Jurassic Park’s Fall: A Franchise Stuck in the Past | How Jurassic World is ruining their own legacy?

The Jurassic Franchise: Devouring Its Own Legacy

The Jurassic Park franchise, once a groundbreaking cinematic milestone, is now a cautionary tale of a series eating itself alive. From Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece to the latest installment, Jurassic World Rebirth (2025), the saga has devolved into a repetitive cycle of nostalgia-driven cash grabs, failing to innovate and squandering its potential to evolve. With each new film, the franchise leans harder on familiar formulas, banking on CGI spectacle and recycled plots while alienating audiences craving something fresh. Here’s how the Jurassic series is undermining its own legacy and why it’s time to break the mold.

A Stale Formula That Refuses to Evolve

At its core, Jurassic Park was a revolutionary blend of awe, terror, and philosophical weight, exploring humanity’s hubris in tampering with nature. Its sequels, however, have increasingly leaned on a predictable template: a shady corporation or bad actors exploit dinosaurs, a group of heroes ventures into dino-territory, chaos ensues, and someone gets eaten. Rinse and repeat. By the sixth film, Jurassic World Rebirth, this formula feels painfully rote. As one frustrated fan will put it, “There’s nothing new in the scripts. They’re banking on nostalgia like they did in Jurassic World and Dominion, bringing back old characters and moments, but it’s the same story, dinosaurs hunt people, people run, blah blah.”

The franchise had a golden opportunity after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom(2018) to explore a bold new direction: dinosaurs coexisting with humans in a transformed world. Jurassic World Dominion (2022) teased this premise, reuniting legacy characters like Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm with new faces. Yet, instead of diving into the messy, fascinating implications of a dino-human world, Dominion retreated to the safe, familiar island setting, pitting heroes against a cartoonish evil corporation (Biosyn) and a swarm of prehistoric locusts. Rebirth doubles down on this regression, isolating dinosaurs to an equatorial zone and recycling the expedition gone wrong trope. As audiences note, “They had potential to show how dinosaurs live with humans, but no, they separated the dinosaurs and went back to the old formula.”

Nostalgia Over Innovation

The franchise’s reliance on nostalgia is both its crutch and its curse. Jurassic World (2015) succeeded somewhat by evoking the original’s magic while updating the spectacle with modern CGI. Audiences flocked to theaters to see dinosaurs roar on the big screen, captivated by vibrant visuals and the thrill of a T. rex or velociraptor. But what worked a decade ago has grown stale. In the start, people went to see the spectacle, the dinosaurs. “But why would they want to see the same thing again and again?” By Dominion and Rebirth, the series feels like a greatest-hits compilation, cherry-picking iconic moments, slow dino reveals, redshirt deaths, T. rex roars, without recapturing their emotional impact. The return of legacy characters in Dominion felt like fan service rather than a meaningful evolution, and Rebirth’s attempt to echo the original’s suspense, like its T. rex river chase, falls flat against a backdrop of overfamiliarity.

The franchise’s insistence on bigger and scarier dinosaurs exacerbates the problem. Each film ups the ante with increasingly grotesque hybrids, think Jurassic World's Indominus rex or Rebirth’s mutant predators, yet the horror and terror that defined Jurassic Park are absent. They make the dinosaurs bigger, more horrible, more ugly, but for what? asks a fan like me. “The horror isn’t there. The terror isn’t felt. We don’t feel anything.” Vibrant, colorful visuals in Rebirth clash with the expected dread, turning tense moments into glossy spectacle. Characters crack jokes and act nonchalant even after comrades die, undermining any sense of stakes. The result? A franchise that prioritizes flash over fear, leaving audiences numb.

Wasted Talent and Creative Constraints

The Jurassic series isn’t short on talent. Directors like Gareth Edwards (Rebirth) and J.A. Bayona (Fallen Kingdom) bring visual flair, and writers like David Koepp have a deep connection to the original. The casts, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, are stacked with star power. Yet it feels like, “They have good directors, but I don’t think they’re allowed to do their work.” Studio mandates seem to shackle creativity, forcing filmmakers to adhere to a safe, market-friendly blueprint. Rebirth underuses Mahershala Ali, giving him minimal screen time despite his gravitas, while Dominion juggles too many characters without giving them depth. Even standout performances, like Jonathan Bailey’s charismatic turn in Rebirth, can’t salvage scripts that prioritize formula over innovation.

The films start strong, hooking audiences with intriguing setups, a dino-black market in Dominion, a life-saving DNA mission in Rebirth. But, as one fan will put it, “They’re always interesting at first, but then you feel the same old formula kick in: bad company, good humans, bad humans, dinosaurs as victims.” The result is a series that feels creatively stagnant, unable to escape its own shadow.

A Legacy in Decline

The Jurassic franchise’s decline is evident in its critical and audience reception. Jurassic World Dominion (2022) sits at a dismal 29% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.9/10 on IMDb, criticized for its convoluted plot and lack of focus. Rebirth fares slightly better at 52% and 5.9/10 but still disappoints with its recycled tropes and tonal missteps.

A combined review of Dominion and Rebirth encapsulates the frustration:

Jurassic World Dominion and Rebirth epitomize the franchise’s creative rut. Dominion squanders its premise of dinosaurs among humans, retreating to a generic island adventure with a laughable locust subplot. Its all-star cast, Pratt, Howard, Neill, Dern, Goldblum, delivers, and the CGI dazzles, but the script drowns in nostalgia and clichés, wasted potential. Rebirth follows suit, with Scarlett Johansson’s Zora leading a DNA-extraction mission that feels like a rehash of past films. John Mathieson’s vibrant cinematography and a thrilling T. rex chase shine, and Jonathan Bailey’s charismatic performance is a highlight, but the recycled plot, illogical choices (a family picnicking in a banned zone?), and lack of terror, characters joking after deaths, undermine the stakes. Mahershala Ali is underused, and the colorful tone clashes with the expected horror.

The Path Forward

The Jurassic franchise is at a crossroads. Its reliance on safe, formulaic storytelling is eroding the legacy of a film that once redefined blockbuster cinema. Audiences are growing weary, and the box office reflects it—while Jurassic World grossed $1.6 billion, Dominion dipped to $1 billion, and Rebirth’s early numbers suggest diminishing returns. They’re destroying the legacy of Jurassic Park, and it’s hard to disagree when the series prioritizes profit over creativity.

To survive, the franchise must take risks. Explore the human-dinosaur coexistence teased in Dominion. Lean into horror, not just spectacle, to restore the terror of being hunted. Give directors and writers freedom to subvert expectations, perhaps with smaller-scale stories or new perspectives, dinosaurs as protagonists, or humans grappling with ethical dilemmas in a dino-altered world. The CGI remains a draw, but it’s not enough.

 “People won’t keep seeing the same thing again and again."

The Jurassic franchise is eating itself, trapped in a cycle of nostalgia and repetition. Unless it dares to evolve, it risks becoming a fossil, beautifully preserved, but lifeless. It’s time for a rebirth that truly roars.