Although Jurassic Park's Dennis Nedry, Muldoon, Ray Arnold, and numerous other park technicians ensure that it is a monster movie first and foremost.
While the sequels The Lost World and Jurassic Park III mostly hold onto this horror atmosphere, the franchise's tone has shifted with the arrival of 2015’s belated reboot Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s story, which centers around saving dinosaurs rather than running from them and introducing sci-fi story elements like human cloning to the series, is more of an action-adventure and less of a horror movie than ever before.
For Chris Pratt’s Jurassic World Dominion hero Owen Grady is the character most indicative of the gradual genre shift that the reboot trilogy has put the franchise through, his death would be the perfect way to reverse this change. However, that doesn’t mean it will happen.
Jurassic Park Started As A Horror Franchise
The original Jurassic Park movies tone down the extent of the source novel’s horror with less gore and less reprehensible characters. However, at their root, the Jurassic Park movies are horrors with action-adventure elements, not action-adventure movies with horror elements. The high body count of the original movie, the brutal death of Eddie in the sequel, and the very fact that the underrated sequel Jurassic Park III abandons the theme park premise for a survival thriller/rescue narrative all betray the original Jurassic Park trilogy's horror leanings.
This is something that is lost in the reboot trilogy, which strays further from the source material than ever before. While John Hammond is a greedy, malevolent villain in the novel, he is a well-meaning kindly grandfather in Jurassic Park’s movie adaptation. This means it is no surprise when Jurassic World replaces him with a comically arrogant goofball, broadening the humor for the franchise and taking it further away from genuine menace.
Jurassic World Is An Action-Adventure Franchise (Sort Of)
2015’s Jurassic World holds on to some of the original franchise’s horror elements irably (as anyone shocked by Zara’s brutal death scene can attest). However, Pratt’s Dr. Grant’s character arc in Jurassic Park sees him struggle to save a pair of children from certain death, whereas, in contrast, Owen Grady’s character arc features him charming an uptight co-worker in the middle of a dinosaur outbreak.
Pratt’s Grady is an unflappable matinee idol hero, while Sam Neill’s character is far more grounded, changing the tone of the surrounding movie from a tense survival thriller to more of an adventure story. 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom doubles down on this approach. Although the finale is set in a gothic mansion bizarrely, the premise of rescuing and freeing dinosaurs instead of evading and fleeing them makes the sequel another action-adventure with horror elements rather than vice versa.
Killing Off Chris Pratt's Owen Would Make Jurassic World Scary Again
Of all the Jurassic World Dominion should bring back Hammond’s villainy but likely won’t, the sequel is equally unlikely to take the daring step of killing off Owen Grady.
Why Jurassic World Dominion Won’t Kill Off Owen Grady
Jurassic World Dominion won’t kill off Owen Grady for the same reason that the sequel should kill him off. He is played by major movie star Chris Pratt, and even with the recent backlash against him, Pratt is one of the most popular actors alive. Jurassic World Dominion’s trailers make it clear that the final chapter in the trilogy is an adventure movie all the way, so there is no chance the trilogy-ending sequel will switch genres in its last outing. While the dark tone of Camp Cretaceous proved the Jurassic Park franchise can still surprise viewers, that was a more low-stakes animated spinoff series. Jurassic World Dominion is one of the year's biggest blockbusters, and viewers who have come to anticipate an action-adventure from the franchise would likely be annoyed to see its leading man eaten alive. As such, Jurassic World Dominion is more likely to hold onto its hero and let go of the Jurassic Park franchise’s horror roots for good in the concluding movie of the reboot trilogy.
