JURASSIC PARK: The Expanded Universe

When Disney announced the old Star Wars EU was no longer canon, fans cried like the billions of lives lost on Alderaan when Vader blew up the planet with the Death Star. The new canon is now, officially, the original six movies, The Clone Wars series and the upcoming Star Wars: Rebels, along with any new publications put out by the new Lucasfilm group. Many fans did not agree with this route, especially since a lot of the old EU stories were as personal to them as the original trilogy.

The new canon, however, opens the door to containing a consistent shared universe throughout multiple platforms. I had my own favorite old EU stories, but I discovered that many of them did not really fit into the timeline they were in. Now that Disney and Lucasfilm are working closely with writers and producers to ensure each new story that comes out really does fit where they’re supposed too, how long will it take for other franchises to follow suit?

One I can see following in Star Wars‘ footsteps is Jurassic Park. With Jurassic World on the horizon, I sit around wondering how they will explain the events of the past two movies. The best way to do so, without having to make another movie, is through other platforms like books, comics and video games. A while back, Jurassic Park tried creating a canon game in the form of Telltale’s interactive episodic game of the same name. However, the game underperformed and was later deemed non-canon.

After Jurassic Park 3, some questions were left unanswered, like:

1) What happened to the pterodactyl’s who fled Site B?

2) The Kirbys basically kidnapped their crew and took them to Isla Sorna, resulting in the death of three people. Were they prosecuted?

3) Alan Grant was forced to see all the unauthorized experiments that InGen had been working on. What became of InGen?

4) In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, what killed the people on the ship where the tyrannosaurus was being held for transportation to San Diego?

Also, there are still items straight from the books, written by the late Michael Crichton, that the films draw from, such as a part where Procompy’s (much bigger then regular Compy’s) snuck onto a boat that ported on the mainland of Costa Rica and wreaked havoc on a small village, resulting in the death of an infant. While the scene was maybe too graphic for the PG-13 franchise, a scene where Raptor’s snuck off a boat onto the mainland, resulting in the death of an older person, may be easier for audiences to handle and a nice nod to what could’ve killed the people on the boat holding the T-Rex. The scene could be used as a flashback scene at the beginning of Jurassic World, showing all the struggles the theme park faced before becoming the “working” amusement park it is now, before all the bad stuff starts happening again, or it could be a nice comic book set between Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, detailing everything that lead to the island chain becoming banned by the Costa Rican government.

The other lingering questions asked a few paragraphs above could also be answered in comic book form, and all made canon opening the world of Jurassic Park. Universal Pictures, make it happen!