Here is the problem with Jurassic Park: It is a fabulous movie that is very difficult to make sequels to. Because Jurassic Park is about people coming to realize that its central concept — a theme park filled with living dinosaurs — is an absolutely horrible idea. So to make sequels, you must focus on people who, for one reason or another, ignore that central fact and go back to islands full of dinosaurs. To do so, they must either a) be incredibly stupid or b) act like they are incredibly stupid. In The Lost World, Dr. Ian Malcolm, who almost got stomped into oblivion by a T.rex, goes to a second Jurassic Park island to find his missing girlfriend. In Jurassic Park III, Dr. Alan Grant willingly goes back to one of the parks to help a couple who think they can just wander onto this island to find their missing son. Years later we got Jurassic World, which basically redid the original concept all over again, with a brand-new park full of dinosaurs, and a whole new human cast who think this time the dinosaurs won’t rampage through the guests. Guess what happened!
And so on. Now the guy who directed that movie and the recent Jurassic World: Dominion, Colin Trevorrow, has basically conceded that very point. In a new interview with Empire he admits Jurassic Park is “inherently unfranchisable, there probably should have only been one Jurassic Park.” That explains his approach to Dominion, which was less about dinosaurs (although at the end of the movie the heroes wind up back in yet another nature preserve full of dinosaurs that quickly falls into chaos) and instead focused on a story involving giant killer locusts. Trevorrow claimed he tried to “change the DNA of the franchise” because he he wanted to “tell stories in a world in which dinosaurs exist” but that didn’t just involve sending more people to an island of dinosaurs. Well, hey when the Jurassic Park scientists changed the DNA of dinosaurs, that worked out great, right? Right?!?
Trevorrow also revealed that even though all of the marketing materials for Jurassic World: Dominion treated it like the final film in this franchise, there is “more to come” involving many of the new characters that were introduced in his film. He claimed that before he saw the movie posters that called Dominion “the epic conclusion of the Jurassic era” that he “never knew that this was the ending of the franchise.” He told Empire that he felt “it might have been clearer if they’d said, ‘The end of an era’, as opposed to all of it.” Well okay then.
Jurassic World: Dominion is now streaming on Peacock, in both its theatrical and extended cuts.
The Jurassic Park Sequels Ranked From Kind of Watchable to Horrible
Jurassic Park has produced five sequels, none of them wildly spectacular. Here they are, ranked from best (or okay-est) to worst.
Matt Singer
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