Over the last few blog-less months, I have had numerous ideas for posts, but I haven’t been sold on a compelling-enough idea or subject to actually sit down and write.

Thank you, Jurassic World, for helping me overcome my writer’s block…

If you only need to know one thing about me, it is that Jurassic Park is my favorite movie of all time. I watched it more than any other movie growing up and loved everything about it. I became obsessed with dinosaurs like any other 4- or 5-year-old boy, but it was more than just finding the dinosaurs cool or scary or awe-inspiring; the filmmaking itself attracted me, even as a kid. The acting, the dialogue, the quirkiness of Jeff Goldblum, the Britishness of Richard Attenborough, John Williams’ majestic score, the way Spielberg keeps the audience in the dark by lingering on Sam Neill’s and Laura Dern’s surprised faces rather than the dinosaurs they are seeing for the first time, the kitchen scene…. the movie is etched in my brain. I even blame Jurassic Park for my bigotry towards those in the “blood-sucking” law profession! (Sorry, but you don’t leave two children in a car when a T. Rex is on the loose, no matter how badly you “gotta go”…)

Jurassic Park‘s two sequels, 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park and 2001’s Jurassic Park III, are both…well, they’re both quite bad. I did enjoy them to a point as a child, but over the years any sort of warmth that I had towards them has all but cooled.

What did San Diego ever do to you, Spielberg?

Can “Jurassic World” be worse than this? Probably…

However, both sequels, while sorta-kinda-really sucking, still managed to share some similarities with the first film. From Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill returning in The Lost World and III, respectively, to the use of John Williams’ music, to similar shot composition and locations, to a reliance on animatronics and models in addition to some(!) computer-generated imagery, the sequels still contained a little bit of what made the first Jurassic Park film so great.

Jurassic World though…

Based SOLELY on Jurassic World‘s first trailer, this third sequel, coming 14 years after III and 22 after the first, looks like an alien trying to assimilate with something that has been familiar to us for decades…

Actually, as a good friend pointed out to me yesterday, it is literally Alien-in-Jurassic-Park.

A genetically-modified creature (so it’s not even a real dinosaur, just some monster?) escapes from a fully-operational theme park containing dinosaurs. And these dinosaurs include seemingly-trained velociraptors (WHAT?). Add in Chris Pratt (I guess he’s better than Shia LeBeouf), B.D. Wong (the one returning cast member from any of the first three Jurassic Park films, so a silver lining, I guess?), and a TON of crappy CGI (dinosaurs, dinosaur-monsters, dinosaur-shark-monsters, as well as locations, scenery, and backgrounds), and you get….whatever the hell this is.

It’s certainly not a Jurassic Park movie.

It’s as if Hollywood took a page out of John Hammond’s book….

Just because you have the power to do something, DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD DO IT.

Take it away, Ian Malcom:

And I thought I was a bit put out by Star Wars: The Force Awakens… At least that film might not be the most disappointing “unnessesary-sequel-to-a-beloved-movie-from-Flipp’s-childhood” that comes out in 2015 now. Sheesh.

-Flipp