Are the Jurassic Park sequels the biggest collection of dogshit of any movie franchise? (Jurassic World Rebirth spoilers)
Usually when a franchise gets 5+ sequels at least one is pretty good, but none of the JP sequels have been.
One of the prevailing themes of the original is that these animals are just living their life and they simply don't belong here 65 million years in the future. They don't like being kept in zoos, they can't eat the flora, they're simply out of place/time. Their violence towards humans is a side effect of their inability to fit in naturally. The T-Rex flips over the Jeep and then starts biting the tires. He doesn't know what a Jeep is.
In the sequels, they simply want to eat people all the time. Like, I was high when I saw the 5th one, but I'm pretty sure dinosaurs will go out of their way to eat people even when they're basically on fire. From what I've seen of the trailers from the new one, they will flip over a boat and wait for the people to fall out before trying to eat them. It would have made more sense if they said they accidentally fucked up their brains or something and made them ravenous.
Oh, sorry, that's as long as you don't hold your hands up. That makes you invisible for some reason.
they accidentally fucked up their brains or something and made them ravenous.
Maybe the dinosaurs used the time machine from Timeline too frequently.
The first one is the only one I enjoy because it is a good movie.
I like The Lost World because I am a big fan of Goldblum's sarcastic portrayal of Ian Malcolm. I like 1 scene from 3. Where Grant is dreaming and a raptor looks at him and says "Alan". That shit was so stupid, it was perfect. It still blows my mind that made it into a movie with the kind of budget and financial expectations Jurassic Park 3 had.
The general premise of Jurassic World had promise. But they ruined it by making up a dinosaur hybrid and just letting it be a monster of the week abomination tear ass-ing through the park in broad day light. What the character of John Hammond did worked because the resulting monsters were based on something that was once real, and because his motivations seemed like something an actual human would try to do with enough hubris and money thinking he was doing something good for humankind. What they turned Dr. Woo and everyone into in Jurassic World was just a mix of incompetence and mustache twirling evil. Which isn't funny unless its played for camp.
Never bothered with any of the others.
I was disappointed that they didn't take the chance and do feathered dinosaurs where appropriate in World. Back when Jurrasic Park came out, dinosaurs evolving into birds wasn't common knowledge and the average person saw them as huge, slow and dumb. The movie did a TON of work of bringing the then-current understanding of dinosaurs into the public consciousness. The new movies could have done the same, but decided to play it safe instead.
Such a missed opportunity! The designers could have gone nuts on feathered designs. And hell, they could still have the "classic" designs around, the movie even features some of the animals from the original island.
Second huge missed opportunity was that the second movie didn't take place in the ruins of the original park so it could be called "Jurrasic World: The Lost Park".
Right I really expected the latest movie to have way more feathers. But the story of it was just sooo bad and unmotivated. Lol "We want to study the proteins of a 100% synthetic species for which the entire genome is known. Let's collect blood." As if all of biotech simply does not exist. It makes very limited sense imho
The worst one for me is the sequel book that Crichton actually wrote. The Lost World.
He actually wrote it as a sequel to the movie, not the first book. Bringing back Ian Malcolm (killed in the book, but not the movie) and flipping the ages of the original 2 kids to match the movie.
As a book, it's not awful, but he kind of sold out by writing it for the inevitable movie adaptation... which then completely ignores the book. 🤬
I really wanted to see the chameleon dinosaurs too! Or, you know, not see them as the case may be!
Bringing back Ian Malcolm
When I read that book as a kid, that confused me so much. I reread the beginning of the book so many times trying to figure out if I had missed a line saying "but it turns out it was his twin who died" or something. I think I had gotten the first book from the library then returned it, else I would have reread it looking for an explanation. No, though; justifying his resurrection was left as an exercise for the reader.
The chameleon dinosaurs would have been a no-brainer! They were scary as hell in the book and easy to translate to the bog screen. Give 'em a predator-like cloaking vibe, but more obvious. Catch one fading into the treeline, stuff like that.
I think the bog screen is where they're debuting Swamp Thing, no?
There were chameleon ones in one of the newer Worlds.
The current Crichton books/sequels written by other authors from outline materials he left behind are so awful.
The one that James Patterson finished about the volcano in Hawaii was pretty awful too.
Alien and Terminator have both had nothing but shit since their second installments.
If you look at only the movies, Star Wars is at least as bad after the original trilogy. Rise of Skywalker is bad enough to make me wonder if there was intentional sabotage going on.
But for my money, the best example of a franchise that starts strong and then turns to absolute garbage in the sequels is Highlander. The original is a classic that was never meant to have a sequel. Then it got a bunch of sequels, the majority of which have been frequently cited as among the worst movies ever made.
Hell, the anime is the most faithful movie follow up, and it doesn't have any of the characters, takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland, and introduces God, destiny, reincarnation, ghosts, druid magic, cyborgs, giant robot spiders, etc.
I liked both alien 3 and Alien Resurrection, and I didn't like anything else after that (Prometheus, Romulus, etc.)
Not sure what is wrong with me.
Resurrection works as a black comedy. I mean the newborn at the end does puppydog eyes and coos at Call.
I can't agree with you about 3. I just rewatched it and it just didn't do it for me. It bothers me that 2/3rds of the survivors from Aliens get iced in the opening scene, but I do really like the scene where she bring Bishop online.
I don't think your opinions are that unusual. The first 4 Alien films are all unique in their own way, and if you watch the Assembly Cut then even 3 is a fairly consistent and satisfying experience. It's really from Prometheus onwards that the major issues started, although I will say that at least Prometheus was still trying to bring something different in its themes and setting (which were unfortunately poorly developed and hampered by the terrible writing). Covenant was just a complete mess suffering from a clear identity crisis and Romulus was soulless nostalgia-bait, as most reboots are.
Meh. I liked Prometheus and Romulus more than some of the other Alien sequels. People have different tastes/likes.
Alien and Terminator have both had nothing but shit since their second installments.
that's what i'm saying, Jurassic Park doesn't even have that. Lost World was okay at best.
Personally, I'd argue that Alien and Terminator weren't amazing either, and it's only Aliens and Terminator 2 that were actually great movies. They're still franchises with one really awesome installment followed by utter trash. And honestly, I think I'd take Jurassic Park 3 and Jurassic World over anything else the Aliens franchise has produced since.
I'm not saying they are definitely worse than the JP franchise, just that they're close enough that reasonable people could disagree.
I give Rise of Skywalker a pass because they were put in an impossible position.
First, Rian Johnson rat fucked them with Last Jedi, painting them into a corner with no villain to speak of, killing Luke, and reducing the size of the Resistance to something that could fit in the Falcon... Like he forgot his part was the middle part.
And then Carrie Fisher died. :( 3rd movie was supposed to be "hers", just like Force Awakens was Han's and Last Jedi was Luke's.
So, not sure what they could have done here. Fisher did die during post production on Last Jedi, so they could have done an edit where Leia dies in space, Luke survives, and then give the 3rd movie to Luke... or... re-cast the role of Leia and do it properly, or as properly as you can do without a major cast member.
First, Rian Johnson rat fucked them with Last Jedi, painting them into a corner with no villain to speak of
Did you forget about Kylo Ren, or...?
I have a dream where they cut out the completely garbage Casino Planet scenes from Last Jedi and use that runtime to finish the movie with the Palpatine reveal. It would've made Last Jedi a reasonably better movie, and more importantly given Rise of Skywalker a fucking chance to be decent.
Rebirth mostly sucked but t-rex river made it worth the price of admission. The Pratt sequels brought nothing worthwhile to the table.
Edit- I'd argue the resident evil films are contenders for "biggest collection of dogshit" and should have ended at 1, but they kept pumping those out too. $$$.
Even the first RE was bad. You could see the boom Mike in so many scenes!
Why do they keep making them? People watch them. Rebirth has passed $800m at the box office.
Why do people watch them? IDK, dinosaurs are cool? I agree it was a bad, unoriginal film. I still watched it and apparently you did too. I knew it would be bad and watched it anyway because I know I like a cheesy, "bad" film on occasion. Why did you watch it?
And it was supposed to be a "soft reboot" of the franchise, so viewers can forget about the one about grasshoppers instead of dinosaurs. So maybe that was supposed to be the "Rebirth" of it all.
Why do they keep making them?
that's not what i asked, I understand why they keep making them.
Why do people watch them? IDK, dinosaurs are cool?
also not what i asked. I agree dinosaurs are cool.
Why did you watch it?
why does it matter? I thought it had a chance of being good. Now that I know it's bad I will not watch it again.
edit: lol, out here on a high horse having a conversation with yourself, and you downvote me for calling you out on it.
Just seeing this now. I didn't downvote you, bud. My instance has downvotes disabled. Get outta your reddit mindset, I was trying to drive conversation!
I was driving at "well, you watched it? Why? And why would they anything differently if folks like you and I keep watching them?"
But all good, I'll tag your username so I don't reply to your posts in the future and you don't have to be concerned about my non-existent downvotes that don't mean anything on Lemmy anyway.
Lost World is a worthy sequel to 1 but yeah, after that its all awful
I rewatched it recently, loved it as a kid. Watching it as an adult though... Not as good as I remember. I actually love all the fake tech and gadgets, but as an adult the movie is clearly made to sell new toys. The gymnastic bars scene is just bad.
I guess I'll have to rewatch that one, been a long time.
Here is the list of movie franchises I just don’t bother watching anymore.
There aren’t any movie franchises that have more bad entries than Jurassic Park ,but when you factor in TV Shows Star Wars wins.
You missed Tremors. First 2 movies were great, 3 was okay, but 4 on is straight to DVD nonsense. I remember buying 4 a while after it came out and being pretty disappointed in how far the series had fallen. They had a SciFi TV show too for like a season but iirc they actually released the episodes out of order and so the show never made sense chronologically
I have only seen the first two. It sucks it went to hell. I loved the first two tremors.
On a strange sidenote, I saw the bacon brothers band live. Kevin Bacon actually pitched the song to the movie producers called under Paradise, Which they did not accept as the theme of the movie.
It was a good song
I don't remember which it was but I remember being delighted by the Tremors Prequel/Sequel that took place in the old west. Tremors was always schlock, though. The first two movies just happened to punch above their weight IMO.
FWIW Prey, the predator sequel from a couple years ago, and Alien Romulus were both pretty good.
I have heard that a lot, but was skeptical, so I eventually watched it. Prey was a lot better than all the other Predator sequels but I did not love it. I had a hard time swallowing how she became the biggest warrior around.
Alien Romulus, I will take your word for it. I am just done with the franchise
Jurassic World was okay....Fallen Kingdom was awful and The one with fucking locusts was the biggest waste of returning talent in an IP that I have ever seen
Sam Neil is understandable because I think he knows he's "the guy from Jurassic Park" and it was an easy paycheck, Jeff Goldblum, sure, because he knows he's Jeff Goldblum and no one will ever really hate him, but it's crazy to me that Laura Dern came back for that script. I hope the paycheck was worth it because... wow.
The modern King Kong films, starting with the Peter Jackson one which was alright when it came out. The rest of them are just straight schlock trash
I was gonna nominate the Hellraiser series, but the reboot movie that came out a few years ago was at least watchable.
Matrix says Hi
I would say they aren't as bad as Jurassic Park. Also Jurassic Park has Matrix beat with volume.
2 and 3 isn't as good but it's not bad either? At least they ended the story. JP doesn't even need a sequel and they got like a shit tons.
The Animatrix was good
Hey now, The Matrix Resurrections finally redeems aspects of The Matrix Revolutions. Progress! 😅
I swear my taste in films isn't always so shallow. I like films to have good moral messages and a good story. But sometimes, I also just wanna see cool things on screen. Sometimes, I just wanna see dinosaurs on the big screen.
If you want to see an entry into the Jurassic franchise that actually has a good story, check out the animated series Camp Cretacous and its sequel Chaos Theory
I agree, sometimes you just want pasific rim. Giant monsters fighting giant robots, to a kick arse sound track.
After the first JP, the rest are just cool dinosaurs on screen.
Rebirth was really good in my opinion, arguably the second best in the franchise. Jurassic Park is the best. I'd have to watch World again to compare it, but Rebirth was genuinely pretty good.
i was watching jurassic world in the theatre and drinking heavily. i kept laughing at the god awful dialogue and ridiculous plot points. a couple people glared at me... the first time. The second time the whole theatre was joining in.
it was just so fucking bad. there is something about being in a theatre that helps people not notice the shit, and ive often found that all it takes is some laughter to cut theough the shitty veneer and the garbage is evident.
i enjoyed the movie. but it was not a good movie.
There are more than a few stinkers when you go down the line Alien sequels, especially if you count the Alien VS Predator films.
Honestly, Rebirth is probably the second best in the series IMO. ( not saying it is good)