Terminator: Dark Fate, and other blockbusters have brought back legacy stars in more traditional ways.
When Universal and director Colin Trevorrow relaunched the Jurassic franchise in 2015, they introduced a new cast. After two films starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, Jurassic World: Dominion brings back original franchise stars Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The return of the franchise's legacy characters is one of many reasons why fans are so excited for the next installment. The anticipation of seeing Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm together on screen is huge.
Early details on Jurassic World: Dominion point to the franchise's original trio getting plenty of screentime together. When the movie comes out, it will have been nearly thirty years since Neill, Dern, and Goldblum shared the screen. Jurassic World 3's commitment to having them all reunite shows the franchise learned from one of the mistakes made by the Star Wars sequel trilogy. While the recent films brought back Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford for multiple films, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo never shared a scene together. This became impossible due to Luke's unknown whereabouts for most of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Han's death at the end. While Leia had the chance to interact with both of them throughout the trilogy, Luke and Han never even got their reunion.
This highlights how Jurassic World has taken a different approach to using its legacy characters than Star Wars. The Force Awakens brought back all of the stars from the start, but Jurassic World played it slow and focused on its own characters first. Now, the returns of Alan, Ellie, and Ian can be used to story and boost the interest in the next installment. That's not to say that Star Wars took the wrong approach and Jurassic World took the right one, or vice versa. Each path has its pros and cons, and both franchise relaunches were incredibly successful from the beginning at the box office.
But, it is fair to say that even those who adore the sequel trilogy would've liked to see Luke, Leia, and Han reunite at least for one scene. Jurassic World: Dominion is taking that a step further by letting its legacy characters have an entire plotline to themselves, which eventually leads them to the main characters. This setup should mean that viewers won't have a chance to be disappointed by the lack of shared screentime between Neill, Dern, and Goldblum. Now fans will have to hope that Jurassic World: Dominion manages to give them each great roles and is a movie worthy of bringing these legacy characters back together.
