This past year, we saw the fifth entry in the "Jurassic Park" franchise released, and it managed to make more than 1.3 billion dollars worldwide. It seems that people can't get enough of watching dinosaurs fight each other, stomp humans, eat humans, and just act awesome, which leaves me scratching my head at the severe lack of dinosaur movies outside of the "Jurassic Park" movies.

Now, I want you to stop and think (don't strain yourselves), what are some dinosaur films you can think of that have nothing to do with the previously mentioned franchise? You would probably think of movies like "The Good Dinosaur" and Disney's "Dinosaur," however, the former was a box office flop, and the latter was both a flop and perhaps one of the most forgettable things Disney has ever made (be honest, you all forgot that movie existed until I mentioned it just now).

Outside of those two examples, I find it hard to think of any other dinosaur movies that have been released, which is kind of strange. Why does the "Jurassic Park" franchise seem to hold a monopoly on dinosaur movies? The answer to that question is quite simple, "Jurassic Park" was too good of a movie.

"Jurassic Park" set the standard for almost every dinosaur film that came after it. It was the perfect blend of wonder and terror when it came to the creatures it presented. It used landmark digital and practical effects to bring these long extinct creatures back to life. That special magic is something no other dinosaur movie was able to fully replicate (not even the franchise's own sequels).

Shortly after the release of "Jurassic Park," any piece of media that featured dinosaurs was seen (fairly or not) as a "rip-off" of the film trying to ride the coattails of its success. Disney's "Dinosaur" was seen as an overly tame version of "Jurassic Park," but with talking dinosaurs. The same could be said for "The Good Dinosaur."

Whether it's fair or not, the "Jurassic Park" franchise was able to implant itself as "the" dinosaur movies in an entire generation of moviegoers. This leads me to a new question; how would a movie go by pulling itself out of that enormous shadow? The answer to that is simple, do something incredibly unique and "out there" with dinosaurs.

While the "Jurassic" movies have only recently gone in strange directions such as training raptors and genetic hybrids, they are still, relatively speaking, grounded in reality. Any film that can do something beautifully strange with them will certainly be remembered as different from the "Jurassic" films.

What if there was a planet of dinosaurs that we discover and they learned space travel? What if there's an alternate Earth where dinosaurs are still around and humanity is the extinct species? There are bound to be plenty more ideas where that came from, and those are just the ones off of the top of my head. Let's see some unique dinosaur movies film industry, I would really like to see an end to the monopolistic stranglehold the "Jurassic" series has on the genre.