While Jurassic World: Rebirth needs to reverse the critical reception of Jurassic World series, the reboot also needs to fix a problem that dates back to the Jurassic Park sequences at the same time. There are many reasons to think that the upcoming year 2025 Jurassic World: Rebirth it will be a proverbial renaissance for the struggling franchise. Jurassic World: Rebirth comes from Monsters director Gareth Edwards, whose 2014 Godzilla proved he can marry large-scale monster action with intimate character drama. Jurassic World: Rebirth also introduces Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey to the franchise.
This new cast is impressive and, crucially, Jurassic World: Rebirth will not bring back any of the previously seen characters Jurassic World and Jurassic Park films. Until the end of 2022 Jurassic World: Dominionthe franchise's legacy cameos became tiresome and the cast somehow expanded to include nearly a dozen main characters. The news that Jurassic World: Rebirththe story of will be a wholesale reinvention of the franchise is promising, and Universalthe synopsis of revealing that the ecology of the planet “Recently proven inhospitable to dinosaurss” 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 reception of the original Jurassic Park trilogy was consistently declined
That being said, Jurassic World: Rebirth will have difficulty salvaging the series' critical reputationconsidering the Jurassic Park movies have been in decline for over three decades at this point. As shocking as it may seem, a quick look at the franchise's history Rotten tomatoes history proves that Jurassic Park The franchise's struggles with critics didn't start in 2015 Jurassic World. On the contrary, the Jurassic Park the franchise had a very difficult time replicating its original success with critics, as evidenced by the declining popularity of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III.
|
Jurassic Park / Jurassic World Film |
Rotten Tomatoes critical rating |
|---|---|
|
Jurassic Park |
91% |
|
The Lost World: Jurassic Park |
53% |
|
Jurassic Park III |
49% |
|
Jurassic World |
72% |
|
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom' |
47% |
|
Jurassic World: Dominion |
29% |
Jurassic Pairk boasts an undeniably impressive 91% critical score on Rotten tomatoesbut the franchise's critical acclaim ended with its first release. Jurassic ParkThe ending offered viewers a standalone, self-contained story, and although director Steven Spielberg returned for 1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Parkcritics weren't convinced that Michael Crichton's adaptation needed a sequel. The Lost World: Jurassic Park has a rating of just 53% on Rotten tomatoeswhile Jurassic Park IIIits rating only has 49%. In this context, the 2015 reboot Jurassic World gaining a comparatively stellar 72% feels like a return to form.
All of the Jurassic World sequels also scored worse on Rotten Tomatoes than their predecessor
The Jurassic World sequels followed the same unfortunate trend
Sadly, Jurassic WorldThe franchise's critical renaissance was short-lived. Jurassic World72% was much higher than Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdomthe comparatively insignificant 47%, which caused the franchise to fall even further than in 2001 Jurassic Park III had achieved. Jurassic World: Fallen KingdomThe wild final twist, in which the series' heroes unleashed dozens of dinosaurs upon the world and they soon appeared throughout human civilization, left Jurassic World: Dominion with a complicated starting point. The final film in the new trilogy had to imagine a world where dinosaurs and humans coexisted, something difficult to imagine.
The 2022 blockbuster was a huge box office success, but Jurassic World: Dominion only got a 29% critical rating.
Strangely, Jurassic World: Dominion tried to get around this by largely ignoring the twist ending of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and instead focusing on a story of corporate intrigue involving BioSyn. The result was a bizarre mix of spy movie shenanigans and dinosaur disaster movies that failed to impress critics upon release. Despite replacing Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director JA Bayona with Jurassic Worldis returning Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World: Dominion it soon became the franchise's least critically successful release to date. The 2022 blockbuster was a huge box office success, but Jurassic World: Dominion it got a critical rating of just 29%.
Why the Jurassic Park franchise struggles so much with sequels
Jurassic World and Jurassic Park were tough acts to follow
Jurassic ParkSequels struggled because they couldn't repeat the original film's story, and Jurassic Worldlater additions to the franchise faced a similar problem. Original by Spielberg Jurassic Park focused primarily on the premise of a theme park overrun by dinosaurs, a standalone sci-fi horror story that had clear stakes. The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III I had to come up with excuses to revisit the island setting, but I couldn't do it again Jurassic ParkIngeniously simple setup. Jurassic WorldThe 2015 sequels faced much the same problem two decades later, following the critical success of the 2015 reboot.
Jurassic World prioritized the simple “Theme park gone wrong”setting for the first time since Jurassic ParkSo it was no surprise when the film was a critical success. 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 of a theme park full of live dinosaurs while keeping its plot self-contained. In contrast, both Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion couldn't just return to this theme park plot, and both fell apart on a narrative level due to this problem.
How Gareth Edwards' Jurassic World: Rebirth Could Be Better Than Previous Sequels
Jurassic World: Rebirth looks set to return the series to its roots
The most promising aspect Jurassic World: Rebirth'The history of society is, ironically, its refusal to return to the configuration shared by Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. It's good that Jurassic World: Rebirth is not a “Theme park gone wrong” historyas the franchise has repeatedly made it clear that it has nowhere to go after a successful standalone cautionary tale. Jurassic World: RebirthThe plot could be better than the stories in the previous sequels if it leaned into the darker survival horror aspects of the story and focused less on the weird elements of corporate espionage and dinosaur poaching featured in Jurassic Worldsequences.
By eschewing the over-the-top action of the sequels in favor of straight-up survival horror, the reboot could offer critics something new
The Lost World: Jurassic Park got bogged down in a convoluted and overly complex plot, but the sequel hit its strongest point when Spielberg's film focused on getting stranded survivors off an island filled with killer dinosaurs. Jurassic World: RebirthThe plot of could revisit this basic setup and provide viewers with their first truly scary experience. Jurassic Park film since the 1993 original. By eschewing the over-the-top action of the sequels in favor of straight-up survival horror, the reboot could offer critics something new. By doing this, Jurassic World: Rebirth could save the critical reputation of both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises.
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