Jurassic World's First Clue To Dr. Grant's Story After Jurassic Park 3

Tuesday, September 29, 2020

For the first time in 20 years, Dr. Alan Grant will return in Jurassic World: Dominion. Netflix's Camp Cretaceous dropped a clue to his activities.

Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) will return in Jurassic World: Dominion, but Netflix's Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous offers the first clue as to what the world-famous paleontologist has been up to since he survived a visit to Isla Sorna in Jurassic Park III. Camp Cretaceous is the first animated series set in the Jurassic universe and it canonically takes place during the events of Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World in 2015.

One of the main heroes of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, Dr. Grant is one of the franchise's most beloved legacy characters. Along with his colleague (and then-love interest) Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Alan was brought to Jurassic Park on the Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar in 1993 by its creator, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), ostensibly to sign off on the dinosaur theme park as a safe tourist destination. Alan was trapped in the park when the dinosaurs got loose but he guided Hammond's grandchildren, Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello), to safety before they all escaped Isla Nublar. In 2001, however, Grant was tricked to travel to Isla Sorna AKA Site B in order to lead a mission to rescue Eric Kirby (Trevor Morgan), a teenager who was trapped on InGen's second island of dinosaurs. Alan and the Kirby family survived Isla Sorna and multiple attacks by the Spinosaurus and they were rescued by the U.S. Marines and Navy.

However, in the years after Jurassic Park III, Masrani Global Corporation bought InGen and opened the dinosaur theme park, rebranding it Jurassic World. From 2005-2015, John Hammond's dream of a successful vacation destination where thousands of tourists flocked to experience InGen's cloned dinosaurs became a reality. The reality of Jurassic World also inspired many children's fascination with dinosaurs, including young Darius Bowman (Paul-Mikel Williams), one of the main characters of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous. Darius is a dinosaur fanatic, which, in the Jurassic universe, also makes him a huge fan of Dr. Alan Grant, who is still highly regarded as a paleontologist famous for surviving two excursions on both of InGen's dinosaur-filled islands. A flashback in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous episode 4, "Things Fall Apart", reveals the first big hint of what Alan Grant has been doing since the end of Jurassic Park III.

In that episode, Darius excitedly shows his late father, Fredrick (Keston John), Dr. Grant's latest article, which was shared on the Jurassic World forums. Darius explains that Alan's newest study is about the new evidence the paleontologist uncovered about "cranial facial biting in theropods". Fredrick caught on right away that this means "theropods didn't just fight to kill, they fought for dominance, for power... And even for fun!"

What we can take away from this is that Dr. Grant is still studying the behavior of predators like the Velociraptor and the Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Alan has deduced that beyond his own experience with carnivores killing to eat, they also exhibited greater social behaviors than previously understood, and that includes the dinosaurs outright playing together. What's fascinating about Grant's research is that his deductions are likely still based upon his own studies from fossils. After all, in Jurassic Park III, Alan publicly decried John Hammond's cloned dinosaurs as "theme park monsters, nothing more" and he insisted that his own work is based upon studying the fossils of real dinosaurs that have been extinct for millions of years.

Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World films have leaned hard into the dinosaurs as "theme park monsters", which is an apt way to describe hybrid beasts like the Indominus Rex and the Indoraptor. Trevorrow's Jurassic movies also purport that dinosaurs can be weaponized for military applications. However, the hint Camp Cretaceous dropped about Dr. Grant's studies could mean that fans will see Jurassic World: Dominion's dinosaurs, which are loose upon the world, behaving more like 'real' dinosaurs. But then again, all of the dinosaurs in Jurassic World: Dominion, including any new creatures cloned from InGen's codes that are now in the open, will be the opposite of the dinosaurs Alan Grant has been studying, and this may highlight the massive differences between the dinosaurs that once lived and the cloned hybrids of Jurassic World.

Source: https://screenrant.com/