WhileJurassic World: Rebirthneeds to turn around the critical reception of theJurassic Worldseries, the reboot also has to fix an issue that dates back to theJurassic Parksequels at the same time. There are a lot of reasons to think that2025’s upcomingJurassic World: Rebirthwill be a proverbial rebirth for the struggling franchise.Jurassic World: Rebirthcomes fromMonstersdirector Gareth Edwards, whose 2014Godzillaproved that he can marry large-scale monster action with intimate character drama.Jurassic World: Rebirthalso introduces Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey to the franchise.
Scarlett Johansson’s Jurassic World Movie Can Do Something Both Trilogies Avoided And Finally Fix A Franchise Problem
Jurassic World Rebirth can massively raise the stakes of the Jurassic franchise by killing off a main character during the reboot’s first movie.
This new cast is impressive and, crucially,Jurassic World: Rebirthwon’t bring back any of the characters seen in earlierJurassic WorldandJurassic Parkmovies. By theend of 2022’sJurassic World: Dominion, the franchise’s legacy cameos had become tiresome, and the cast had somehow swollen to include almost a dozen main characters. The news thatJurassic World: Rebirth’s story will be a wholesale reinvention of the franchise is promising, andUniversal’s synopsis revealing that the planet’s ecology has “Proven lately inhospitable to dinosaurs” means the sequel won’t feel as far-fetched as its predecessor,Jurassic World: Dominion.
Every Jurassic Park Sequel Has A Worse Rotten Tomatoes Score Than Its Predecessor
The Original Jurassic Park Trilogy’s Reception Steadily Declined
That said,Jurassic World: Rebirthwill have a hard time salvaging the critical reputation of the series, considering theJurassic Parkmovies have been on the decline for over three decades at this point. As shocking as it may sound, a cursory glance over the franchise’sRotten Tomatoeshistory proves that theJurassic Parkfranchise’s struggles with critics didn’t start with 2015’sJurassic World. On the contrary, theJurassic Parkfranchise had just as hard a time replicating its original success with reviewers, as evidenced by the waning popularity ofThe Lost World: Jurassic ParkandJurassic Park III.
91%
53%
49%
72%
47%
Jurassic World: Dominion
29%
Jurassic Park boasts an undeniably impressive critical score of 91% onRotten Tomatoes, but the franchise’s critical acclaim ended with its first outing.Jurassic Park’s endingoffered viewers a self-contained standalone story and, even though director Steven Spielberg returned for 1997’sThe Lost World: Jurassic Park, critics weren’t convinced that the Michael Crichton adaptation needed a follow-up.The Lost World: Jurassic Parkhas a rating of only 53% onRotten Tomatoes, whileJurassic Park III’s rating has a mere 49%. In this context, 2015’s rebootJurassic Worldearning a comparatively stellar 72% seems like a return to form.
Jurassic World’s Sequels Followed The Same Unfortunate Trend
Sadly,Jurassic World’s critical revival of the franchise was short-lived.Jurassic World’s 72% was far higher thanJurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s comparatively paltry 47%, which saw the franchise dip even lower than 2001’sJurassic Park IIIhad managed.Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’s wild endingtwist, wherein the heroes of the series released dozens of dinosaurs into the world and they soon cropped up throughout human civilization, leftJurassic World: Dominionwith a tricky starting point. The final movie in the new trilogy had to imagine a world wherein dinosaurs and humans co-existed, something that was tough to envision.
The 2022 blockbuster was a huge box office hit, but Jurassic World: Dominion earned a critical rating of only 29%.
Bizarrely,Jurassic World: Dominionattempted to work around this by largely ignoring the twist ending ofJurassic World: Fallen Kingdomand instead focusing on a tale of corporate intrigue involving BioSyn. The result was a bizarre mélange of spy movie antics and dinosaur disaster movies that failed to impress critics upon release. Despite replacingJurassic World: Fallen Kingdomdirector J.A Bayona withJurassic World’s returning Colin Trevorrow,Jurassic World: Dominionsoon became the franchise’s least critically successful outing so far. The 2022 blockbuster was a huge box office hit, butJurassic World: Dominionearned a critical rating of only 29%.
Why The Jurassic Park Franchise Struggles So Much With Sequels
Jurassic World and Jurassic Park Were Hard Acts To Follow
Jurassic Park’s sequels struggled because they could not repeat the original movie’s story, andJurassic World’s later franchise additions fell afoul of a similar problem.Spielberg’s originalJurassic Parkfocused primarily on the premise of a theme park overrun with dinosaurs, a self-contained sci-fi horror story that had clear stakes.The Lost World: Jurassic ParkandJurassic Park IIIhad to come up with excuses to revisit the island setting, but couldn’t repeatJurassic Park’s ingeniously simple setup.Jurassic World’s sequels faced much the same issue over two decades later after the reboot’s critical success in 2015.
Jurassic Worldprioritized the simple “Theme park gone wrong” setup for the first time sinceJurassic Park, so it was no surprise when the movie was a critical hit. This premise allows the franchise to comment on the ethical issues of man playing god, the exploitative nature of capitalism, and the comically obvious practical problems with a theme park full of live dinosaurs while keeping its plot self-contained. In contrast, bothJurassic World: Fallen KingdomandJurassic World: Dominioncouldn’t simply return to this theme park plot, and both fell apart at a narrative level due to this issue.
How Gareth Edwards’ Jurassic World: Rebirth Can Better Than Previous Sequels
Jurassic World: Rebirth Seems Set To Return The Series To Its Roots
The most promising aspect ofJurassic World: Rebirth’s story is, ironically, its refusal to return to the setup shared byJurassic ParkandJurassic World.It is good thatJurassic World: Rebirthisn’t a “Theme park gone wrong” story, as the franchise has repeatedly made it clear that it has nowhere to go after a successful standalone cautionary tale.Jurassic World: Rebirth’s plotcould be better than the stories of previous sequels if it leans into the darker survival horror aspects of the story and focuses less on the outlandish elements of corporate espionage and dinosaur poaching featured inJurassic World’s sequels.
By eschewing the over-the-top action of the sequels in favor of straightforward survival horror, the reboot could offer critics something new
The Lost World: Jurassic Parkwas bogged down by knotty, overly complex plotting, but the sequel was at its strongest when Spielberg’s movie focused on getting stranded survivors off an island teeming with killer dinosaurs.Jurassic World: Rebirth’s plot could revisit this bare-bones setup and provide viewers with the first truly scaryJurassic Parkmovie since 1993’s original. By eschewing the over-the-top action of the sequels in favor of straightforward survival horror, the reboot could offer critics something new. In doing so,Jurassic World: Rebirthcould save the critical reputation of both theJurassic ParkandJurassic Worldfranchises.
Jurassic World: Rebirthis set to be released on June 24, 2025.
