'The Fast And The Furious' And 'Jurassic Park': The Crossover We Deserve

The Fate of the Furious, the latest high octane goof-fest from the Fast and the Furious series, comes rip-roaring into theaters this weekend. What started as a fairly dull Point Break knock-off with street racing instead of surfing somehow blossomed into a delightful, silly, universally embraced franchise. As the series unveils its eighth entry, one question remains: where does Dominic Toretto and his family go from here?Some would say the logical (or perhaps illogical) next step is space, the final frontier. Even Fate of the Furious screenwriter Chris Morgan acknowledged as much recently, and didn't completely shoot down the idea, saying, "Look, I get all versions of that question. I get, 'Are you going to space?,' and, 'Please, God, tell me you're not going to space because you'll lose me if you do.' The only way I'd go to space is if I had something so good."I submit, however, that the Furious franchise need not slip the surly bonds of earth, but rather stay rooted to terra firma. And then bring in some dinosaurs.

Cinematic universes may seem like a new fad, but they're actually rooted in Hollywood history. And Universal Studios, which owns the Furious franchise, was one of the first studios to embrace it, via their wildly popular Universal Monsters series. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolfman – these black-and-white horrors started off as self-contained stories. Then Universal began to mix and match, crossing characters over in films like House of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. These were Universal's bread and butter back in the day.Now, they have the Furious franchise, and one other proven commodity: the Jurassic Park series. Universal's Jurassic World was a massive hit, becoming the first film ever to generate over $500 million in a single weekend, going on to become the third-highest-grossing film of all time. It doesn't take a gene-splicing geneticist to put two and two together: it's time to cross over the Furious films with the Jurassic saga.Right away, I know some of you will be resistant to this idea. "It's too silly!" you might protest. "It doesn't make any sense!" you might counter. Folks, have you seen the Furious films? None of them make any sense! That's part of the charm of the series. The bigger the franchise has gotten, and the more off-the-wall mayhem it's added, the more the public has embraced it. So why not pull out all the stops and take this thing to next level? Why not combine the Furious universe with the Jurassic universe?

Combining these two franchises wouldn't be very difficult. You'll likely recall a scene in Jurassic Park between treacherous computer nerd Dennis Nedry and a mysterious gentleman named Dodgson (the gentleman with the nice hat trying to look like a secret agent). Dodgson wanted Nedry to smuggle a bunch of dinosaur embryos off the original island – a task Nedry failed in after the Dilophosaurus spit some goo in his face and then ate him. As for Dodgson, we never heard from him again, nor did we learn much more about him.However, in Michael Crichton's books Jurassic Park and The Lost World, Dodgson is the the head of research at Biosyn, a direct competitor with InGen, the company bankrolling Jurassic Park. There's your in: Biosyn still wants to get their hands on that dino DNA, and who better to break into Jurassic World and harvest it than Dom and the gang? They are, after all, thieves. Or maybe they're spies now? Or thieves who moonlight as spies? Whatever – it doesn't matter! Logic plays no part here.Dom and his team would have to ride some slick, shiny boats (or perhaps cars that turn into boats) to get to the island. Then once there, they'd be outrunning and outracing dinosaurs left and right. Just imagine the famous "Must go faster!" sequence from Jurassic Park, where some hapless humans in a Jeep are chased by a T-Rex, re-created with Vin Diesel behind the wheel. Don't even pretend you don't want to see that. Can't you just picture the mostly expressionless face he'll make as he glances into the rearview mirror and sees the T-Rex closing in?

I can still sense some resistance. "Why would all of the Furious crew need to go to Jurassic World to steal embryos? Don't they just steal cars?" Perhaps Dom and company have another motive: cloning!One fan-favorite member of the team, Han Seoul-Oh (Sung Kang), met his untimely demise in The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift. However, writer Chris Morgan has suggested that we possibly hadn't seen the last of Han. The logical assumption would be that the Furious films would play around with timelines again – even though Tokyo Drift was released third, it's actually set after Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Fast & Furious 6, chronologically. But why bother jumping back in time when the series can work the cloning angle, especially if it hooks up with the Jurassic franchise? If they can clone dinosaurs, surely they can clone Han. Nonsensical? Sure. Illogical? Absolutely. Kind of amazing? Yes! Of course, Dwayne Johnson's Luke Hobbs will have to be involved in some capacity too. Maybe he can ride on the back of a T-Rex firing a chain gun.Some Jurassic Park fans bemoaned Jurassic World's decision to introduce "trained" raptors that run alongside Chris Pratt's motorcycle. But can you imagine that same element applied to a Furious film? Imagine Dom dryly rasping, "I don't have friends, I got raptors." Smash cut to a garage door opening and a bunch of raptors running alongside a speeding muscle car. The possibilities are endless here.The Furious franchise has already gone well beyond the concept of grounded reality. It's time to take things even further, and never look back. Of course, when The Jurassic and the Furious ends, where does the franchise go from there? Keep in mind Universal is currently in the process of rebooting their original Universal Monsters cinematic universe into big action tentpoles. The Fast & the Furious Meet Frankenstein, anyone?