‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ Should Reveal This Character as the Big Bad
The sixth film in the Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World: Dominion, is heading into theaters. And director Colin Trevorrow promises to circle back around to many of the disparate characters and story beats the franchise has collected over the years. The main attraction this time around is, of course, the return of original Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. But another longtime character deserves to achieve full villain status in the new film.
‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ is the end of a six-film saga
The Jurassic Park has always been about the dinosaurs and rightfully so. After all, the concept behind Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original film – based on the Michael Crichton novel – imagines what if modern science revived dinosaurs today. As such, the thrill in each installment stems from the heroes’ efforts to survive an island filled with hungry dinosaurs. Jurassic World: Dominion, much like its predecessors, introduces a new, nastier dinosaur into the mix.
However, the dinosaurs themselves represent the power of nature. They are animals, first and foremost, and aren’t truly capable of villainy as modern moviegoers understand it. They’re literal forces of nature. And so the T-Rex, Spinosaurus, Indominious Rex, and Indoraptor are indeed monsters. But they aren’t villains. However, the Jurassic Park franchise does have a character who more accurately fits the bill of a villain with malicious or dangerous intentions.
This character is positioned as the series’ main villain
From the very beginning, Jurassic Park has been about the folly of man to meddle with nature. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) certainly paid the price for his ill-conceived goal of bringing dinosaurs into a modern setting. But the most direct individual responsible has yet to face his comeuppance, namely BD Wong’s Dr. Henry Wu. Wong is back in Jurassic World: Dominion and in 2020, he discussed his character’s evolution with Entertainment Weekly.
“[Director Colin Trevorrow is] very proud of where he’s taken this particular character. He kind of rescued this character from obscurity from the original Jurassic Park movie…. And he has now taken a turn into a whole other world in the franchise and become a more complex and more interesting individual. So where he goes in the third movie cannot be said by me right now, but Colin’s very proud of it and rightly so.”
Time and again, Wu has proven his willingness to put profit and ambition ahead of human life. He’s played god for decades as the lead geneticist of both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. Despite the recurring disaster that results from the co-existence of humanity and dinosaurs, Wu refuses to learn the error of his ways. As such, it’s only right he faces consequences for his actions in Jurassic World: Dominion. In his chat with EW, Wong teases the potential for Wu to meet a gruesome demise. For the new film to truly mark a definitive conclusion, he needs to.
What’s next for the ‘Jurassic Park’ franchise?
Even though Trevorrow intends Jurassic World: Dominion to mark “the end of the Jurassic era,” fans are still wondering whether that means the new movie will truly be the last in the series. After all, the film is likely to be one of 2022’s highest-grossing movies. Would Universal really leave one of their biggest money-making brands behind? The answer is “of course not.”
Fans can look forward to more Jurassic Park at some point, though it will likely take a different form and focus on new characters. But they won’t have long to wait for more stories set within the continuity of the movies. The Netflix animated series, Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, has filled in the gaps between movies since 2020, with a fifth and final season due in July 2022.
