forest and dinosaurs.



Suddenly we see fireballs in the horizon that bear some similarity to the asteroid impact of the K-T boundary 65 million years ago.



But instead of asteroid, what those flashes of light and sounds actually were, was humans bombing their revivals back to extinction. All of them. Again there is no music or other melodramatic effects during either the bombing sequence or the aftermath of it, just natural sound of death. Which by the end of it is just whirl of wind in barren landscape.



What follows after, in the final 5 minutes of the film, is Grant sitting in restaurant, drinking wine. We haven't seen or heard of him even once since JP3 so he looks cranky and beaten up. He doesn't say a word but just sits there looking at his glass and taking sip of wine at times.



He goes to a museum. He walks past the dinosaur fossils that became extinct millennia ago, not particularly observing them, while slowly advancing to the next room. And finally he comes upon T-Rex skeleton. He stops and looks at it. It's an InGen dinosaur fossil. Fade black and end credits. Jurassic Park done forever.

We see a long shot of a town somewhere in the US, with a forest right on the outskirts of the town.





The camera slowly zooms into the forest. As it moves closer we see a cluster of dinosaur eggs nestled somewhere on the forest floor.



As the camera continues to zoom in, one of the eggs starts to move ever so slightly. The egg starts to crack, and the film ends before we see exactly what's inside of it.



I think this would be a great way to show dinosaurs starting to integrate themselves into modern ecosystems without going too over-the-top with it. It's subtle, and implies that dinosaurs could actually integrate into the modern world without causing complete chaos (whether that's actually true or not is irrelevant).

I think it's important the franchise ends with a beacon of hope, rather than something dark and depressing.

Whatever happens, I don't think it'll end with napalm. It'll probably just have dinosaurs integrated into our natural world as invasive species, living among the modern animals. It's survival of the fittest, but it's left up to the audience whether the dinosaurs come out on top.

Of course I won't ever expect it to happen, you know the (re-) extinction of the dinosaurs, but it is what I would like to see. Poetry. And realism. It would be depressing, but life is depressing. As was the original fate of the dinosaurs.

And yes original Jurassic Park didn't end like the novel did, you know in miserable fire of agony, but it also didn't say they were gonna live happily ever after that. Rather it left the question of their fate hanging in the air... until the sequels anyway...

With the Dark Knight Rising....JK

With Charlton Heston cursing our hubris. JK JK



Just do it like TLW novel. Death from Humanity's arrogance and imperfection. And overpredation but primarily because Humanity is limited in its knowledge and its expertise in reviving dead animals they know nothing about. Good way to reference Crichton one last time too.

But isn't the implication in the TLW novel that the government is sooner or later gonna napalm the dinosaurs anyway (again), whether their population on that island was sustainable or not.

Here's my vision for the end of the franchise :

Following a series of disasters that led to the fall of modern civilisation, escaped prehistoric animals have multiplied and invaded the ecosystems, occupying the fragilised ecological niches and competing with the remnants of Holocene megafauna while the surviving humans have regrouped into isolated and/or fortified settlements, venturing only when necessary in the savage lands where Nature has claimed its rights.
However, the newly formed human societies learns slowly how to live in this new world, a Jurassic World (Mesozoic will be more accurate but this was more for the pun).

I know it bears many similarities with Xenozoic Tales or the new Planet of the Apes series but a happy-ending scenario sounds too cheesy for me while this one, while being quite grim, let a small light of hope exists : The world has we know it may have ended and the price paid by mankind heavy but a new world has born from its ashes. Life have found a way.

It should have ended at TLW.

Aegyptiacus3 wrote:

It should have ended at TLW.

I can sympathize with that notion.

Mistral wrote:

But isn't the implication in the TLW novel that the government is sooner or later gonna napalm the dinosaurs anyway (again), whether their population on that island was sustainable or not.

That was Jurassic Park. TLW they left the island to take its course because they knew overpredation and DX would end the animals. Plus they left on a rowboat without any successful contact with the outside world.

Mistral wrote:

Aegyptiacus3 wrote:

It should have ended at TLW.

I can sympathize with that notion.

I completely agree, but that is simply not the case. We got 3, and now World. We've got another 2 films to go.

Had it ended at TLW, I'd probably think it was a good ending. Had there been no Jurassic World, I'd have continued to be pissed off at JP3's non-ending. Had Jurassic World been a moderate success exactly as it was but didn't do enough to warrant a sequel (not because it ended up a worse film, mind you, I don't think I'd be able to take that), and ended with Rexy roaring over her domain, I would call that a satisfying ending. But as is, I am looking forward to whatever ending may come.

I would love it if they finished it with something like Mistral's plan.

Maybe I'm a grim person underneath, but ending the franchise on a sad note kind of absorbs me, and I think it would be very grown-up of the studio to try doing something out-of-the-ordinary like that.

Scott B wrote:

Mistral wrote:

But isn't the implication in the TLW novel that the government is sooner or later gonna napalm the dinosaurs anyway (again), whether their population on that island was sustainable or not.

That was Jurassic Park. TLW they left the island to take its course because they knew overpredation and DX would end the animals. Plus they left on a rowboat without any successful contact with the outside world.

That it how it literally ended, but regardless of their already ongoing self-extinction (which they could continue to monitor with the cameras they had in place), the indication was the island was gonna get bombed sooner or later.

"Anyway, what's the big rush?" Eddie said. "I mean, you build all these vehicles, and then you leave without them - "
"I had no choice," Levine said. "The government has an outbreak of some new encephalitis on its hands. They've decided it's related to the occasional dinosaur carcass that washes up there. Of course, the whole idea is idiotic, but that won't stop them from destroying every animal on this island the minute they find out about it. I had to get here first. Time is short."

---
"Look," Levine said, "I don't know what your problem is. The expedition was going to come to this island sooner or later. In this instance, sooner is better. Everything has turned out quite well, and, frankly, I don't see any reason to discuss it further. This is not the time for petty bickering. We have important things to do - and I think we should get started. Because this island is an extraordinary opportunity, and it isn't going to last forever.

---
Levine edged forward.They knew so little about these creatures. They didn't even know the most basic facts about their lives - how they ate, how they eliminated, how they slept and bred. A whole world of intricate, interlocking behaviors had evolved in these long-vanished animals. Understanding them now could be the work of a lifetime for dozens of scientists. But that would probably never happen. All he could hope to do was make a few conjectures, a few simple deductions that skimmed the surface of the complexity of their lives.

TheRexMan22 wrote:

I would love it if they finished it with something like Mistral's plan.

Maybe I'm a grim person underneath, but ending the franchise on a sad note kind of absorbs me, and I think it would be very grown-up of the studio to try doing something out-of-the-ordinary like that.

Yup!

And it wouldn't be depressive for depressive's sake, but mirror their fate poetically. Successive group of animals go extinct for the second time not by their own flaws, at least not ultimately, but by exterior source that ends the reign suddenly and decisively. Only this time it's the force that (re) created them in the first place. And just as humans took part in the extinction of megafauna in Holocene and epochs before that, they will also be responsible for this.