All 7 ‘Jurassic Park’ Movies, Ranked

Jurassic World: Rebirth has brought dinosaurs back to the big screen, and with it, the never-ending conversation on how not all Jurassic Park movies are made equal. 

In 1993, director Steven Spielberg stunned audiences with what he affectionately described as “Jaws on land”: Jurassic Park, a world where men play God, dinosaurs make for good theme park attractions, and shaking glasses of water spell imminent doom. The movie has since made more than $6 billion worldwide, spawned a generation of aspiring paleontologists, and expanded into six sequels, each one with varying degrees of success when compared to the original.

While there hasn’t been any Jurassic Park movie to come close to Spielberg’s blockbuster, we went ahead and watched all seven to rank them, from CGI mulch to timeless classics. Here’s how all the Jurassic Park movies stack up, from worst to best.

7

‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ (2018)

There is too much going on in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. There’s an impending volcanic eruption that threatens to wipe out an entire island full of dinosaurs. But there are also political and philosophical discussions about whether or not dinosaurs deserve to live. And there are threats of selling dinosaurs on the black market, weaponizing ugly, mutated dinosaurs for evil, and figuring out how cloning works (as if creating dinosaurs wasn’t enough of a scientific breakthrough). Plus, dinosaur wrangler extraordinaire Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) is making the same cocky jokes and newly minted dinosaur activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is once again screaming her head off as she’s chased by mutant dinos (at this point, she should know they’ll be chasing after her).

Coming right after Jurassic World, which reintroduced a new generation of moviegoers to the franchise, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom feels like it’s desperately trying (and failing) to outshine its predecessor. While it does have many of the elements that made Jurassic World a more than serviceable movie (but not the best), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom gets lost in its multiple storylines too many times.

6

‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ (2022)

The only reason Jurassic World: Dominion isn’t ranked seventh is that it brings back all of the original Jurassic Park main cast without making it seem like just a nostalgia grab (although it definitely is).

Just like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, this movie gets really messy. The clone and black market storylines are back in full force, and this time we get a swarm of mutated insects out to destroy and kill. Owen and Claire are now hiding out in the cold Sierra Nevada mountains and raising 14-year-old Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermons) on their own, so, of course, there’s a sappy chosen family subplot about what it means to step up as a parent.

To give credit where credit is due, Jurassic World: Dominion does an adequate job of playing with the original Jurassic Park trinity: Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). While all three actors have been brought back to the theme park’s universe in some form or another, their existence in Jurassic World: Dominion doesn’t feel like a sloppy attempt to get fans of the original back into cinemas. The relationship between Ellie and Alan feels as tense and real as it did in Jurassic Park, and Goldblum is back with his unique, Goldblum-esque brand of chaotic good. They are also the more mature, capable counterparts to the new cast of younger characters, grounding the story in subplots that actually felt worth pursuing.

5

‘Jurassic Park III’ (2001)

Jurassic Park III was once described by Rolling Stone as stinking “worse than dino dung.” There is an air of truth to this. Grant, despite swearing off dealing with living dinosaurs ever again, is forced to play the hero paleontologist one more time when couple Paul (William H. Macy) and Amanda Kirby (Téa Leoni) trick him into helping them save their son Eric (Trevor Morgan) who was last seen on a dinosaur-infested island (it’s always an island with this franchise). 

Besides the fact that it makes no sense that Grant, who survived the horrors of the original Jurassic Park, is once again back in this world, a lot of the scares of Jurassic Park III are just not thrilling enough. The dinosaurs don’t feel new, and the kill sequences heavily resemble scenes audiences had already seen in Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park. This movie brought little to the table, and perhaps that was why we didn’t hear from the franchise for more than 10 years after its release.

4

‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ (2025)

I was worried that the latest addition to the franchise would fall into the same trappings of the two movies that came before it (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion). But the film provides a surprisingly fresh take on the age-old story of whether or not we should be messing around with dinosaurs.

It steers away from the usual issues with nostalgia that have plagued the franchise’s more recent cinematic projects. The premise of the film, like most Jurassic Park movies, is outlandish, but Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey have such a light-hearted onscreen presence between them that I’m more than happy to watch them make their way through a tropical jungle and figure out how to collect dinosaur DNA from living specimens. What’s more, the sideplot of a family finding themselves stranded on the same dinosaur-infested island harkens back at some of the stronger elements of both Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III, adding emotional depth and a much-needed dose of high-stakes family hijinks.

3

‘Jurassic World’ (2015)

When Jurassic World first hit theaters, it had been almost 15 years since the last movie in the franchise. Let me translate that: it had been almost 15 years since audiences had seen quality-level dinosaurs running amok and eating people on the big screen, which is why fans of the first three movies welcomed the franchise reboot with open arms.

While the movie does feel at times like a nostalgic cash grab, it makes up for this by having just enough big, terrifying dinosaurs that delight in torturing the naive parkgoers of Jurassic World. There are hilarious scenes of a woman being eaten by a pterodactyl that is also being eaten by a giant mesosaurus, of Jimmy Buffett running for his life from a dinosaur stampede (holding two apple green margaritas to boot), and Pratt riding a motorcycle and leading a herd of slightly domesticated velociraptors. Everything about Jurassic World screams absurd, but the movie uses this to its advantage.

2

‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park’ (1997)

As a sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park delivers. Building on its predecessor’s success, the movie adds just enough plot complexity to stand on its own without inviting constant comparisons to the original. There is the usual island full of dinosaurs, but now there are mercenaries hungry for dinosaurs to catch and sell. 

Moreover, with a protagonist like Malcolm, the film leans into its brand of humor and chaos. His dry wit, paired with the escalating absurdity of the situation (it’s not just one Tyrannosaurus rex anymore, it’s a family!), brings a layer of self-awareness that makes the whole thing feel fun, if a little unhinged.

1

‘Jurassic Park’ (1993)

There’s no way we’d rank all the movies without putting Jurassic Park on top. Before Jurassic Park, there hadn’t been any movie like it. As a franchise-starter, blockbuster, and honestly, the movie that made dinosaurs mainstream, Jurassic Park turned what could have been a dense sci-fi concept into a timeless classic about morality, the consequences of technology, and the limits of human control. 

Jurassic Park could also have easily just been an action blockbuster filled with man-eating dinosaurs, and perhaps audiences would have still enjoyed that. But Spielberg took it one step further by focusing on the mortality of his dinosaurs (who can forget that sick Triceratops?) and the emotional bonds between Grant, Sattler, Malcolm, and the Hammond grandchildren, Lex and Tim (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello). 

Jurassic Park may not be Spielberg’s most serious or cerebral film, but it’s easily one of his most entertaining. It’s left us with so many iconic scenes that, more than thirty years after its release, it is still deeply embedded in our movie pop culture. I will never look at a shaking glass of water the same way ever again, or find myself in a field of tall grass for fear that a raptor will jump out at me, or listen to John Williams’ sweeping orchestral score without feeling that same sense of awe I did the first time a dinosaur walked across the screen.