Make a Jurassic Park Movie Starring Only Dinosaurs, You Cowards

This summer’s Jurassic World Rebirth will swap out the human leads of the previous three Jurassic World installments for a new motley crew of human beings so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they never stopped to think if they should. Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, Jonathan Bailey, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein, and Luna Blaise are just some of the actors taking on major roles in this production. There will, of course, also be tons of new dinosaurs, including at least one mutant T-Rex offshoot with an overabundance of arms.

The Jurassic Park franchise has employed tons of great actors over the years to play its human characters including Judy Greer, Dichen Lachman, Toby Jones, Julianne Moore, and Vincent D’Onofrio (among many others). But do you remember their names? Beyond the engrossing humans in the very first Jurassic Park movie, none of the humans in this franchise have left an impression. Rather than shelling out Scarlett Johansson money for her to headline Rebirth, it’s time for the dinosaurs themselves to be the exclusive stars of the Jurassic Park saga.

Dinosaurs Can Totally Headline a Movie

Putting dinosaurs front and center in a movie without any human leads might sound weird, but in all honesty, it’s not a strange concept. For one thing, the concept of having lead characters who can’t talk isn’t an unprecedented concept. There’s an entire era of silent cinema out there proving audiences can be absorbed into dialogue-free storytelling. Modern incarnations of this mold like No One Will Save You or Flow show that the appeal of such stories lives on into the 21st century.

For proof of the joys of silent dinosaur cinema, just look at Gertie the Dinosaur, a 100+ year old animated short film focusing on the mischief created by the titular critter. Gertie is infinitely more compelling than Vince Vaughn in The Lost World: Jurassic Park or Chris Pratt in any of the Jurassic World films. She’s adorable, a scallywag, and immensely hungry (not to mention prone to random naps), with all these character traits succinctly materializing in just a few minutes of screentime. Imagine what kind of rich, fun personalities could emerge following a dinosaur for a feature-length Jurassic Park movie.

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Projects like Gertie the Dinosaur (and even projects like WALL-E) reflect how much humans adore interpreting their own emotions or words onto silent characters. That’s a phenomenon the Jurassic Park dinosaurs could easily play into for a whole movie. Plus, there’s a frustrating historical trend of various dinosaur-centric properties like The Land Before Time or Dinosaur initially planning on being silent epics before shoehorning in traditional dialogue. A Jurassic Park entry focusing just on dinosaurs could finally make those unrealized concepts a reality. Finally, a movie about dinosaurs who don’t incessantly yammer.

Focusing On Dinos Would Fix Jurassic Park’s Human Problem

It’s clear that audiences would totally sit still and be enraptured by a dinosaur-centric Jurassic Park movie if it was well-made and emotionally engaging. Even better, concentrating on the dinosaurs would solve a problem plaguing this franchise in recent years. The original Jurassic Park was packed with striking characters and intimate human-centric scenes (like John Hammond wistfully recalling his flea circus) that crackled with tangible pathos. Since then, though, the humans have been a snore, especially in the Jurassic World movies.

There’s something so deeply obligatory about the writing of post-1993 Jurassic Park/World human characters that makes it impossible to invest in them. People come to these movies for fun dinosaur chaos, not to hear poor Laura Dern utter the phrase “slid into my DM’s” or witness Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard do tin-eared romantic banter. Worse yet, the most recent World installments filled up the human casts with characters like an older Lewis Dodgson who just harkened back to the old movies.

Focusing on dinosaurs for an entire Jurassic Park movie could help this saga finally burst free from the constraints of fan-service and the legacy of the original 1993 masterpiece. No more could this franchise rely on human characters meant to remind viewers of Ian Malcolm or Dennis Nedry. Instead, fresh prehistoric protaganists would fill the frame. Audiences would have to relate to characters previously only used for chase scenes or jump scares. That would be an exciting, creative challenge rife with creative possibilities far more enticing than just making more disposable Jurassic Park human characters. People come to the Jurassic movies for glorious dinosaur spectacle. It’s time this franchise seized on that reality by ceding the spotlight to these resurrected creatures.

Jurassic World Rebirth hits theaters on July 2.