What are the replicable elements of the original film's secret sauce?

It's hardly an original insight, but much of what makes Jurassic Park such a great film cannot be recaptured in sequels. It's a phenomenal idea for a story that was executed perfectly and released at exactly the right time in history.

They cannot tell a story in which such feelings of awe and wonder turn to horror and desperate survival. The audience, and characters within the universe, know the drill. In-universe, the dinosaurs and their hazards have been public knowledge for thirty years; out of universe, audiences have seen endless convincing CGI creatures since Jurassic Park blazed the trail.

There is little new thematic ground to tread to do with man's arrogance and overreach. That's an appealing, evergreen theme - but within the series, you're left repeating ideas.

My question is, what great elements from the original can be replicated or recaptured?

• I don't know how much modern audiences would stomach it, but I'd appreciate a much more restrained approach to showing the dinosaurs. As a kid, I *loved* looking at the forests and mountains in the original film and wondering if creatures were in it. Muldoon spotting the velociraptor before Ellie is many times more intense than any of the raptor scenes in any of the other five films (The Lost World approaches it, but the scene in the long grass just happens too rapidly). Also, in real life, wild animals typically keep out of our way - it feels more realistic for hunters to keep a low profile, and for herbivores to do the same.
• The horror element. Jurassic Park has more sunny and upbeat material than any of its sequels - but from title card it tunes into this very primeval sense of horror, of something stalking you through the forest.
• Drawn out, frightening deaths. Jurassic Park doesn't have that many, but Joffrey, Nedry, and Muldoon's deaths are full blown scenes, where proper time is given to developing the feeling of their last moments. Dieter's death in The Lost World is similarly great, but by Jurassic Park III the disturbing deaths (and there are plenty) are pretty swiftly hurried through or kept at arm's length.