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The Jurassic World Trilogy · The Reboot

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

EssentialMovie20182h 8m

A volcano forces a rescue, and the dinosaurs reach the mainland.

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Availability changes by country and by week, so this searches JustWatch rather than guessing.

Can you skip Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom?

Not really, though nothing here has to be watched in order. It is one of the main Jurassic Park titles rather than a side story, and it stands on its own. See the full Jurassic Park order.

Essential, because it changes the premise of the whole franchise and everything after it is built on that change. It is also two separate films glued together, and whether you like it depends almost entirely on which half you were expecting.

The first is a rescue from an island with an erupting volcano, which is the last time the series uses its original setting, and it ends with a shot of a brachiosaurus left on a dock as the ash closes over it that is the most affecting image in any of the sequels. The second is a haunted-house picture: a Gothic mansion in northern California, a black-market auction of animals in a basement, and a creature stalking a child along a rooftop in the rain.

J.A. Bayona came from horror and the second half is where his instincts are. It is genuinely better directed than anything in the trilogy around it, with shadows, long lenses and a sense that the house itself is wrong, and it is also a very strange thing to find inside a summer dinosaur film.

The ending is the point. A decision is taken that releases the surviving animals into the world rather than letting them die, and the franchise's central containment, that all of this happens on an island you can choose not to visit, is gone for good. Dominion and Rebirth are both consequences of that last ten minutes.

Jurassic Park guides

Where it sits in the Jurassic Park order

Release order
#5 of 9
Chronological order
#6 of 9
Released
22 June 2018
In-universe era
The World Years

What to watch next

More from The Jurassic World Trilogy