No Jurassic Park director has managed to recapture Spielberg's magic, but some (like Colin Trevorrow) have come closer than others (like J.A. Bayona).

There’s a case to be made that Jurassic Park should have never been an ongoing franchise. The first film summed up the themes of playing God and facing the consequences perfectly and wrapped up its character arcs in a neat bow ahead of the end credits. But since it became the highest-grossing movie of all time, Universal has greenlit sequel after sequel. There was precedent for the first follow-up, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, because Michael Crichton had written a sequel novel to the source material. But there has been a grand total of four sequels to Jurassic Park and none of them have come close to matching the critical acclaim or cultural significance of the original film.

Since Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking work on the original movie (and his less-than-groundbreaking work on the first sequel), a handful of other filmmakers have put their stamp on the Jurassic series. While none of Spielberg’s successors have managed to recapture his magic, some (like Colin Trevorrow) have come closer than others (like J.A. Bayona).

4 J.A. Bayona

J.A. Bayona isn’t a bad director by any means. He’s made some great movies throughout his career, like the gothic horror gem The Orphanage and the true-life disaster thriller The Impossible. But the director’s contribution to the Jurassic franchise – Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – marked a new low for the franchise.

The sequel’s plot (co-credited to previous Jurassic director Colin Trevorrow) is a disjointed mess. The first half follows the baffling revelation that the park has been on an active volcano waiting to burst since the beginning. Then, the second half turns into a completely different movie: a scare-free haunted mansion movie with escaped dinosaurs instead of ghosts. Audiences felt cheated after all the movie’s most exciting action beats were spoiled in the trailer (including a handful of shots from the final montage, which is basically a trailer for the next movie).

3 Joe Johnston

After working on seminal movies like Star Wars as a visual effects artist, Joe Johnston moved into directing with fan-favorite VFX-driven comedies like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji. He also introduced Chris Evans’ iconic take on Steve Rogers in the MCU’s Phase One with Captain America: The First Avenger. With Jurassic Park III, Johnston became the first director to tackle a Jurassic movie after Spielberg stepped down from the franchise.

The threequel is noted for its much darker tone than the previous entries, using the threat of the dinosaurs to create more terror than fun. Jurassic Park III brought back Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant, but he’s basically just Indiana Jones Lite. On top of that, most of the other protagonists are ridiculously unlikable. Still, Johnston nailed the tense, unsettling pterodactyl set-piece. Shrouded in thick fog at a high altitude, it’s one of the most thrilling action sequences in the whole series.

2 Colin Trevorrow

The new Scream movie coined the term “requel” to describe a direct sequel with familiar legacy characters that also acts as a reboot introducing new characters. One of the most successful “requels” is Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. It’s still nowhere near as great as the original, but it’s arguably the best Jurassic sequel to date. It shook things up with the premise of a functional dinosaur park, but it also established the annoying franchise trend of InGen manufacturing hybrid dinosaurs with the “Indominus Rex.” There are some exciting set-pieces in Jurassic World, like Chris Pratt riding a motorcycle alongside a small herd of raptors through the jungle. The dinosaur hunter massacre plays more like a straightforward horror film than anything else in the series.

Trevorrow had never directed a big-budget movie before Jurassic World – his debut feature was a low-budget time-travel comedy called Safety Not Guaranteed – but he proved his chops with a solid dinosaur actioner. He’s returning to the director’s chair for the next movie, Jurassic World: Dominion, due to hit theaters later this summer.

1 Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg had already broken the record for the highest-grossing movie of all time twice – with Jaws and E.T. – before breaking it a third time with Jurassic Park. The director turned Michael Crichton’s bestselling literary phenomenon into a top-grossing cinematic phenomenon. With early CG effects that still hold up today, Jurassic Park changed blockbuster cinema forever. Spielberg employed a real sense of Hitchcockian suspense in nail-biting sequences like the T. rex’s escape and the raptors’ kitchen attack. While the dinos undoubtedly steal the show, Spielberg made sure his human characters weren’t just one-note archetypes. Characters like Drs. Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm became just as iconic as the dinosaurs trying to kill them – largely thanks to the well-directed performances of Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.

Spielberg followed up the groundbreaking original Jurassic movie with an underwhelming sequel, The Lost World. Whereas the first movie exercised restraint in depicting its dinosaurs, The Lost World went all out with jam-packed frames full of prehistoric monsters leaving nothing to the audience’s imagination. But there are still glimmers of Spielbergian greatness in the sequel. The director has a lot of B-movie fun with a T. rex attacking San Diego like a classic kaiju.

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