Jurassic Park & World Movies, Ranked
Here's how the Jurassic franchise measures up, from best to baffling
I still remember it vividly – the first time I watched Jurassic Park. You don’t forget the sound before the dinosaur comes. The low thumping, a tremor in a glass of water. The air fills with suspense and you find yourself grabbing the edge of your seat.
The movie wasn’t just a spectacle; it was a masterpiece. The rain-drenched T-Rex breakout. Lex’s spoonful of jelly quivering in time with the oncoming horror. Raptors stalking through a sterile kitchen while two kids tried not to breathe. It was a film that understood tension the way horror movies do, but with the heart and scope of a blockbuster. The movie knew what terrifies us. Plus, throw in the swell of a John Williams score, and you’ve resurrected awe.
However, that was 1993.
Since then, the franchise has done what franchises do: they have escalated, inflated, and mutated dinosaurs. The awe gave way to excess. The terror became background noise for louder monsters, dumber science, and increasingly convoluted reasons to keep putting people on dinosaur-infested islands. Every new entry has tried to recreate that original magic, but like the scientists in the movie itself, the sequels have mostly just cloned the shape, not the soul.
And yet, we keep going back to it so, here are the dino movies, ranked from best to “how did this cost $700 million?”
Jurassic Park (1993)
You knew this was number one. It’s not a ranking; it’s a fact. Jurassic Park is peak blockbuster: a perfectly calibrated mix of spectacle, wonder, tension, and quotable one-liners. It’s as if Spielberg took a cautionary tale, and then gave it the polish of a prestige thriller. The T-Rex escape is still terrifying. The kitchen raptor sequence is till masterful. Jeff Goldblum, shirt open, glistening and chaotic? Iconic. The effects hold up, the pacing is ruthless, and the film’s central tension — man vs. nature, hubris vs. humility — still hits hard. Every sequel bows to this film because they have to. It’s not just the gold standard of Jurassic movies — it’s the gold standard of blockbusters. That’s it.
You may also like
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
Did this sequel need to exist? No. But I'm also not mad that it exists. The Lost World is moodier, darker, and dumber — but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun. Jeff Goldblum returns as Dr. Ian Malcolm, grumbling his way through a film that treats ethics like an afterthought and where, practically, a plot doesn’t exist. But it’s got a few bangers: the double trailer cliff scene is peak Spielberg tension. Plus, a baby T-Rex used as bait? Genuinely disturbing. Sure, the third act goes full kaiju, and the characters are flat, but there’s a scrappy energy here that makes it enjoyable. It’s the best sequel Jurassic ever managed — a hot mess, but still watchable.
Jurassic World (2015)
After a 14-year dino drought, Jurassic World pulled off the impossible: it rebooted the franchise and sold a whole generation on Chris Pratt as a raptor whisperer. It’s essentially Jurassic Park with corporate branding— there’s even a Jimmy Buffett cameo during a pterodactyl attack. The Indominus Rex is peak 2010s blockbuster logic (“What if the dinosaur was part raptor, part T-Rex, part cuttlefish, part God complex?”), and Bryce Dallas Howard’s stiletto sprint remains legendary. But there’s something sleek and satisfying here — it’s self-aware, it’s loud, and it’s just dumb enough to work. You won’t feel smarter after watching it, but the movie won't bore you.
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
Rebirth ditches the old guard (Alan Grant is now a trivia answer) and brings in Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Gareth Edwards’ flair. It’s got a pharmaceutical villain (like we haven’t seen that one before), a survival plot set on a new island, and some of the best dino CGI the series has delivered. It’s also the first movie since the original to feel like it remembers that dinosaurs are animals, not supervillains. But the characters are thin, the runtime is bloated, and every emotional beat fall flat. Still, Koepp’s return as screenwriter gives it some soul, and the action scenes don’t skimp. A decent sequel in a sea of forgettable ones — which, for this franchise, is practically a win.
You may also like
Jurassic Park III (2001)
Let’s be honest: it’s just 90 minutes of run-fast-or-die chaos, featuring a surprisingly terrifying Spinosaurus, a mercifully brief runtime, and one of the weirdest moments in dino-cinema history — Alan Grant dreaming of a raptor that talks to him on a plane. The plot is paper-thin, and the characters (especially the bickering divorced parents) feel pulled from a network sitcom. But it’s fast, fun, and has just enough Alan Grant grumpiness to make it bearable. It’s not good, but it’s certainly not great.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
This movie misses, hard. It starts with a volcano erupting on Isla Nublar, segues into dino trafficking, and ends with a haunted mansion filled with weaponised dinosaurs and auctioneers in tuxedos. Somewhere in there is a cloned girl and a scene where Chris Pratt rolls away from lava like he’s in Temple Run. Director J.A. Bayona clearly tried to do something different here, but no, it didn't work. But the tone is all over the place, the plot is nonsense, and worst of all, it just isn’t fun. The dinosaurs deserve better. So do we.
You may also like
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
The premise — dinosaurs living among humans — is killer. The execution? A mess of bugs, biotech villains, and boring exposition. Somehow, the most expensive Jurassic movie ended up being the least interested in dinosaurs. The OG trio returns, but they’re sidelined by a clone backstory that got retconned mid-trilogy, and a plot that feels more Mission: Impossible than Jurassic Park. There’s a scene where Laura Dern and Sam Neill flirt while examining locust droppings. Do I need to say more? A franchise low point — and that’s saying something.