Although Jenna Ortega’s Camp Cretaceous isn’t the most famous entry into the Jurassic World franchise, it is the best addition to the series since Steven Spielberg’s original 1993 blockbuster movie Jurassic Park. Debuting in 2020 to stellar reviews, *Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous *was the first animated addition to the *Jurassic Park *franchise, as well as its first spinoff TV show. The Netflix series follows a group of teens stranded in the eponymous theme park during the events of 2015’s Jurassic World, with later seasons covering the events of 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
As shocking as it may sound, this show managed to recapture the atmosphere and tone of 1993’s original Jurassic Park better than any of the franchise’s live-action sequels. With a superb voice cast that included Raini Rodriguez, Kausar Mohammed, The Goldbergs star Sean Giambrone, and a pre-fame Jenna Ortega, Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous also has a killer premise. The show’s heroes are brought together by a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the titular theme park’s inner workings up close.
Thus, their story starts out like a blend of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Jurassic Park, as a mismatched group of kids are besieged by unexpected horrors while trying to enjoy what sounded like some exclusive fun. Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous makes great use of the group’s character dynamics, with every protagonist bringing something unique to the table. Paul-Mikél Williams’ Darius is a born leader, while the overbearing Kenji Kon provides reliable comedic relief alongside Rodriguez’s Sammy Gutierrez.
The balance of personalities in *Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous *results in a show where viewers are truly invested in the main cast and their survival instead of simply waiting for the next set of dinosaurs to show up. This highlights the primary shortcoming of the Jurassic World sequels, and the issue that doomed 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion in particular. After Jurassic World turned Chris Pratt’s Eoin Grady into the face of the franchise, it was clear that this character was never going to be killed off.
It was similarly obvious that his love interest, Bryce Dallas Howard’s Clare, was also safe from any dinosaur attacks. Soon, when characters from the original Jurassic Park trilogy returned, viewers could be equally assured that fan-favorites like Dr. Ian Malcolm, Alan Grant, and Ellie Sattler were also safe. This resulted in a bizarre situation where a series about dinosaurs facing off against humans was afraid to kill off any major characters, even though Spielberg’s original 1993 movie killed off a slew of supporting stars, both heroic and villainous.
Too concerned with safeguarding audience nostalgia and not sufficiently interested in taking creative risks, the Jurassic World movies felt shockingly toothless compared to 1993’s original blockbuster. It is truly striking when an animated Netflix show aimed at children has more upsetting deaths than a blockbuster franchise, but the saddest character deaths in Jurassic World’s animated spinoffs proved that the spinoff did a better job of recapturing the dark tone of the original movie than the reboot’s sequels.
To be fair to the Jurassic World movies, they are not the first series to fall into this nostalgia trap. Another blockbuster franchise that Ortega starred in, the Scream movies, went from shocking viewers by killing off their biggest A-list star in the original movie’s opening scene to keeping not one or two, but all ten of the franchise’s most important characters alive by the end of* Scream 7*. The more popular a franchise gets, the more its creators worry about upsetting fans, meaning Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous can end up feeling more like Jurassic Park than the Jurassic World movies.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous ](/db/tv-show/jurassic-world-camp-cretaceous/)
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