Why Are The ‘Jurassic World’ Movies Critic-Proof? Blame ‘The Avengers’

With $12.65 million on its first Monday, Universal and Amblin’s Jurassic World Dominion has now earned $157.7 million in four days at the domestic box office. Presuming the domestic/overseas split remains as it was on Sunday, the $185 million dino threequel has earned around $420 million worldwide. So, yes, it has passed the $368 million global total of Jurassic Park III which I’m sure is a relief for all involved. Jokes aside, Joe Johnston’s Jurassic Park III is a perfectly enjoyable B-movie thriller that just needs more red shirts/expendable supporting characters, the strong $145 million domestic debut (essentially tied with Fallen Kingdom’s $148 million launch in June of 2018) shows that the withering reviews barely made a dent in the domestic debut.

The Jurassic sequels, from The Lost World to Dominion, have remained a critic-proof franchise. Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. The Jurassic films have remained popular by offering something extremely specific (everyday scientists, soldiers and archeologists getting mixed up in extraordinary circumstances involving dinosaurs amid an IMAX-friendly action-adventure) and continuing to offer that each time out. If the fans and general audiences, including kids who love dinos, get what they want, the actual critical consensus is irrelevant. If you like Jurassic for the core appeal of regular folks running from dinosaurs and other folks occasionally being eaten by dinosaurs, well, it’s probably not going to matter much if your local critics argue that the latest chapter is “bad, actually.”

The Michael Bay-directed Transformers sequels were held up as the nadir of blockbuster filmmaking yet (at least the first three) still earned top-tier ($835 million in 2009, $1.2 billion in 2011 and $1.1 billion in 2014) worldwide box office anyway. It was the only place to get $150-$250 million sci-fi spectacle about giant fighting robots amid an IMAX-friendly visual wonderland of huge-scale spectacle and distinctly Bay-ish sensibilities (bawdy humor, patriotic fervor, objectification, music video polish, etc.). The Last Knight underwhelmed in 2017 ($133 million domestic and $605 million global) partially because the MCU had begun to offer comparatively sized spectacle with Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy. Moreover, Transformers tripped up trying to be a cinematic universe with chosen one narratives.

Even amid a resurgent Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious franchises, Daniel Craig’s James Bond films still stood out as upper-crust, mega-budget prestige-skewing, adult-targeted action blockbuster cinema. For example, Spectre is among the worst 007 movies. However, it’s still a James Bond movie through-and-through, with all the expected ingredients (fashion porn, wealth porn, PG-13 carnage, fisticuffs, chases, espionage, thirst-quenching women, etc.). Even the worst Spectre reviews assured folks that it featured all that stuff, so cue an $881 million global cume. Batman v Superman weathered lousy reviews for a weekend since the pans assured moviegoers they’d get 150 minutes of IMAX-friendly over-the-top action and visual spectacle, the Dark Knight fighting with the Man of Steel and Wonder Woman cameoing at the end.

Jurassic World Dominion offers 2.5-hours of dino action, IMAX-friendly adventure and established characters all trying to save the world from, uh, genetically modified locusts. Those who were casually interested in the film were assured by critics that it had all the fixings of a Jurassic movie along with a mix of new cast members (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) and old Jurassic Park stars (Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum). Did everyone love it this weekend? No, but general audiences who made the informed choice to see it mostly enjoyed what they got, hence the A- from Cinemascore. One element related to Hollywood tentpole production makes Jurassic World Dominion stand out even more than it might have in the 1990’s.

Hollywood spent a decade chasing the The Dark Knight ($1 billion in 2008) and The Avengers ($1.517 billion in 2012). The industry spent years chasing superhero franchises (despite no evidence that audiences liked superheroes in the abstract) and cinematic universes (ditto), at the expense of nearly every other kind of tentpole. Never mind that Furious 7 ($1.515 billion), Jurassic World ($1.671 billion) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.068 billion) all out earned Avengers: Age of Ultron (a still spectacular $1.405 billion), showing that there was more than one way to franchise. Hollywood spent a generation making their own cinematic universes (Dark Universe) and superhero franchises (Fantastic Four) while pretzeling other IP (King Arthur, Solo, Robin Hood, etc.) into “like a superhero” movie.

Audiences were left choosing between the genuine article, which was appropriating genres to diversify, and non-superhero action fantasies that were molded into bland variations of Batman Begins or Iron Man. 1990’s blockbusters usually focused on normal citizens forced to claw their way out of irregular situations. Think Tom Cruise’s naïve attorney realizing he works for the mob, Will Smith’s hotshot pilot defending Earth against aliens and two star-crossed teens falling for each other right as their cruise ship sinks into the sea. After 20 years of 9/11-influenced “one man can save us” would-be blockbusters, almost every major tentpole franchise is a DC/Marvel superhero saga or action films where non-superpowered heroes (John Wick, Ethan Hunt, Dominic Toretto, James Bond, etc.) are unkillable super-soldiers.

Jurassic World Dominion stands out from the blockbuster crowd even more than it did 25 years ago. It’s not just the only game in town for mega-budget dinosaur peril, but it’s among the only big-budget Hollywood franchises focused on regular, non-wealthy, non-superpowered humans. That’s why it still pulls top-tier blockbuster box office (an average of $1 billion worldwide on an average budget of $125 million) despite generally mixed-negative reviews. It makes its fortune not *despite* not focusing on superheroes or larger-than-life action heroes but *because* it supplies an alternative to such tropes. Hollywood spent ten years foolishly chasing The Avengers to their institutional detriment. Maybe now the success of Jurassic World Dominion will attract the kind of attention it deserved in 2015.