What Should Be The Next Big Dinosaur Movie Franchise? – A Response Patrick H. Willems
I know this out of the blue, but I felt compelled to write this after I was thinking about Patrick Willem's dinosaur video again last night, and I was thinking of other dinosaur franchises could get a movie and become a movie franchise in addition to the medium that they're already in. I can't just write a comment, believe me I would if I could, because I already wrote a comment on his video. It was me talking about how I agreed with him that we're seriously lacking in dinosaur movie franchises that aren't Jurassic Park/World, and that's why I was so interested in Primitive War, a dinosaur war movie about US soldiers 🇺🇸 in Vietnam 🇻🇳 going up against dinosaurs that were accidentally brought into the then modern day of 1968 by a Soviet and North Vietnamese science experiment ☭🇻🇳 with time ⏱️, that no one saw. Not literally, some people did see it, but not a lot of people saw it.
Even I haven't seen it, even though it was one of the movies I was most interested in seeing in 2025 and I wanted to see it. You know, dinosaurs in the Vietnam War 🇻🇳, that's a cool concept. Not cool enough entice many people to go see it, though the movie fading into obscurity is more the result of people not knowing it even exists than just not being interested. People weren't interested in seeing Superman (2025), people didn't know that Primitive War was even a thing. Had there been more awareness, would it have been successful? I don't know, it's hard to say. Things you think would be surefire hits turn out to be duds all the time. Like I thought Venom: The Last Dance was going to be a much bigger hit than it ended up being. It ended up being the lowest grossing of all the Venom movies, and it was the second to last SSU movie before Kraven the Hunter came out, and landed like a lead balloon, ensuring that it really was the last dance.
So just because people like dinosaurs doesn't necessarily mean every dinosaur movie will succeed. In fact most of them, whether it's due to the quality of the films themselves or because of other factors, they just don't succeed for whatever reason. Even if it wasn't a popular movie and mostly faded into obscurity, I still intend on watching Primitive War and reviewing it on my blog sometime in the future. It's on my list, so I have to do it. I also disagreed with him about Godzilla (1998) and his assertion that no one likes that movie, which is clearly not true. I like it, and there's a whole community of fans who like it and defend it. It's kind of a counter cultural thing within the Godzilla fandom. We're going against the grain. We have the unpopular opinion. And it is a more niche thing within the larger Godzilla fandom. It's sort of like Transformers fans who like the Bayverse and only like the Bayverse. There are Bayverse only Transformers fans, or Bayverse mostly Transformers fans.
Like Talon Productions for example, he's a massive Bayverse fan, most of them anyway. He likes the first four, but doesn't like Transformers: The Last Knight, which is kind of the story with a lot of Bayverse fans. A lot of them seem to drop off with The Last Knight, and The Last Knight is often thought to be the worst one out of the Bay films. Even more than Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which used to be considered the worst one, but people have kind of soften on that one overtime, along with the rest of the "original trilogy, which consists of Transformers (2007), Revenge of the Fallen, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon 🌑. Personally I like to call it the "Sam Witwicky trilogy" since they're the films with Sam Witwicky, and I like to call the two films that followed the "Cade Yeager duology" since they're the films with Cade Yeager. Patrick actually mentioned one of the Bayverse movies in his video, Transformers: Age of Extinction as an example of a movie with robot dinosaurs since it had the Dinobots, Transformers aligned with the Autobots who turn into robot dinosaurs. Although the versions in the movie are not aligned with Autobots at first, are just ancient warriors who happened to be imprisoned on Lockdown's ship (specifically the part of the ship that Cade, Tessa, Shane, and the Autobots commandeered and escaped on), and Optimus has to "convince" them to help them by beating their leader, Grimlock in combat. The Bayverse Dinobots, at least portrayed in Age of Extinction, only respect strength and they will only consider working for you if fight one of them fight and them beat in combat. And the one you usually have to fight is Grimlock, who turns into a fire-breathing robot T. rex with horns. Basically, it's trial by combat. That's why Optimus had to beat the crap out of Grimlock first to make him submit and him and the other Dinobots help him and the Autobot defeat Galvatron and the KSI drones, or KSI Bots as I like call them.
He also said that it was the worst or "most exhausting Transformers movie," but you know, there are Bayverse fans who actually like Age of Extinction and think it's an underrated and overhated entry in the series, regardless of any faults it may have (including that runtime 😒), including Talon. Which could actually be a name for a Dinobot now that I think about it. They did have one named Slash, who turned into a robot Velociraptor, that got cut from the movie but still got a toy made out of him or her. I don't know if Slash was meant to be a male ♂︎ or a female ♀︎. If she was female ♀︎, I won't be surprised if that was the reason why she was cut since Michael Bay doesn’t seem to like female Transformers ♀︎. He didn’t include Arcee in Transformers (2007) despite her being a popular character and replaced her with Ironhide, and he only begrudgingly included her and her sisters, Chromia and Elita-One (even though they weren’t actually her sisters before in other iterations of Transformers) in Revenge of the Fallen, likely at the request of Hasbro who of course wanted to sell toys of her and her sisters. And even when he did include them, he barely gave them any screen time and killed them off right away, unceremoniously. The way Arcee and Elita-One die in Revenge of the Fallen is so matter of fact. You would not think that these main characters or popular characters worthy of respect from the way Bay decided to kill them off.
Is it because he’s sexist? I don’t know, maybe. I’d like to think it was one of those things where he used to be really sexist, but became less sexist overtime. Like, the way he portrays Viviane Wembly in The Last Knight, or Cam in Ambulance 🚑 (2022), or any of the main women ♀︎ in 6 Underground (the ones apart of Magnet’s Ghost team), shows that his respect for women ♀︎ has grown in recent years. Power Rangers: Dino Charge and Power Rangers: Dino Thunder had robot dinosaurs, since the Zords that the Power Rangers pilot in those shows resemble dinosaurs. Even their suits are made too superficially like dinosaurs, like the shape of the Red Ranger’s visor was designed to look like teeth since he pilots the Tyrannozord. I’m surprised Patrick didn’t mention either of those. He mentioned Tammy and the T-Rex, but not Power Rangers: Dino Charge or Power Rangers: Dino Thunder 🙄🤦♂️.
I haven't even seen Jurassic World Rebirth, the dinosaur movie that people saw last year instead of seeing Primitive War. Sure, it didn't make a billion dollars 💵 like its predecessors, but it still made a lot of money 💵. A lot more money 💵 than you'd expect from how much people complain about the Jurassic World movies and say that they're bad. Speaking of Jurassic World, the other part of my comment was me defending the third movie (sixth movie of if you count all the Jurassic movies all together rather than as two separate trilogies or series), Jurassic World Dominion, which is currently the third most expensive movie ever made with a budget of $465 million 💵 😱, and Patrick's assertion that no body liked that movie and that the movie's bad because it focused on the locust plot rather than on the dinosaurs in human civilization plot. Obviously Patrick was exaggerating for dramatic effect, but people often take his exaggerations as fact and saying that no one liked Dominion is just not true. There are plenty of people who like Dominion and all the other Jurassic World movies, both in real life and online. Someone even made a video essay defending Dominion and saying that it was actually good, and that they don't agree with the overwhelming majority of critics (and even fans) saying that it was bad. If no one liked these films, then they wouldn't keep going to go see them, and they wouldn't keep making money 💵.
Of course, Patrick, if he were reading this, could throw that argument back at me about Avatar, because he's a huge Avatar fan, and a huge Avatar defender. He always argues against the assertion by a lot of people that no one cares about Avatar, and Avatar hasn't left a much culturally impact, and that people can't remember the characters' names. I mean, they can't, you can't deny that, Patrick. I barely remember most of the characters' names. The only ones I know are the main ones, Jake Sully, Neytiri, and Miles Quaritch. The fact that those are the only three characters that have appeared in all three movies so far should tell that's all who James Cameron remembers and cares about. Fuck all those other characters from the first movie, even the ones that didn't die. The fact that I brought up Avatar is important because the main thesis of his video, beyond the fact that there aren't enough dinosaur movies that aren't Jurassic World movies, is that if there can't be original dinosaur movies, it has to be based on a preexisting IP, then it should be Dinotopia. Even though the main Dinotopia books 📚 are mostly picture books that don't really have much story or narrative through line. They're just travel logs showing this father and son as they travel through this dinosaur world and see this dinosaur/human society play out, and become apart of the society.
There is more story and conflict in the non-illustrated spinoff books 📚, but that's about it. The main books, the ones that people mainly think of when they think of Dinotopia, don't have a lot of story, are mostly just pretty picture, illustrated by the franchise's creator, James Gurney. He apparently did recommend filmmakers looking to adapt the books 📚 to pull more from the spinoff books 📚 than the original books 📚 that he wrote and illustrated in a Substack he wrote, but I can't find any proof of that. So, either Patrick was bullshitting with that, or I wasn't reading the full thing that Gurney wrote. I think it's more of the latter since once I got the end of the page, it said to "Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of James Gurney," and then it give you the option to "Claim your free post" or "Purchase a paid subscription." I did neither because it requires you to download the Substack app and create an account, and I don't want to do that just to read the rest of a Substack article. Get out of here with that! But, Substack needed a monetary model 💵 somehow. They're a business and have to have a way to make money 💵 to keep their operations going. But, they could've done it in a little bit less of a gotcha way. I may join Substack someday, I may create my own Substack newsletter, but not today. I like where I am and what I'm doing.
Gurney also has a blog too here on Blogger called Gurney Journey, but it seems like he doesn't post on there that much, as he shifted all of his activity onto his Substack, and on nearly all of his post, he tells people to go to his Substack, and provides a link 🔗 to it. And the post that I did write on his blog about the topic of a Dinotopia movie is all bullshit. It has nothing, it's just a tiny blurb that summarizes the Substack article I told you about that you can't read the whole thing of unless you download the Substack app, create an account, and then subscribe to him, either for free or for money 💵. I don't know if Gurney monetized his newsletter or not, and if you have to pay to subscribe to him and stay subscribed to him. If he did, if he put a paywall behind it, that's bullshit. And it provides a link 🔗 to that article. So, you're not getting anything if you read the blog post, all the information you're going to get is on the Substack. So, it's better to just go with the Substack than with the blog. You're wasting you time if you go to the blog for information. But I still provided links 🔗 to both.
But regardless of whether or not I can actually find proof to Patrick's claim that Gurney recommended filmmakers trying to adapt Dinotopia to pull more from the novels and digest novels, he voiced disagreement with that assertion and said that he wouldn't mind if you had a whole Dinotopia movie that was just a travel log and he compared to the Avatar movies, which put less emphasis on telling a coherent story with compelling characters and put a lot more emphasis on showing off the world of Pandora, and making you want to visit there and want to live there. You know, like a travel log. And he basically said that he would love to have a Dinotopia movie that's exactly like Avatar: The Way of Water 💦. Oh god, please no, anything but that. I do not want to watch a Dinotopia movie that's over 3 hours long and has little to no story, has boring or flat characters who aren't very memorable don't leave much of an impression, and is just showing off nature, or I guess in this case, showing off the dinosaur/human society.
There is a limit to how much of that sort of thing I can take, and a lot of other people can take since the biggest complaint about the Avatar sequels has been their run times. 3 hours is a huge ask for a lot of people, especially people with kids and people who are just there to have a good time and aren't necessarily just watching the movie for "artistic" reasons. Who aren't just there to enjoy a movie for a movie's sake, and analyze and pick it apart. Not everyone looks at movies the same way that Patrick or any of any these other pretentious video essayists do. So for most people, who aren't Patrick Willems or these other pretentious video essayists, a 3 hour movie better have a damn good reason to be 3 hours long, otherwise they'll feel like they've wasted their time. Time may not be precious to people like Patrick, who talk about movies for a living on the Internet 🛜, but it is for other people. Even me, someone who doesn't talk about movies for a living but as a hobby.
Even Disney knows that the 3 hour runtimes on these movies are a problem, in capturing and maintaining an audience to go see them, which is why they're telling James Cameron to make the next ones shorter, at least to 2 and half a hours rather than 3 hours. They also told him to keep costs down, since these movies are hella expensive. The Avatar sequels (so far) are among the most expensive movies ever made. The Way of Water 💦 had a budget of $350–460 million 💵, and the third movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash 🔥 is not too far behind with a budget of $350–400 million 💵. Disney does not want to spend that kind of money 💵 on a movie, it's too risky, even if these movie did make over a billion dollars 💵 each. The Way of Water 💦 made $2 billion 💵 just like the first one did, and Fire and Ash 🔥 made $1 billion 💵, less than the first two, but still a lot of money 💵. Most other blockbusters would kill to make that kind of money 💵 in their theatrical runs. At least a $200 or 250 million budgets 💵, a budget similar to the first one. That would be more reasonable and manageable, especially for the fiscally concerned executives who are always worried about cost.
I don't even know how many more these Cameron is going to make. Is he going to stop at 5 or 6, 7 or 8, 9 or 10? When it does it end for him? I still feel like he's going to making these movies until the day he dies, or until they stop making money 💵, which is always possible. This franchise is already showing diminishing returns with Fire and Ash 🔥 being the lowest grossing film in the series so far. And the longer the series goes on, and the shorter the gaps between the movies are, who knows how much money 💵 they'll make by the time they reach the end of it. Disney does have a proven track record of sucking the life out of pretty much every franchise that they've acquired. The most notable example is Star Wars. Star Wars was once a juggernaut, it was a moneymaker 💵. A money printing machine 💵 one could say. Every new Star Wars movie was almost guaranteed to be a success before Disney came along. Now we're at the point where people are seriously talking about Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu possibly being a box office bomb 💣.
Something that would've seemed unthinkable before Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm and all of its properties. Sure, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones wasn't as successful as Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, but it wasn't a bomb 💣. It still made money 💵, a lot of money 💵, especially for 2002. $653.8 million 💵 was nothing to sneeze at back then, a movie making a billion dollars 💵 or close to a billion was still pretty rare, and didn't become the expectation or the goal to which every studio strives towards. It just had more competition than any other Star Wars movie had in the past. 2002 was a packed year, especially for sequels, you had the second Lord of the Rings movie, the second Harry Potter movie, the second Men in Black movie, and the fourth Pierce Brosnan James Bond movie.
But it was really The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that provided the most competition to Attack of the Clones. It got outgrossed by both of them. Then of course, there was the juggernaut that was Spider-Man (2002). Spider-Man (2002) was the huge upset in 2002, that really changed the game, and kept Star Wars from even reaching the number three spot in the list of highest grossing movies of 2002. Spider-Man (2002) was the third highest grossing movie of 2002, The Chamber of Secrets was the second, and The Two Towers was the first, the highest grossing movie of 2002. Attack of the Clones got stuck in fourth place, just above Men in Black II and Die Another Day. If it wasn't for those three movies, Attack of the Clones's spot in the highest grossing movies of 2002 would've been higher because Star Wars still was special back then. It was still independently run and it was still the personal vision of George Lucas. The problem of more competition has only gotten worse since Attack of the Clones, and it's worse now more than ever. Especially since people's viewing habits are changing and they are going to the theaters as much anymore. But it isn't just that. Star Wars could overcome a changing moviegoing landscape, it's also Disney's overall mismanaging of the brand. The same thing could very happen to Avatar and might already be happening to Avatar, since they didn't create Avatar, Avatar wasn't created under them, they just acquired it through their purchasing of 21st Century Fox and all the properties it currently owned at the time the merger took place.
So no, no Dinotopia movie like Avatar, that is out of the question. Even the Avatar movies have more conflict than the original illustrated Dinotopia books 📚, since they're all about the humans encroaching on Pandora, and trying to pillage its resources, and it's all supposed to be an allegory for the European colonization of the Americas, particularly the expansion of the United States 🇺🇸 through Manifest Destiny, and the genocide against us Native Americans, or indigenous people. Every film so far had an elaborate final battle where it's the Na'Vi and the wildlife of Pandora going up against the humans and their technology, and stopping them from committing whatever sin against nature they were about to commit.
In the first one, it was them stopping the humans from destroying that sacred tree that was heart of this neural network that runs through the whole moon (since Pandora's a moon, not a planet), and connects all the wildlife and the Na'Vi with the spirits of their ancestors and their fallen. As well as how the Na'Vi communicate with their deity, Ewya. In the second one, it was them trying to stop the humans from harvesting this special oil from these Pandora whales (I don't know what they're actually called but they're pretty much the Pandora equivalent to whales 🐋). And then I have no idea what they're even trying to do in the third one. I know less about the third one than I do about the second one and I haven't seen either. Patrick had to have known that when he made this comparison if he is such a big fan of these movies and defends them every chance he gets.
That being said, I would still be interested in seeing a Dinotopia movie, just in the style that Patrick was talking about. If there ever is a Dinotopia movie I think it would be wise to pull more from the novels 📚 and digest novels 📚 than the picture books 📚 by James Gurney because those are the ones that have conflict and actually story based. No offense James, if I haven't already offended you with what I said about you already. According to Patrick, you told any filmmakers reading your Substack that if they wanted to make a Dinotopia movie to base them more off of the novels 📚 and digest novels 📚 than your original illustrated books 📚, so unless he was lying, you shouldn't be offended. I would also like to watch the original Dinotopia miniseries as well as the full TV series that followed, and review them on my blog.
Even if Gurney doesn't consider them to be faithful adaptations of his books 📚, and they apparently changed a lot of things according to him. To the point, where it was no longer his story, and he was just watching someone else's dinosaur story that happened to share the same name as his books 📚. It's sort of like what happened with Max Brooks when watched the World War Z 🧟♂️ movie starring Brad Pitt. It was nothing like his story, but it shared the same name. But unlike Gurney, Brooks was actually able to enjoy the movie a lot more because it was nothing like his novel 📖, because he wasn't constantly comparing it and seeing his story and characters get ruined because it wasn't his story or his characters.
Okay sure, the movie follows the same plot as the book 📖 in very broad strokes, as in there's a zombie pandemic 🧟♂️ that affecting the entire world, and the main character works for the UN 🇺🇳. Although some would argue the book 📖 doesn't really have a true main character, but the story is mostly told from the perspective of an UN agent 🇺🇳 who's going around the world, interviewing people who survived the war and are willing to tell their stories, so he counts. It's the specifics where the book 📖 and the movie differ because the movie doesn't follow any of the same characters that are in the book 📖, and instead follows new characters created specifically for the movie, such as the protagonist, Gerry Lane, Brad Pitt's character. And the movie doesn't really follow any of the same events, and largely makes up its own, and the story is not told in the same way, where it's told like a history event that actually happened, and the story is conveyed to us through interviews that the protagonist is conducting on behalf of the UN 🇺🇳 with people who are either veterans who fought in the war against the zombies 🧟♂️ or were civilians who survived and lived through the war.
The way the zombie pandemic 🧟♂️ is talked about in the book 📖 is as if it was an actual war. It wasn't just a pandemic 🦠😷, it was a war. A war like any other, except it was against the undead 🧟♂️. That's why it was called World War Z 🧟♂️, it was a world war but where the enemy were zombies 🧟♂️. The movie from what I understand, doesn't really treat it like it were a war, and it kind of just feels like a typical zombie apocalypse movie 🧟♂️, only it's not a post-apocalyptic movie, it's during the apocalypse. The movie also doesn't treat the event like a history event that actually happened, like they try to adapt that style from the book 📖 and shoot it like a documentary. It's just a normal movie with a third act structure and a singular main lead. A typical summer blockbuster ☀️ I guess could say, although from what people who have seen the movie have said, the movie kind of fizzles out at the end, and they should've really just used the original ending where they were going to fight zombies 🧟♂️ in Russia 🇷🇺.
Probably Moscow, since every movie that's set in Russia 🇷🇺, or has a scene or a section set in Russia 🇷🇺 is usually set in or around Moscow since that's the most well known city in Russia 🇷🇺. It's the first city people think of when they think of Russia 🇷🇺. Even though it wasn't always the capital of Russia 🇷🇺. Saint Petersburg was the capital during the time of the Russian Empire 🇷🇺, although name was changed to Petrograd during World War I to avoid association with Germans 🇩🇪, and then it switched over to Moscow during Soviet times ☭. This also when the name of Saint Petersburg was changed again to Leningrad, after the founder of the Soviet Union ☭ and father of Russian communism ☭, Vladimir Lenin. The name of the city wouldn't be Saint Petersburg again until after the fall of the Soviet Union ☭ and the birth of the Russian Federation 🇷🇺, but it wouldn't be the capital again. The capital remained Moscow, as it been during Soviet times ☭.
But, if not Dinotopia, what other dinosaur franchise could be turned into a movie and launch a whole new film series if it is successful enough? Well I got a couple of ideas, and they both happen to be video games. I didn't plan that, it just happened that way, and I realize that both of the dinosaur franchises that I would like to see get turned into movies besides Dinotopia (and could be alternatives to Dinotopia) both happen to be video game franchise. One of them might not even be considered a true "dinosaur series" by Patrick. The first one I'll talk about is Dino Crisis, the survival horror game series developed by Capcom that began in the late 1990s and was meant to follow up Resident Evil. With the first game, simply called Dino Crisis being the most like Resident Evil, it's essentially Resident Evil but with dinosaurs instead of zombies 🧟♂️. Not that Resident Evil is only zombies 🧟♂️, but you know what I mean. It's the franchise most associated with zombies 🧟♂️, or the franchise is mostly associated with zombies 🧟♂️.
That's all most people think Resident Evil is, they think it's just a zombie game 🧟♂️. But, as I've said on the blog and elsewhere, it's so much more than that. It's a full on biopunk franchise. It involves people altering DNA 🧬, creating monsters, or turning into monsters with viruses 🦠, parasites, and even fungi that they either create or find and experiment on. All with the intended goal of either created bioweapons to sell to governments and militaries or to mercenaries and terrorists on the black market, or enhancing and strengthening the human body and creating a superior race of humans. Often times both, and often leading to disaster consequences for everyone involved and any civilian who may get caught in the crossfire. There's a lot of body horror in Resident Evil, as you have human characters, often the villains, turn into these horrific abominations after injecting themselves the same virus 🦠, parasite, or fungus they infected others with 💉 that the heroes have to then fight, and they just keep mutating until they're completely unrecognizable. That's textbook biopunk stuff right there. But, Dino Crisis is essentially that, but with dinosaurs. Instead of creating B.O.W.s, they're cloning dinosaurs, just like in the Jurassic movies. From what I understand.
I'm gonna be honest with you, I really don't know anything about Dino Crisis. All I really know is that it's a survival horror game with dinosaurs, or at least the first one is, it was developed and published by Capcom, a lot of the same people who worked on the Resident Evil games (mainly the first three) worked on the first Dino Crisis and maybe even the second, and it has a female protagonist ♀︎ with short red hair who has a lot of NSFW artwork 🔞 made of her. I know, I've seen it, it's pretty good, or at least by the ones Pumpkinsinclair or PumpS Smut as he's also known as. I would link you his Dino Crisis artwork 🔗, but I don't want to get in trouble with Blogger. I want to stay on good terms with them, and not get this age restricted. You'll just have to look it up yourself or just take my word for it. Trust me, it's good 👍...if you're into that sort of thing. I don't know the main female protagonist ♀︎ of the first two games's name, that's how little I know about Dino Crisis. I saved a longplay of the first game as well as two video essays about the first two games in my Favorites, I want to learn more, but right now I don't know that much.
But as little concrete knowledge I have about Dino Crisis, I still think it would make for a pretty good movie. Assuming you got all the right people to make it. I know there's a lot of people who would like to see a Dino Crisis movie, or really a Dino Crisis anything since this franchise has been dead for years. There hasn't been a new Dino Crisis game in 23 years, since 2003. Sure, there was the Dino Crisis Bundle, but that's not a new game, it's just a compilation of the two first games. Sort of like what Pikmin 1 + 2 or Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2 are. Apparently according to Wikipedia, there is talk of possibly reviving the Dino Crisis series with either a fourth game (like a Dino Crisis 4), or a remaster/remake of the first game, within Capcom, but nothing concrete has actually happened. There are no real plans in place, and nothing has been officially announced. It's just people within Capcom, developers and producers, expressing interest in making a new Dino Crisis game, but none of the higher ups at the company have put anything in place.
So what better way to revive the Dino Crisis franchise than with a movie? If you can't do it with a game, then how about a movie? Movies have been used to revive dead franchises. Like, Star Trek (2009) revived the Star Trek franchise after it has been dead for 4 years, regardless of whether people like that movie or not, Godzilla (2014) brought back the Godzilla franchise after it has been dormant for 10 years, Mad Max: Fury Road brought back the Mad Max franchise after it had been dead for 30 years, and Blade Runner 2049 brought back the Blade Runner franchise after it had been dead for 35 years. Okay, the Blade Runner franchise was completely dead for that long, there was that PC point-and-click game by Westwood Studios in 1997, but there wasn't anything after that. So, if we count the 1997 Blade Runner PC game, then the Blade Runner franchise had been dead for 20 years before 2049 came out. Sure, it didn't explode in popularity after that movie came out, neither did the Mad Max franchise after Fury Road came out. But there is more Blade Runner and Mad Max content now than there had been in the long gap in-between each movie of their respective franchises.
Regardless of what I or other people think of those movies, they did bring their franchises after they had been gone for a while, and people perhaps forgot about them. There isn't any case of a movie bringing back a video game franchise as of yet, but it was done with a bunch of movie franchise and at least one TV franchise, that being of course Star Trek. Even if the gap between Star Trek: Enterprise and Star Trek (2009) wasn't as huge gap between those other movies. Detective Pikachu almost did that, it was put into development with the explicit purpose of revitalizing the Pokémon franchise, but Pokémon Go had already done that by the time Detective Pikachu came out. I actually saw Detective Pikachu in theaters when it came out, back in 2019, it was alright, but I would still like a realistic Pokémon movie, where it's more serious and perhaps more edgy and where the Pokémon look like actual animals. Like those realistic Pokémon designs done by RJ Palmer, better known to me as arvalis on DeviantART, I would love a Pokémon movie where they looked like that.
Basically what I'm asking is for Pokémon to get the Bayformers treatment. Sort of like how Power Rangers did, but more successful, and not as much of Krispy Kreme commercial even though I love Krispy Kreme. No one else in my family does, but I do. Even if that's not likely to ever happen for reasons that Cody explained in his Detective Pikachu review on his PointlessHub channel on YouTube. Pokémon is a very protected brand, and the company that owns it, The Pokémon Company doesn't want any outsiders coming in and ruining the brand they worked so hard to build up. They don't want it to deviate from the cute and wholesome image that they curated. Even if it would bring in new people to the franchise that wouldn't otherwise engage with it, and even if this guarding of the brand and maintaining that cute wholesome image prevents experimentation and someone trying something truly new with the franchise that hasn't really been done before. You don't know until you try it. But, if Detective Pikachu didn't need up doing that for the Pokémon franchise, then a Dino Crisis movie could do that for the Dino Crisis franchise.
People have been wanting true dinosaur horror movies, and this would be the chance to do a big budget dinosaur horror movie since the first game is more horror based, and if you were adapt into a movie, you could really lean into the horror in a way that the Jurassic films just can't since they have to balance out the horror with adventure. They still have to make whimsical. But with Dino Crisis, you'd get the chance to do a dinosaur movie without the whimsy, and lean into the horror. Make the dinosaurs scary. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but dinosaurs can be scary, even the plant-eating ones 🌱. People don't think that herbivorous dinosaurs can be scary just because they're herbivorous and they eat plants 🌱, but they can be. They can scary and really dangerous. Probably more dangerous than the carnivorous dinosaurs. And what makes the herbivorous dinosaurs scary is that unlike carnivorous dinosaurs, they don't kill you for food.
They're not killing you because they're hungry and they want something to eat, they kill you because they're scared, their startled, or they're pissed off 😡. Because you're encroaching on their territory or they see you as a potential threat, mostly to their eggs. If a herbivorous dinosaur mother thinks you're a threat to her nest, then it's lights out for you my friend. Sometimes, they don't need a particular reason to want to kill you, they just do. That's the scariest of all, and it's not something you can easily avoid or prevent because you really didn't do anything, they just don't like you or they're just bullies and want something to wack around or kill. Sure, that kind of behavior is more common in mammals, but it is somewhat observable in birds too, and birds are dinosaurs, so it works. One of the parts people actually praised about Jurassic World Dominion is the Therizinosaurus scene, where Claire is stuck in a tree 🌳, and there's a blind Therizinosaurus stalking around, looking for leaves to munch on, and she has to avoid it because it has those massive claws and will kill anything that gets in its way, especially gets in the way of it having a meal. People liked that scene because finally, a scene in a Jurassic movie where the herbivorous dinosaur is not only treated as a threat but also scary. The only other scene before this where a herbivorous dinosaur was actually portrayed as a threat was the Stegosaurus scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. And maybe the camp attack scene, where Nick and Sarah release all the dinosaurs the hunters caught (most of them being herbivorous dinosaurs), and they completely destroy their base camp, also from The Lost World.
So herbivorous dinosaurs can be scary, they can be a threat. Don't underestimate them just because they eat plants 🌱 and not meat 🥩. It would also be an opportunity to do some scientifically accurate dinosaurs, or paleo accurate dinosaurs, do dinosaurs that actually look like how current science says that they might've looked. According to the latest research. The Jurassic franchise is too far in to really have true paleo accurate dinosaurs, despite them adding more feathered dinosaurs in the more recent entries, and there haven't been any real attempts at doing paleo accurate dinosaurs in other movies outside of the Jurassic franchise. The only one that has gotten close is Primitive War, even then, they still leaned into the Jurassic Park/World T. rex look for their T. rex. The Primitive War T. rex doesn't look very scientifically accurate according to current science, despite it having feathers or quills on the back. It didn't have lips, and the top teeth are still showing, just like in the Jurassic Park/World T. rex. And it was super chunky either, real life T. rexes were pretty chunky (from all that muscle and fat they had) according to the latest paleontological research.
Even if the scientific accuracy doesn't matter to you, it would still give audiences the chance to see dinosaurs in a way that they weren't used to seeing them before. Most general audiences are unaware of the current depictions of how these animals looked, so by placing them in this movie, this potential Dino Crisis movie, you'd be showing them something they've never seen before. Just like how the first Jurassic Park movie showed audiences back in 1993 something they hadn't seen before. It showed dinosaurs in a different way that they had seen before. Well now it's been over 33 years and a lot has changed in terms of our understanding of dinosaurs, so it's about to update people and once again show them something they haven't see before, and hopefully blow their minds 🤯. You could even do an Alien/Aliens thing and have the second movie be more action since the second Dino Crisis is more of an action game than the first game is. The first game is pure horror, pure survival horror. But, for the second game, they decided to go in a more action arcadey route, where I assume it's more of you shooting dinosaurs than you simply running away or hiding from dinosaurs. So, if you do that for the movies, if the first one's successful enough to get a sequel, then it will be like Alien and Aliens, where you go from a horror film to an action film. I think that would be pretty cool to do with a dinosaur movie, You lure them in with horror, and then you treat them to some action.
Speaking of action, the other dinosaur franchise that I think should get the movie treatment, and would be a viable option to turn into a franchise is Turok. Now I know even less about Turok than I do about Dino Crisis. Really the only thing I know about Turok is the main character's name is Turok and he's a Native American, and he's around since the 1950s. He first appeared in a comic book series simply called Turok: Son of Stone. So, a Turok movie would also technically count as a comic book movie, even if we would be mostly pulling from the games as opposed to the original comics the games were initially based off of. And I of course all know that it involves dinosaurs, and Turok often fights them and kills them. But, the first game, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter wasn't made until 1997 for the Nintendo 64, and it's basically an action-adventure game where you go around a jungle environment and shoot at any dinosaurs or prehistoric animals that come your way.
The plot of the game is that he gets teleported to this alternate dimension where dinosaurs live because he's next in line to be the next Turok. That's one change Dinosaur Hunter makes to the Turok lore, it's a title that's passed down from generation to generation, to the eldest male ♂︎ of Tal'Set (Turok's name prior to becoming Turok), and every Turok is charged with protecting the barrier between Earth 🌎 and the Lost Land, the world that Tal'Set gets transported to in the game. And he needs to stop this evil overlord named the Campaigner from acquiring an ancient artifact called the Chronosceptor. Because if he doesn't, the Campaigner will use the Chronosceptor to destroy the barrier between Earth 🌎 and the Lost Land, basically merge them together, and then rule the universe I guess. I got all this information off of Wikipedia BTW.
I didn't know any of this information beforehand except for that Turok was a Native American, he fights dinosaurs, and he's from the 1950s, and the first game is about being transported to this alternate reality where dinosaurs still exist, and has to fight and kill them. Oh, and I also know that there isn't any sexy art of him or his sister, Danielle, at least not that I know of. Maybe there is, I just haven't found it, or I haven't even started looking. If there is, I'll be the first to let you know 😉. There are a few more games after this, including a reboot that no one liked, but I don't know how much they follow the lore of this game. It seems like the first two sequels follow the lore of the first game, since the third game, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion still has Turok being a title rather than a name since the names of the two main characters are Joseph and Danielle Fireseed, siblings. Joseph is the new Turok after Tal'Set, and in the game, you can choose whether to play as him or Danielle, and your gameplay experience will be different depending on which sibling you choose. The best way I can describe it is that's basically how Mortal Kombat: Special Forces 🐉 was supposed to be (with Sonya and Jax) before John Tobias left the project and the franchise as a whole.
This is the one that I was saying that may not count as a dinosaur franchise per Patrick Willem's parameters, because from what I understand it is more than just dinosaurs. According to Patrick's rules, it only counts as a dinosaur movie or dinosaur franchise if it's solely about dinosaurs rather than just having dinosaurs in them. Like he didn't count King Kong, Land of the Lost, and Journey to the Center of the Earth 🌎 because those just had dinosaurs in them, but weren't about dinosaurs. So, he's pretty strict about that sort of thing. But, Turok is mostly dinosaurs, dinosaurs are a huge part of the franchise's identity, and they are what people most associate with it, so I think it counts. Turok would good because then you'd get some Native American representation.
I felt a comment on a video on YouTube talking about the lack of black representation in media, particularly cartoons and why that is, where I talked about how there's even less Native American/indigenous representation than there is black representation or even Asian representation (truth be told there is way more Asian representation in media than there is Native American/indigenous representation), and that comment blew up. It over a thousand likes and 72 replies. I haven't posted a comment anywhere that got that much attention or support anywhere. It's amazing, and I'm flattered that people cared what I had to say and agreed with me. I've enjoyed all the replies I've gotten on my comment so far. So, that was at the back of my mind when picking Turok for this, to be the next big dinosaur movie franchise. And honestly, it would be pretty cool to have a Native American in this big blockbuster franchise. It would be affirming for a lot of people, a lot of Native Americans, and it would be cathartic for them to see Native American actor leading such a big movie, which a Turok movie would be.
Turok has the second best shot of getting adapted into a movie besides Dino Crisis, and it's perhaps more marketable than Dino Crisis is, it's more a traditional blockbuster since all the Turok games are action-adventure games, whereas the first Dino Crisis is a survival horror game. Dinosaur horror movies are a lot harder to sell than dinosaur action-adventure movies. Patrick even straight up said that dinosaur movies shouldn't be straight up horror movies, they shouldn't just be monster movies, and they should evoke a sense of awe and wonder and show the majesty of these animals rather than show the horror of them. And basically he said that every dinosaur movie should be like the first Jurassic Park because he believes that it's the best dinosaur movie of all time. And a lot of people agree with him. They certainly think it's the best Jurassic movie, none of the sequels could top it in a lot of people's eyes. A studio would be more willing to finance a movie like Turok than a movie like Dino Crisis, since it is more of an action adventure movie and has wider appeal than a horror movie which a Dino Crisis based off of the first game would have to be.
It is something they would see as a safer bet than a horror movie involving dinosaurs. The riskiest thing about it is having a Native American in the lead role, but that would be a relatively easy hurdle to overcome than trying to convince studios to greenlight and finance a dinosaur horror film. A big budget dinosaur horror film. Even one that is based off a video game, and has name recognition, and has a built-in audience that's nostalgic for it. It's just not enough. Everything I said in the Dino Crisis section about the look of the dinosaurs applies here too, make them look scientific accurate according to how scientists currently think they looked, and show the audiences something they haven't seen before or aren't used to seeing. Imagine, a Native American going up against paleo accurate dinosaurs, with a huge budget and top of the line CGI, ooh, that would be amazing 👌, that would be a sight to be behold.
Some honorable mentions I have are Primal Rage, which is another video game that almost became a franchise but didn't for whatever reason. It's an arcade stop motion fighting game that was developed and published by Midway, the same company that developed and published Mortal Kombat 🐉 and Rampage prior to its bankruptcy and closure. It also included finishing moves similar to fatalities from Mortal Kombat 🐉. So by the way of the same company and the inclusion of finishing moves, it has a connection to Mortal Kombat 🐉. Even if it wasn't made by the same people, it has a lot of Mortal Kombat 🐉 DNA 🧬 in it. As well as Rampage, it has a lot of Rampage in it because of the monster aspect, and somewhat goofy irreverent nature of it. It's an honorable mention because while it does feature dinosaurs, it doesn't just feature dinosaurs, as it also features a couple of giant apes and giant snake monster 🐍.
But it definitely sounds like a cool concept. It's basically a bunch of monsters, that are worshiped as gods by the humans, duking it out in a post-apocalyptic world. The premise is that the Earth 🌎 was hit by an asteroid ☄️, and it caused it to revert back to a primitive state, and these ancient gods (many of whom resemble dinosaurs) to awaken and reclaim the Earth 🌎 once again. But first, they must fight each other to the death to decide who gets rule over the Earth 🌎. Some of these monster gods want peace, while others want chaos. You better hope the peaceful ones win. It would make for an awesome movie. The thing that convinced me was Jeremy Jahns's review of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, where he mentioned it and said that the movie convinced him that a Primal Rage movie would be possible now since The New Empire did a good job at focusing on the monsters, the Titans, and making them actual characters with personalities that you can actually follow. The monsters are the main characters in that movie, not the humans. The humans are the side characters. If you could do a Primal Rage movie just like that, it would be perfect.
I'm going to bundle my next two honorable mentions together since they're both books 📚: Jurassic Park and Carnosaur. Now, of course, there already are Jurassic Park and Carnosaur movies, but I'm talking about is a more book accurate version of both 📖. A more book accurate Jurassic Park movie 📖 and a more book accurate Carnosaur movie 📖. The movie adaptations took enough liberties and the books 📖 are different enough from the adaptations that if you were do another adaptation of both of them that was more faithful to the source material, it genuinely be a different experience. Audiences would truly feel like they were seeing a different take on the story rather than just seeing a rehash of something they've seen before.
The Carnosaur movie is definitely more different from its book 📖 than the Jurassic Park movie is to its book. So if you were to do a more book accurate Carnosaur movie 📖, it would very different from the Roger Corman movie. It wouldn't even recognizable except for the fact that dinosaurs hatch out of chicken eggs 🥚 and were created from chickens 🐓 since you know, birds are dinosaurs. But, the Jurassic Park one would be exciting to do because then you could really lean into the horror because the book 📖 has more horror elements than the movie does, and it's also more violent and gory than the movie is. A book accurate Jurassic Park movie 📖 would be rated R, which would be insane. An R rated Jurassic Park movie, can you imagine? That's probably why it will never happen.
These movies cost too much for them to risk making one that's R rated, even if it would draw in audiences and people would go see it just out of curiosity. Like, "what? An R rated Jurassic Park movie 🤔? I gotta go see this." Universal would much rather play it safe, and keep these movies PG-13, but push that PG-13 rating as far as it will go. And the Carnosaur name and brand has been so tarnished by the Roger Corman movies that no other studio would be willing to finance another one, especially one that was closer to the book 📖 and perhaps has a bigger budget. It's sad, but it's true. Both movies have so much potential, and I think both would be pretty good if you did them right, and you gave them a decent enough budget for them. Another film adaptation of Anonymous Rex would be good too since it has such a fascinating concept. Dinosaurs living amongst humans, disguised as humans, you can't go wrong with that.
Speaking of dinosaurs living amongst humans, Dinosapien would be another good one. I was going to mention it in the Dinotopia section but I decided to save it here. But a Dinosapien movie would pretty awesome. It has a cool concept: intelligent dinosaurs that survived the K–Pg extinction into the modern day and start interacting with humans, and even gaining the ability to talk. A movie like that would be awesome, and it would sort of be the same as doing a Dinotopia movie only on a much smaller scale (a less daunting scale) with the whole talking dinosaurs thing. For now, we'll just have to see how this End of Oak Street movie turns out. It's produced by J. J. Abrams and directed by the same guy ♂︎ as It Follows, and stars Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway. And it's an original concept rather than being based on some preexisting IP. It should be interesting. Hopefully it's good. I know I said I was going start working on my Cowboy Bebop (1998) review, but I really felt compelled to write this, I really had to write this while this was still on my mind. Plus, I needed a short break after I’ve been working on this blog for the past few weeks. Not just posting the prewritten posts I wrote during my three month long hiatus, but also writing new posts like my Super Mario Galaxy Movie review, my Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 🦈🐙, my Simpsons Movie review, my Mortal Kombat II 🐉 (2026) review, my post about the upcoming Ghost in the Shell anime, The Ghost in the Shell (2026), and my post about The Weekenders getting added to Disney+. It was a lot, and I was often doing all this while going to and from Albuquerque. There were weeks we kept going to Albuquerque, or just leaving home to go do stuff, like we went to one of the feasts going on. I believe it was the San Felipe feast if I’m not mistaken. If not that, then we would just head over to casino 🎰 to gamble, though I personally would often not partake, but I played a couple of times. I didn’t win big, but I won something, and that to me is more important. As long as you win something that’s all that matters. We were hardly ever home, and that’s just because we finally had money 💵 to do stuff. Before we got the money 💵 we were always broke, and being broke sucks if you’ve ever been broke. So now, we were getting the chance to do stuff that we couldn’t do before when we were broke. But now that we got it out of our systems, we’ve been at home more often, and we’ve been staying away from casino 🎰 except to eat at the restaurants or the grills. My grandma doesn’t want to become a gambling addict. Us staying home has been really helpful to me because it means I have more time to write and work on this blog, and also get my Favorites playlist back in order, rearranging all the new videos I added, putting them in the right places (I like to keep my Favorites well organized, and have sections for each type of video I have in there), which is what I’ve mainly been doing whenever I’m on break. Not only that, but I got sick this past week, my nose 👃 has been stuffy and I’ve been coughing up phlegm. I’ve been taking Mucinex Fast Max (the liquid one), the same cold medicine I took last time, and it’s been working, I’m getting better. But, you can imagine how that could be hinderance and why I wouldn’t want to work on my blog. But I powered through my sickness to write this, and it should be the last post of May, depending on when I actually post this. I hope I can post it either today (Saturday May 29, 2026), or tomorrow (Sunday May 30, 2026). As soon as I’m done with this, I will post it. But I will start working on the Cowboy Bebop (1998) review real soon. I’m not like Cody from PointlessHub or some of these other YouTubers, if I commit to something, I follow through. I keep my word, and you can be sure that if I say I’m going to do something I will do it. I’m starting to get everything into place. All I need to do is start rewatching the show, and watching the longplay of Cowboy Bebop: Serenade of Reminiscence in between.
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