Back in 1997, audiences shuffled out of theaters with one thought on their minds: “I guess not even Steven Spielberg can make a good sequel to Jurassic Park.” The Lost World: Jurassic Park failed to match the quality of its predecessor in every way, setting off a series that would be nothing but lackluster entries. Even Spielberg’s previous mean-spirited follow-up to a beloved adventure film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom at least had moments of cinematic excellence, but The Lost World has a dull New York sequence and an ill-advised raptor versus preteen gymnast scene.

And yet, like InGen, ParkerGenix, and all of the other companies in the Jurassic universe, Universal Pictures seems determined to keep churning these movies out. Sometimes, the results are fairly entertaining (see: Jurassic World Rebirth); sometimes, they’re disastrous (see: Jurassic World Dominion).

So with that in mind, let’s pretend we’ve been hired by Universal to serve as advisors, offering our opinions on how the franchise should proceed. We’ll put on our cool glasses, don our leather jackets, and ignore the question of whether the studio should make more Jurassic movies and tell them how they could make better Jurassic movies.

We’re Not Bored of Dinosaurs

One of the strangest threads in the movies that follow Jurassic Park III is this idea that we’re bored of dinosaurs. Let me say that again, just so it can sink in. The Jurassic World movies think that people find dinosaurs boring.

To be fair, the idea that dinosaurs are old news kind of worked as a metacommentary in the first Jurassic World. It had been 14 years since the last movie and that fictional world had moved on while we weren’t watching. Maybe people within that universe would get bored (though Disney adults still seem pretty jazzed to hug some actor in a Mickey costume, and that’s been going on for decades).

But here’s the thing, we—the people in the real world, the people in the audience, the people actually watching the movies—are not bored of dinosaurs. We love dinosaurs. That’s why we’ve come to watch the films.

More than anything else, the Jurassic movies need to remember this fact. Dinosaurs are cool and everyone in the audience wants to see them. A love of dinosaurs should be the first thing that drives their movies, even if the characters in the film don’t share that feeling.

No More Mutants

If only Wanda Maximoff existed in the Jurassic universe, then we wouldn’t have so many problems. Again, it’s slightly forgivable that Jurassic World included the Indominous Rex because it was a type of metacommentary on the franchise’s absence. But even that movie understood Indominous sucks, which is why it gets taken down by classic dinos at the end.

And yet, the movies keep coming back to mutants, whether it’s the clone kid from Fallen Kingdom or the Distortus Rex from Rebirth. At best, these things feel like crass toy tie-ins from the era that spawned Jurassic Park, like when Batman would get a new, increasingly esoteric suit every twenty minutes of his latest movie.

But in most cases, the mutants feel like distractions. None of them have the majesty and wonder of the real dinosaurs. Most of them seem like the product of executives and the least talented designers… which, they are, of course. But that doesn’t mean that we want to see them on screen, not when there are real dinosaurs to watch.

Pulp Adventure Only

Without question, Owen Grady is the worst character in the Jurassic franchise. All of the self-depricating humor that makes Chris Pratt so much fun to watch in other things went out the window for a pompous tool who felt like a twenty-something who ends up at way too many high school parties.

Yet, despite the disastrous execution, the idea behind Owen Grady is the right one. There should be old-school, lantern jawed men and steely women in these movies, because they are fundamentally pulp adventures.

The most consistently effective scenes in Jurassic movies understand this. The tall-grass raptor attack in The Lost World, the rappelling sequence in Rebirth, the opening of Fallen Kingdom: all of these moments feel like they came out of a cheap paperback from a century ago.

Not every Jurassic film can achieve the level of mastery that Spielberg brought to the first entry. But it’s not unreasonable to expect every film to be exciting, and pulp adventure is a way they can achieve that.

Don’t Overdo the Kids Stuff

There’s no getting around the fact that Jurassic movies appeal to children, and that’s a good thing. Nobody loves dinosaurs more than kids, and a sense of wonder is built into the franchise. However, even as the films tend to be more cynical and mean (as we’ll discuss in a minute), the Jurassic franchise has also become almost cloying to children.

The most obvious example occurs in Rebirth, in which Isabella Delgado (Audrina Miranda) gets a cuddly animal sidekick in a baby triceratops mutate. But the problem goes back earlier, to raptors that can be stopped through gymnastics and Owen Grady’s buddy Blue.

All of these attempts to make dinos into puppies fundamentally misunderstand why kids like dinosaurs. It’s not just that they fill children with awe; it’s also that dinos scare them a little. That wonder diminishes when kids aren’t as frightened as they are amazed. This doesn’t mean that the next Jurassic movie needs to have scenes of a stegosaurus impaling junior on its spiky tail. But we do need to see kids in danger, just like Lex and Tim in the first movie.

Wonder Over Cynicism

Quick, what’s the best scene in any Jurassic Park movie? The T-rex’s arrival? Tim scaling the fence? Raptors in the kitchen? All great moments, but without question, the best moment is the first reveal of the dinosaurs, when John Hammond welcomes us to Jurassic Park. Spielberg’s ability to capture awe is in full effect, as is one of John Williams‘s best scores, filling us viewers with a wonder that remains even after multiple viewings.

Since then, the Jurassic movies have only occasionally replicated that feeling, which makes a certain amount of sense. The dinosaurs were new back in 1993 and nobody does awe like Spielberg. But instead of even trying for awe, the films have gone for meanness and cynicism, even Spielberg’s own The Lost World.

Certainly, there’s a place for meanness in a dinosaur movie. These are, after all, cold-blooded creatures. But the Jurassic franchise wants to be a series of PG-13 crowdpleasers, which takes away the edge needed to make meanness interesting.

The recent films have occasionally achieved this sense of wonder, as in the sequence of the dinos collapsing into the sea as Isla Nublar burns in Fallen Kingdom or Dr. Loomis’s (Jonathan Bailey) delight in Rebirth. But these moments have been few and far between, buried under sequences in which dinosaurs team up to kill a babysitter or compies attack a little girl.

Wonder, even imperfectly realized, better fits the Jurassic Park tone and therefore should be the focus of the series.

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