Which dinosaur joyride will rise to the top?
I’m five years old and I am very high up. I’m sitting in a saddle and heading through the school gates looking down upon fellow students and buildings and teachers – they’re so far away but I can see they’re all pointing up at me because I’m riding on the back of a brontosaurus who is my pet and best friend.
I bet a billion I’m not the only one to have dreamed of being pals with such a mythical yet scientifically bonafide creature. Which is why it doesn’t surprise me one bit that 2025’s Jurassic Park: Rebirth is a box office hit in an otherwise sluggish market for mainstream cinema. Jurassic Park is a toothy, evergreen fantasy for all ages: a T-Rex sized “what if?” that, like Tamar Adler’s everlasting meal, keeps on making a new dish with the leftovers from the last one.
But Jurassic Park isn’t really about dinosaurs. After reviewing the seven feature-length films in the franchise I’ve reached the conclusion that these films are an all too accurate take down of homo sapiens: most specifically, our propensity for dumbass decision making and our species’ infuriating and perplexing tendency to put commercial interests above all else even when it’s extremely obvious there are more pressing things to spend money on than a Distortus Rex.
It’s easy to write Jurassic Park off as nothing more than a crude string of yarns about dino disasters but, and I hate to break this to you, it’s a pretty freaking accurate metaphor for the near constant, movie-villain level shite that’s going down on this planet. You just know that if we really could bring back dinosaurs some billionaire would do that instead of contributing to climate solutions. Instead of trying to help the life we haven’t yet managed to kill, our species would allow just one or two of us to pour millions into joyrides to space or de-extincting a tall, flightless bird.
Having said that, some J-Park films are better than others: here is a definitive ranking from worst to best.
7. Jurassic Park III, 2002 (directed by Joe Johnston)
Not even Téa Leonie (remember Deep Impact? What happened to her?) could save this mess. Long-suffering palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is once again lured back to Isla Nubar by a pair of millionaires who promise to fund his research into velociraptor vocalisation in return for a guided fly-over tour of the island. Turns out the rich couple are faking it because actually their son is missing on the island and Alan is forced to go groundwards and run from T-Rexes all over again.
The dinosaurs are unconvincing, the opening sequences are laughably bad and the plot just doesn’t flow. A highlight is when Téa Leonie and William H Macy try to convince Sam Neill’s character that they are bonafide millionaires by saying that they’ve already booked their seats on the first commercial flight to space. This will become a subtle motif throughout the franchise which loves to stick the knife into our habit of squandering resources on really bad ideas.
6. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, 2019 (directed by J A Bayona)
Too. Much. This is the follow up to Jurassic World which rebooted the franchise with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard as the next-gen leads. Isola Nublar’s volcano is now active and threatens to wipe out the island’s dinosaurs. Old mate Ian Malclom (Jeff Goldblum) testifies (in some kind of court setting) that the dinos should be left to die so as to reverse the damage done by John Hammond’s tampering with nature (Hammond being the elderly English gent and the original instigator of Jurassic Park).
Pratt and Dallas Howard return to the island where they once worked to turn the tracking system back on and somehow move the dinosaurs to a new island sanctuary where they’ll live without any fences (no issues there!).
Highlights include that bloody brilliant Mosasaur (massive whale-shark thing) that everyone seems to keep forgetting now lives out in the ocean merrily swallowing boats and great whites whole; and the return of Dr Henry Wu (the geneticist who made the OG dinos way back in the first Jurassic Park) who has been busily affixing genes together to create new dinosaurs like the Indoraptor which is part Velociraptor and Indominus Rex, itself a genetically engineered hybrid.
This film really didn’t need the volcano plot – it turned an interesting twist on black markets and weaponising genetics into an absurd parade of fireballs. This was relentless and not in a fun way.
5. Jurassic World: Dominion, 2022 (directed by Colin Trevorrow)
Three decades since Hammond’s original Jurassic Park (the concept, not the film) was an instant disaster, and four years since Jurassic World was another deadly mistake, dinosaurs now live among us. Most of them roam about in Big Rock National Park but they’re spreading even further (across America that is – we kind of assume everywhere else too, given Isla Nubar is in Costa Rica).
Old Biosyn Genetics is trying to set up a reserve for dinosaurs in the Dolomites in Italy (lucky Italy!). Sam Neill is back! Laura Dern is back! Jeff Goldblum is back! The fun of this film is that the old world and the new collide as a Brand New Threat arrives – mutant locusts the size of cats that weirdly don’t eat grain grown with Biosyn seed. This is the moment in the franchise where we really get into the genetics and the chaos that Dr. Henry Wu started by mixing raptor blood with frog DNA and whatnot.
It’s hysterical and sad at the same time because Biosyn is basically Monsanto.
Honestly, I can’t really remember much else about this film except that it contains, in my opinion, one of the most terrifying dinosaur chase scenes of them all: a huge birdlike feathered creature runs with its mouth open like a livid goose and dives under the ice and fucking SWIMS under the humans and then pops up and runs at them again. I screamed. I also think this is the one with insane shots of dinosaurs running with the wild horses at sunset and the winged dinosaurs flying with the regular birds to really drive home the message that they are among us now.
4. Jurassic World, 2015 (directed by Colin Trevorrow)
This is the first reboot starring Chris Pratt as Velociraptor trainer Owen Grady, and Bryce Dallas Howard as Jurassic World’s park manager, Claire Dearing. So, yes, a new corporation has acquired InGen’s assets and has made a new dinosaur park and this time we meet it when it’s full steam ahead and a hive of tourists and we know exactly what we’re in for.
This is the first film to introduce the idea that genetics must once again be harnessed so as to continue to charm and interest the homo sapiens for whom the novelty of the plain old T-Rex is wearing off. Enter the Indominus Rex, and re-enter Henry Wu who made him. Turns out this creation is very, very clever and can trick humans and, thanks to some cuttlefish DNA, can camouflage too.
What I loved about Jurassic World is that it is self-conscious and nests a ton of Easter eggs for those nostalgic for the original Jurassic Park. Nick from New Girl (Jake Johnson) plays a Jurassic World control room employee who wears a vintage Jurassic Park t-shirt that he bought on e-bay. He’s melancholic and we know that he knows shit is going to go down but he loves the idea of it all so much he’s along for the ride, despite the dread.
This film wisely reintroduces the fact that J-Park works best when kids are in danger of being munched. Two brothers (Claire’s nephews) get to whizz through the park in an orb which is basically like a play toy for the Indominus Rex and narrowly escape death many times.
The ending is both inevitable and hilarious and charming: T-Rex has her “there’s not enough room for the both of us” moment with the Indominus Rex and the humans finally see that maybe Jurassic Park 2.0 was a folly.
3. Jurassic Park: The Lost World, 1997 (directed by Steven Spielberg)
Hammond: “I’m not making the same mistakes again!”
Dr Malcolm: “No, you’re just making all new ones.”
Look, it’s not subtle. But neither are we! The second film in the franchise is a rollicking ride. Dr Malclom (Jeff Goldblum) is the reluctant hero lured back this time by that sneaky old codger Hammond who has sent Goldblum’s girlfriend Sarah (played by a sprightly Julianne Moore) off to the island to document the dinos who are thriving without the electric fences (apparently Malcolm and Sarah don’t talk much – he’s flabbergasted that she went without his knowledge).
Spielberg x dinosaurs x a remote island with goodies and baddies is just so much fun. Spielberg knows how to elongate tension and propel the plot in all the right places. He has the actors hooning down rock slides (always, in his films, people are sliding down rocks that are shaped like actual slides); and knee-weakening dangling scenes with vehicles and ropes incorrectly tied and then wham! T-Rexes come in and stick their faces in windows with their pupils all contracting and fangs out.
There’s the brilliant Pete Postlethwaite (RIP) who plays a tish-tosh, gung-ho Brit; and there’s a number of superb deaths: the arrogant French solider who is only there for the hunt gets nailed by those little tiny chicken-sized dudes; one poor chap gets ripped in half by two very pissed off mum and dad T-Rexes; and the entire crew of a ship is demolished with only parts of people left to show for it.
All in all a well-paced, perfectly ridiculous and at times, beautiful, couple of hours.
2. Jurassic Park: Rebirth, 2025 (directed by Gareth Edwards)
The film that made Scarlett Johansson the highest paid actress in history is almost perfect.
Jurassic Park: Rebirth carries all the beloved hallmarks of the franchise – Mosasaurus! Crazily named new mutant dinosaurs! Tropical islands! Cute T-Rex escapes! Kids in danger! – while doing something really quite different and urgent for our times.
The start of the film shows a sweet old brontosaurus dying on the side of the road with cars and people flowing all around it, totally uninterested. The creature is even sporting graffiti like a crumbling, defenceless building. From the very beginning it’s made clear that the state of Earth can no longer sustain dinosaur life, and humans are taking over like mutant locusts.
Enter, the baddie – Martin Krebbs (Rupert Friend) who is a pharmaceutical company rep from ParkerGenix; and the goodies – Zora Bennett (ScarJo) who is some kind of ex-military operative, and specky palaeontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). The three of them head to the equator (the last climate left where dinosaurs can thrive) to retrieve DNA from three of the largest remaining dino species to be used in new drugs to cure human heart disease.
ScarJo’s Zora harks back to badass leading roles from the 90s: she’s all tank tops and muscle and owning long-range weaponry. Jonathan Bailey is an attempt to mirror Sam Neill’s Alan Grant – the character dedicated to the “old arts”, the bone digging and data analysis, who is nevertheless awed and dazzled and moved to tears when he encounters the real thing in its natural habitat.
The action is thrilling; the family-in-mortal-peril storyline is fresh; the dinosaurs are fun and scary and beautiful; and there’s the sacred scene of humans running into shoulder-high grass which we know by now signals a velociraptor sequence. The film veers very close to ludicrous with a heinous new dinosaur called Distortus Rex (lol) with a very Godzilla-like countenance – but this film did have to follow the 2022 genetics god-fuckery storyline and the dome-headed horror really is something special.
What I like most about the film, though, is that its message is stunningly and upsettingly a culmination of all that’s come before: that we cannot afford to take our eyes off what we have. Instead of gazing at Pterodactyls flying into the sunset, the final shot is of dolphins leaping in the sea. Those intelligent, graceful beings that are still here, for now. The question is whether the global leaders and corporations that insist on dictating our weather and our resources will ever put people and planet over profit.
1. Jurassic Park, 1993 (directed by Steven Spielberg)
I’m sorry to disappoint with zero surprises here but the first Jurassic Park movie is one of the greatest movies ever made. It is the soup from which all subsequent Jurassic Park movies and TV shows and short films have taken their flavour – but none have ever achieved the perfection of this original attempt.
The scene where Sam Neill and Laura Dern first see the Brachiosaurus still moves me to god damn tears and I’ve seen it not less than 15 times. It’s one of the most perfect moments in cinematic history: pure awe and overwhelm, adults brought to their knees by wonder. Just like in the world of Jurassic Park, it’s very hard to be as moved by the sight of dinosaurs among us – by the audacity of it – to the same degree as this first, potent encounter.
This is the film that established the sweeping shots of dinosaur herds running free and panicked through the fields; it’s the film that brought us Velociraptors and their capacity for wit and cleverness and claws; it brought us Jeff Goldblum in leather and Laura Dern plunging her lovely fists into Triceratops shit.
It’s the kids that really make this film, though: Joesph Mazello plays little Tim Murphy, and Ariana Richards plays his big sister, Lex. They give standout performances as their juvenile minds and bodies are rocked by cars falling through trees, bone-zapping electric fences, T-Rexes slavering, and feisty Velociraptors hustling them into kitchen cupboards.
In fact the entire cast is impeccable including minor roles like Samuel L. Jackson as a chain-smoking park engineer, and Wayne Knight as the dastardly IT guy with a plan to smuggle embryos out of the park and make some extra cash.
And how can I write about Jurassic Park without writing about the soundtrack? In some ways I think this franchise is 50% John Williams, the composer. The genius of the music is that the tone captures the ups and downs of life on Isla Nublar perfectly and carries with it now the nostalgia of a simpler time – the 90s – before all the other Jurassic Park problems got lobbed into the boiling pot of major crises.
I could leave all the other Jurassic Park films from here on in, but it’s this very first go with its Sam Neill and its Laura Dern and its Jeff Goldblum that I’ll return to over and over again. It’s adventure, it’s pathos, it’s T-Rex.
