With everything happening in the world it feels a little glib to discuss globally successful Hollywood properties as if they need our sympathy or concern. But someone needs to take the blame for the last decade of Jurassic Park sequelising, a spiral of diminishing returns that has evolved from roaring comeback to bloated shambles.
After launching with huge success in 1993, the Universal film franchise based on Michael Crichton’s 1990 bestseller had essentially been in stasis since 2001’s compromised Jurassic Park III.
The series was revamped in 2015 with Jurassic World, written and directed by Colin Treverrow and starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt and a friendly raptor named Blue.
By playing the greatest hits with gusto – dinosaurs run amok in a tacky theme park – Jurassic World turned out to be a highly effective reset. It raked in $1.6 billion at the global box office and is still holding its own against various Avatars and Avengers as the 10th highest-grossing movie of all time. No wonder it was viewed as a launchpad for a second trilogy.
In 2018 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, directed by JA Bayona, kept up the momentum with a large-scale island rescue to save the theme park dinosaurs from extinction via flaming volcano while also staging some claustrophobic stalking sequences in the darkened corridors of a country house.
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But the climax involved various dinos belatedly escaping into the wild and settling in places all across the planet, permanently disrupting the balance of nature.
That extreme global rewilding project was the tipping point. Jurassic World Dominion (2022) saw Treverrow return to the director’s chair. But with its globetrotting action, high-speed chases and sprawling cast – bringing back Park’s classic triassic crew of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum to bicker with Howard, Pratt and Blue the raptor – Dominion felt more like a mutated Fast and Furious spinoff than a Jurassic Park film.
Even for a series predicated on the concept of recombining DNA for corporate gain it felt like something essential had been carelessly discarded along the way. Dominion received an absolute critical mauling, collecting one-star reviews like playground Pokémon cards. Yet it still made a shade over a billion dollars, which is why a fourth Jurassic World looms this week.
It’s the second time the franchise has found itself in the doldrums. Steven Spielberg’s masterful 1993 original and action-heavy 1997 sequel The Lost World set an intimidatingly high bar of quality. The comparatively unloved Jurassic Park III was directed by Joe Johnston, no stranger to wrangling special effects or staging jungle larks after making Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1991) and Jumanji (1995). But his film ends so abruptly it feels like you could time to the second when the budget simply ran out.
In keeping with its subtitle the upcoming Jurassic World Rebirth, set five years after the confusing events of Dominion, sounds like a return-to-first-principles reboot. The cast – led by Scarlett Johansson alongside double Oscar winner Mahershala Ali and Bridgerton breakout Jonathan Bailey – may all be new but there is still some original Jurassic Park genetic material in the mix.
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Screenwriter David Koepp, who worked on the first two films, has returned for Rebirth, apparently at executive producer Spielberg’s request.
The scope also seems to be more focused, with Johansson’s character tasked with retrieving blood samples from dinosaurs on a secret research island. That suggests a remote, contained setting, lots of safari fashion and ample opportunities to see humans get chased by hungry dinos: basically everything you need for a classic Jurassic romp.
Should Universal have allowed more time for the dust to settle after the critical cratering of Dominion? It probably wouldn’t have hurt to give audiences more time to begin feeling the absence of Jurassic Park’s durable iconography and wonderful John Williams theme. But that’s simply not the way Hollywood business is conducted.
Jurassic World Rebirth bagsied its 2025 release date before a director was even confirmed (it has ended up being overseen by Gareth Edwards, who knows a thing or two about giant rampaging lizards after making Godzilla in 2014).
Here’s hoping for a satisfying back-to-basics thriller where the corporate urge to get more product out means there was simply no time to overthink things. But if the mass audience burned by Dominion stay away, Universal may wish they’d parked the franchise for a few years longer.
Jurassic World Rebirth is in cinemas now.
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