After Jurassic World Rebirth, There's Only One Way Forward For The Franchise

The "Jurassic World" franchise has raked in billions over the years, but with diminishing critical returns. When you're making that kind of money, it's tempting to say that reviews and general sentiment don't matter much. But as the series enters a new, post-second-trilogy era with the release of the back-to-basics "Jurassic World Rebirth," more questions arise. How long can the franchise continue on the merits of its core concept alone? And what exactly is the plan for the future as the story strays ever farther from the rich narrative soil of Michael Crichton's original novels?

"Rebirth," for my money, doesn't substantially answer those questions. While overall critical reactions have been mixed, the film clearly isn't a home run, and the story department is where it lacks most severely. The new characters introduced are, for the most part, poorly drawn action figures with little depth or ties to the larger fictional world around them. The story also doesn't set anything up for future films, other than some general shifts in the ecological landscape of the neo-dino age. It hardly seems like a kickoff point for a new trilogy, but if "Rebirth" makes anywhere near the amount of money its predecessors have, there will certainly be more films, despite the aforementioned narrative soil being farmed so aggressively that very little nutritional value remains.

My proposal is simple: A cover crop in the form of a big-budget "Jurassic World" streaming series. The franchise has already found serialized success with the animated "Camp Cretaceous" and "Chaos Theory" shows on Netflix, and NBCUniversal has an ideal home for a live-action series on Peacock.

The beginning of "Jurassic World Rebirth" shows a world that, as far as we're told, has lost interest in the prehistoric creatures sharing the Earth with humanity. The film explains that the dinos can only thrive in a thin strip near the equator due to the planet's present-day climate. We also see that even museums and academic interest are struggling in the wake of, uh, dino fatigue?

To be perfectly honest, it doesn't make a lot of sense. They're dinosaurs, for crying out loud! Surely, there would still be a lot of popular and scientific interest. But the film is forced to deal with the setup from the previous trilogy — one where raptors were being trained for paramilitary use and dinos roamed the savannah alongside modern animals. It's understandable that the studio wanted to shrink the focus again and return to the "island refuge" vibe of the earlier "Jurassic Park" movies, but at the same time, this sudden moving on from the last trilogy's most interesting storylines feels like it cuts off future paths that could have been taken.

A live-action series could refill those gaps. With no park, no evil biotech company, and no legacy characters sticking around to carry things forward, "Rebirth" feels lost at sea. You could write any number of different shows — lab-focused, old island facility, some sort of dino hunter situation, or even a jump back in the timeline to an earlier, more action-packed era. Obviously, effects budgeting would be an issue, but other franchise tie-in shows have dealt with that before.

It's no secret that the big-budget, genre-heavy, franchise tie-in streaming series that have been so popular over the last five years or so aren't exactly guaranteed hits. The high production costs and volatile nature of streaming as a business model make them high risk, but they can also renew and bolster fandoms and channel excitement toward future projects.

"Jurassic World" doesn't feel like appointment viewing on the big screen right now, but a change of scenery could bring in new fans and get the excitement rolling again. Rather than the massive shows of the "Star Wars" or "Game of Thrones" universe, I'm going to pick two examples that may be more appropriate for "Jurassic World" — the Godzilla spin-off series "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters," and the upcoming "Alien: Earth." Both are connected to larger horror/monster film franchises. While we don't yet know what the response to "Alien" will be, the trailer footage shows an ambitious production design that splits time between sci-fi laboratories, ship interiors, and a hostile jungle. That exact same blend could work for "Jurassic World."

On the "Monarch" side, you have a franchise that's always struggled to create compelling human drama alongside the monsters — something "JW" also has had big problems with. The longer timeline of a show allowed for more fully developed characters in the case of the MonsterVerse, as well as a ton of rich worldbuilding for future films to engage with. It's the same formula Universal could embrace, and depending on how "Rebirth" ultimately performs, it might be a necessary swing to take to keep the franchise at the forefront of peoples' minds.

"Jurassic World Rebirth" is in theaters now.