Jurassic World: Dominion arrived in cinemas this summer to round off the Jurassic Park franchise, at least for a little while. The film may have suffered some heavily critical reviews but continued to deliver what audiences want: lots of dinosaurs attempting to eat people. This time around, the film, the sixth in the overall franchise and third in the Jurassic World series, had the added nostalgic pull of bringing back Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, as well as featuring plenty of Easter eggs, fan service moments and the long awaited return of the much underused Dilophosaurus. All this led to Jurassic World: Dominion becoming one of the biggest movies of the year, which in turn has seen the Jurassic Park franchise pass $6 billion at the worldwide box office.
When Jurassic Park hit cinemas back in 1993, Steven Spielberg brought dinosaurs to life on the big screen in a way they had never been seen before. Almost 30 years on, the movie still holds up and its centerpiece T-Rex attack is every bit as effective now as it was then. However, technology has moved on, and while that doesn’t mean the dinosaurs are any more spectacular, the limits on how many can be put on screen have been completely lifted, meaning that Jurassic World: Dominion delivers the biggest variety of dinosaurs in any of the Jurassic movies.
Jurassic World: Dominion looks set to end its run just short of becoming the 51st movie in history to pass $1 billion at the worldwide box office, having racked up just over $990 million since its release in June, which was enough to see it pass Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness as 2022’s second highest grossing movie behind the mighty Top Gun: Maverick. Whether it will still be there by the end of the year is yet to be seen, but it has certainly proved that there is still plenty on interest out there in a good dinosaur romp, even with a dismal critics rating of just 29%.
Jurassic World: Dominion Benefited From The Current Nostalgic Trend of Legacy Sequels.
Although Jurassic World: Dominion was the third movie in the Jurassic World franchise, the return of Neill, Dern and Goldblum, as well as a story tied to the character of Lewis Dodgson, meant that the film also acted as a legacy sequel to the original Jurassic Park movies as well.
In the last few years, there have been a number of hugely successful sequels to movies from the 80s and 90s, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which saw the return of the original Ghostbusters, Top Gun: Maverick, which has broken numerous records and is currently the highest grossing movie of the year, and a number of upcoming streaming bound offerings such as Hocus Pocus 2, the series Willow and many others. While it is not unusual for Hollywood to dip into the past to reboot and remake popular older movies, with many of those movies still standing up today, it has proven hard to simply push them aside and studios have instead found themselves instead continuing stories that seemed to have come to an end decades ago.
While Jurassic World: Dominion has rounded of the story that began with Michael Crichton’s novel over three decades ago, it is likely that this will not be the last we see of the franchise in the long-run. However, whatever comes next is likely to be a complete switch-up from what has gone before, and will also not be able to rely on the same sense of nostalgic culmination that gave Jurassic World: Dominion a huge box office boost.