I mean part of it is that the original JP was just a movie. These characters weren't beloved or legendary or whatever. The third act is also decidedly Spielberg doing a slasher except with raptors, so more deaths and more blood make sense. But there was no need to worry about Mr. Arnold stans posting on the internet about how 'They killed my favourite character with an offscreen death smh Spielberg hates the fanbase, never watching another JP again!'

But now after so many years and a fanbase that has grown and grown, Sattler/Grant/Malcolm aren't just characters, they're ~Legends~ which means if you're gonna kill them, you have to really do something special to earn it.

If Malcolm just got chomped by the Giga it would have been an outrage hahah.

It's not great, obviously at this point these movies are just cash machines that happen to include dinosaurs tangentially. But I also can't complain. The original isn't going away. I still like dinosaurs.