After 30 years and two separate trilogies, the Jurassic Park franchise is the flag bearer of dinosaur films. Starting in 1993, the series has been praised for its breathtaking depiction of dinosaurs and their interactions with humans. Over the years, Jurassic Park has expanded from its initial science fiction source material into a science fiction/action hybrid with the Jurassic World series. But after Jurassic World Dominion was released in Sumer 2022, it's safe to say that the Jurassic franchise is going to hibernate for a while.

With years of success behind the franchise, it's clear that audiences love dinosaurs, but that presents a problem. Dinosaurs never interacted with humans, so it's hard to build a narrative to carry that. Sure, there are well-known films like Disney's Dinosaur, but films accurately depicting dinosaurs are quite rare. So, how can a movie tell a story of dinosaurs and humans while being fresh and realistic? Well, it can tell the real-life story of the Bone Wars between paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.

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Bone Wars

The Bone Wars was a long-term feud between two well-respected paleontologists on the brink of one of the most important paleontology booms ever. Cope and Marsh were once friends and even named dinosaurs after each other. But their feud began when Marsh humiliated Cope when he pointed out that Cope had put the Elasmosaurus' head on the wrong end of the body. After this incident, the two became very hostile, and their rivalry became public.

For several years, Marsh and Cope would trade barbs back and forth before the bitter paleontologists moved westward to fossil sites, most notably the Morrison Formation near Como Bluff, Wyoming. During a 15-year fossil excursion, both men would try to one-up each other by stealing bones, sabotaging dig sites and even destroying bones to try to discredit or destroy their opponent. However, even with the underhanded tactics, both men would go on to unearth over 130 dinosaur species, including Allosaurus, Triceratops, Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. But how would this story fit as a Jurassic Park successor? Well, it would use a similar setup as Pan's Labyrinth.

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Pan's Labyrinth used an active imagination and imagery as a way to explore universal themes. A film depicting the Bone Wars would use this conflict as a framing device, where the feud would undermine the beauty of both their finds and the importance of the event. The sheer pettiness of Marsh and Cope over discoveries that changed the world would be an interesting theme as their rivalry outlived the period. Both men's reprehensible behavior opens the discussion of pride. Instead of presenting one as good and the other as bad, the film could show both in an antiheroic light and let the audience decide if what they did was worth the destruction and venom.

As with any dinosaur movie, the most important thing is the dinosaurs. In a Pan's Labyrinth-style film, the dinosaurs could be presented in recreation in their ecosystems. As each of the paleontologists investigates their respective finds, the excavated bones could be imagined in their natural environment. That could also influence something that started their feud: the things they imagined and described being wrong.

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Velociraptor Jurassic Park III

The drawings and depictions of dinosaurs in the late 1800s were correct for the time, but as paleontologists learned more, they found that they were wrong. In moments during the film, Marsh or Cope could draw descriptions or imagine descriptions and show a realistic dinosaur roaming nearby as a comparison. The idea of the dinosaurs won't be as monsters but as natural beings moving and behaving normally. As each dinosaur is brought back to life metaphorically, the image would provide an exclamation point to the discovery's importance.

Marsh and Cope provide an interesting dichotomy in that they are bitter enemies who created the future of paleontology together. In a film adaptation, a passage of time would show paleontologists such as Robert Bakker, Jack Horner, J. Keith Rigby and others marveling over the two and their work before setting out to find their own. As with Jurassic Park, the Bone Wars started a major boom period for paleontology. Let the film lean into the spectacle of dinosaurs as Jurassic Park did. With a bitter feud came a hopeful future for paleontology, one that led to the restoration of great fossils. Both Marsh and Cope had their drawbacks, but in a film about them, the future they created is just as important.