Every Jurassic Park & World Movie Ranked, Worst To Best (Including Rebirth)

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There’s a clear frontrunner for the best of the franchise, where arguments develop is every other slot. So where does Jurassi World Rebirth rank among the three Jurassic Park and three other Jurassic World movies? Read on to find our official decision.

7) Jurassic World Dominion

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What a missed opportunity. The filmmakers somehow brought all three main members of the original Jurassic Park gang and made it a movie about bugs. Perhaps even worse yet, Jurassic World Dominion is the movie that was supposed to capitalize on what we’d all been waiting two movies to see: dinosaurs (violently) cohabitating with people.

Without a doubt, Dominion is a thoroughly unexciting slog of a movie. Even with the locusts, it never feels like there are stakes. Not once do we feel like the legacy characters or the Jurassic World characters are actually going to get chomped. The best thing that can said about it is that DeWanda Wise and Dichen Lachman steal all of their scenes as, respectively, Kayla Watts and Soyona Santos. That and Owen Grady and Claire Dearing taking on the role of adoptive parents to Charlotte Lockwood is moderately compelling. But this is still supposed to be a movie about dinosaurs, and instead it’s a movie about an aging tech bro (played very oddly by Campbell Scott) who has made big bugs that gobble up crops.

6) Jurassic Park III

There are certain aspects of Joe Johnston’s Jurassic Park III that are admirable. To its credit, it captured the spirit of the original film slightly better than any of the Jurassic World movies.

But Jurassic Park III also feels very rushed. At 92 minutes, it’s a pretty quick rollercoaster ride. That’s not a fatal flaw, but the fact that most of the disposable characters die about two minutes after landing on the island hurts the move greatly. We’re then left with a group of people who we’re pretty sure are going to live, and we’re mostly right. That takes the tension out of things. However, it still manages to have a few standout scenes, e.g. when we hear a cellphone ring and, along with the characters, realize it’s from within a dinosaur, which is now standing out in an open field, looking down at our protagonists. Then there’s the scene that stands out in a bad way. The worst scene of any Jurassic movie: when Grant dreams that his pal, Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola), is a talking raptor.

5) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the very definition of a mixed bag. In fact, it’s two films stuffed into one. The first film is essentially a remake of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which culminates in a volcanic eruption and a sad shot of a helpless Brontosaurus. The second half is a haunted house movie with a raptor version of the previous film’s Indominus Rex.

It’s a pretty jarring jump, and the first half is better than the second, but one has to admire director J. A. Bayona for playing with the IP’s formula a bit. However, this is also the installment where the characters make some of the dumbest decisions of the franchise. For instance, when Ted Levine’s Ken Wheatley gets in the Indoraptor’s cage to get its tooth (AKA gets in the Indoraptor’s cage so his character can be killed off).

4) Jurassic World Rebirth

Consider Jurassic World Rebirth and Jurassic World essentially tied. Both represent slight steps forward for the franchise with an even greater emphasis on reverence for the past. The only reason Rebirth ranks (slightly) below World here is that the hybrid dinosaurs aren’t put to as good a use as World‘s Indominus Rex, which was a fairly intimidating addition to the dino roundup, especially during the effective enclosure escape scene.

But to its credit, Rebirth works. It’s a very straightforward adventure film with no shortage of fun set pieces. That said, it’s a pretty predictable adventure. Once you get a chance to meet all of the characters, you have a strong sense of who is going to die and who is going to sail away to the John Williams theme. Most of the characters are on a mission to capture samples from three particular dinosaurs, while the other half of the coin consists of a father, his two daughters, and the eldest daughter’s genuinely insufferable boyfriend (a strong contender for the franchise’s most dino-edible character). Both groups are fun enough to watch, though one does wish they had gone for dinosaurs created practically this time around. For all the World trilogy’s faults, at least it utilized practical effects when it could.

3) Jurassic World

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The prospect of seeing a functioning Jurassic Park helped make Jurassic World the biggest hit of the 2015 summer movie season. Like with the original film, it was a big deal when it came out. And, while it doesn’t fulfill the promise of its title as well as it could, it’s better than the two other parts of the trilogy combined.

There are a few factors that hold it back, though. For one, the arc for Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing is silly, perfectly emphasized by the scene where she takes off her high heels and feels that’s enough to signify she’s now capable of stomping through a dino-stuffed jungle. Two, some of the characters make very stupid decisions (though not quite as stupid as some decisions in Fallen Kingdom). Like Vincent D’Onofrio’s Vic Hoskins, who knew the raptors had only bonded with Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady, yet puts his hand towards a raptor’s mouth like he’s expecting it to react with the gift of an ice cream sandwich. And that’s without mentioning the raptor training thread in and of itself, which never got less silly after being employed three separate times. Lastly, there’s the death of Katie McGrath’s Zara which was, well, a bit much.

2) The Lost World: Jurassic Park

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It makes sense that The Lost World: Jurassic Park is the closest the franchise has ever come to capturing the specific sense of ’90s magic held in surplus by the original film because, well, it was released in the ’90s. That, and it’s the only other installment directed by Steven Spielberg. However, The Lost World is a T-Rex-sized step down from the original film. The wonder of seeing dinosaurs on the big screen is already mostly gone, especially since they were so convincingly brought to life the first time out the gate.

Fortunately, there’s still a lot about The Lost World that works, especially when it comes to the darkness of the tone and the entirety of the trailer sequence. Naturally, this turned some people off and gave plenty of kids nightmares, but it really does make the film feel as though not even Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm is fully safe. Even still, The Lost World is nothing if not divisive, and it’s easy to see why. Take for instance the third act, which has the T-Rex storm across San Diego. The boat that brings it over had a ton of crewmen, yet when the boat smashes into the dock and the T-Rex breaks free, every member of the crew is dead. We have absolutely no idea how they died, and it doesn’t really make any sense, but neither does the notion of a T-Rex chomping people on some big city streets. But like with the first film, we sit back and enjoy the ride, even if this time the required suspension of disbelief is a tall order.

1) Jurassic Park

With perfect pacing, on-point casting, a few genuinely intense scenes, and the most adventurous tone ever committed to celluloid, Jurassic Park is ’90s cinema at its best. Everything about Jurassic Park works. It’s Spielberg at his best and most energetic. It’s clear that he was excited behind the camera, fully aware that he was pushing boundaries of what the audience was used to seeing on the big screen.

Of course, special effects aren’t enough to make a film timeless. More often than not, they’re what prevents a film from being exactly that. Though some of Jurassic Park‘s CGI has aged the way one might expect, it’s so perfectly balanced with practical effects that it never becomes a problem. What has allowed Jurassic Park to remain so rewatchable all these years later is the lovable group of characters.

The reason Jurassic Park‘s sense of wonder is so palpable is that the three leads sell their awe of and excitement for what they’re seeing. We’re excited not because of the CGI dinosaurs, but because we’re watching people who have devoted their lives to studying fossils finally see a dinosaur in real life, an opportunity they never imagined could come to fruition. The original Jurassic Park will always be the best Jurassic Park.