Jurassic Park IV story ideas

Summer blockbusters offer up storylines derived from children’s literature and premises that wear and tear with an arms race of super heroes fighting in a warehouse lab or snowy complex. Or in all other cases, destroying a major city. The stories are so cheap these days because they are all similar in scope and there’s no consequence: Innocent people in cities are never shown dying as skyscrapers crumble, and no one for a second thinks The Hulk or Batman isn’t going to live through proceedings.

This is why Jurassic Park is undoubtedly the best summer blockbuster of all time. With apologies to Independence Day, Star Wars, and Jaws, Jurassic Park wins because its premise–while scientifically impossible–is offered up with completely believable, ingenious imagination. The difference between Jurassic Park and RIPD is that you START with HOW to believably bring back dinosaurs and THEN you eventually land on “dinosaur theme park with automated Jeeps.” With news in late July that the summer of 2015 would feature reboots from Stars Wars, Avengers, a Batman and Superman friendship buddy cop drama, Independence Day, and Terminator, I mostly just rolled eyes.

All of that sounds so predatory and unsatisfying. But not so much Jurassic Park IV, which will also throw itself into the 2015 summer jam mix.

The JP franchise is the product of a dead man’s novel, not a series of comics and brands. The source material is basic. The heroes are relatively interchangeable, yet memorable. It’s great because children will always be fascinated by the idea of dinosaurs, and thanks to JP there is a solid premise for how to interestingly make them co-exist.

The plot is reportedly people going back to the island because it is now a functional, realized theme park that the world loves. Then it all goes wrong. Cool.

But every bored child has sat around and pondered the consequence of man and dinosaur co-existing. The Lost World was in kind of an isolated incident bubble. As was the redundant and pointless Jurassic Park III. Lest we forget that a T-Rex was set loose in San Diego, Calif. How is this not world-changing news that makes everything run for the third film? How would Dr. Grant be able to even get back to the island in part three–it’d be actively cultivated by every major corporation in the world.  It’s why the fourth idea’s movie is so great.

If it were me in the writer’s room, you have to make Lex the main character. She’s a genius and in her adult prime these days. You could cast a major star as Tim and tease him on the posters but he gets chomped in half mid-way like Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea. There is no laboratory or park. You simply build around the premise that dinosaurs are now a thing. You take a page from The Cove–a documentary that details the horrors of the international dolphin trade, specifically those captured for Sea World-theme parks. Lex is an activist against the practice of poaching dinosaur eggs from labs and Central American islands.

We open on a scene of a boy coming from school alone. In a nod to part one, he’s dressed just like the fat kid from the desert. He puts his backpack down, prepares a bowl of what appears to be dog food, says “here girl” in the backyard. He is eaten alive by his illegal pet raptor. Then we go to a Peace Corps-like scene where Lex is trying to sabotage dinosaur fisherman. Rich people pay big money for dinosaurs they do not understand or pretend to know how to tame.

I’ll put a pin in it for now. Here are five other ideas.