Jurrasic World's Place in the Franchise

Jurassic World (Universal)

Let’s all take a deep breath. Good. Now let out your biggest dinosaur roar. Did it get you more excited for Jurassic World? I know it did for me. I have been excited for this film since the day it was announced, and the images, cast, and trailers have only heightened my excitement.

Then some people decide to stir up trouble and ruin the images and notions we have established in our pretty little heads.

While The Lost World and Jurassic Park III are fair to mediocre sequel movies at best, let me reassure you these films still exist in the “Jurassic Universe.” No retconning happening here (today, anyway). Let me break it all down for you and try to help ease the confusion.

While looking to get ahead in the “breaking news” regime, Uproxx recently released an article describing that the events of the two sequels ”NEVER HAPPENED” as their attention-getter claims. In reality, it’s a giant internet misunderstanding.

The quote they use within their article is actually taken from a Yahoo article whose people interviewed director Colin Trevorrow while the film was still shooting! To make matters worse, what was quoted was actually a paraphrase of what Trevorrow was trying to express. Talk about Hearsay.
 

The quote Uproxx used:      

Of course, Jurassic World isn’t a mere re-creation of Jurassic Park; it’s a direct sequel to the original, set some 20 years after the events of Spielberg’s film. (According to Trevorrow, the previous sequels aren’t being written out of continuity so much as placed to the side, as they both unfolded on a different island.) In that time, a functioning theme park has been constructed on Isla Nublar, overseen by operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and employing hundreds of staffers, including velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt).

Notice no direct quotes? So now all we really know is the internet knows how to take things out of context. Big surprise. Let’s see if we can clear it up a bit.

To the best of my knowledge (which is rather extensive, having read both books along with seeing the movies), The Lost World takes place in canonical Isla Sorna – both the book and movie reference it. Jurassic Park III, on the other hand, is set on the same island but has no book to back it up.

What it basically does is look at the next logical step in the series, and try to take it there. Its mistake was returning to Isla Sorna. Trevorrow has learned from that mistake and is returning to Nublar with his film.

To quote the same Yahoo article, producer Frank Marshall gives a better idea of the movie’s true intentions:

It was Colin’s pitch that we needed to go back to what we did in the first movie and enter the [Jurassic Park] park in wonderment and joy and happiness, delivering what [Hammond’s] original dream was. And then it can go wrong.  

So we welcome everyone to Jurassic World, then everything falls apart just as it did before the original park opened. Straightforward enough.

Here’s where things get interesting. Are you still with me? Good. While the 2001 movie does not have its own book, it does give reference to events in the original Jurassic Park book that the 1993 movie does not cover. Events such as a dino on the river (replace T-Rex for Spinosaurus) and the Pteradon attack. Ironically, Alan Grant experiences all of this, just over the course of two movies on two islands.
 

If you recall, the Pteradons escape at the end of JP3.
 

This is where it all ties together (in a sense).

One thing I give the Jurassic World marketing team credit for, they are thorough. There is a park website to make it look like an actual tourist attraction. There is even a Masrani Corporation website describing the goal Simon Masrani [Irrfan Khan] has for Isla Nublar.

On the Masrani site, it describes the intense security measures they take. The Chief of Security, Vic Hoskins [Vincent D’Onofrio] is the piece that brings it all together. From the Masrani Corp. Website:

A seasoned security contractor, Vic Hoskins was involved in overseeing the infamous flying reptile ‘cleanup’ operation over Canada in 2001. Due to the professionalism his team displayed, he was hired personally by Simon Masrani to re-develop InGen’s Security Division, which helped oversee the protection on Isla Nublar during Jurassic World’s reconstruction.

 

Vic Hoskins, played by Vincent D'Onofrio (Universal)

 

Big picture, the website is just a giant advertisement. Small picture, looking at details, Hoskins captured the Pteradons that escaped in Jurassic Park III! The fact they chose to include this in his character proves, I think, that the claim the other two events "never happened" is false.

Whether this will be referenced in this movie is still to be determined, but many voices have speculated that Hoskins will be the human antagonist in this film. Much like Dennis Nedry was in the original movie, except perhaps less obsessed with vending machines.

If anything, the creators are looking for ways to INCORPORATE Hammond’s original plan along with what Crichton wrote, and what could be considered Universal Pictures’ mistakes. Hoskins having a past in the Jurassic Universe rather than being a randomly selected guy could certainly prove interesting.

And for all we know, Sorna may still have problems that need taking care of later on. I personally would love to see Owen Grady’s raptors encounter the Sorna raptors and see what happens.

For now, however, there appears to be enough trouble on Nublar (and the internet) that we should focus our attention to the park and the “asset out of containment” and see what happens from there.

Indominus Rex (Universal)