Paul Williams
The Jurassic World franchise has been amazingly successful to date, with each of the first three instalments earning over $1 billion at the box office. Despite the immense commercial figures, though, the critical responses declined as the series progressed.
After Jurassic World Dominion, many people came to view the reboot series as tired and out of ideas. Jurassic World Rebirth was designed to be a soft reboot-of-a-reboot, with the crowd-pleasing Scarlett Johannson heading the cast. Although it has been met with positive reviews, the picture has not performed as well as its predecessors.
Franchise Still Doing Exceptionally Well
Even though the latest Jurassic World offering has failed to live up to the success of the others, it has still been a box office hit. The new title raked in more than $650 million within the first month of its release, making it the fourth highest grossing movie of the year.
Regardless of critical performance, these pictures are always likely to do well at the box office thanks to the overall strength of the franchise. Since the release of Jurassic Park in 1993, there has been a vast amount of related merchandise, with myriad games that have helped to market pictures to a wider audience.
Jurassic World: The Game from Ludia was one of the first games in the Jurassic World era, and the popular title inspired various others. These include the likes of Jurassic World Evolution 2, and the much-loved augmented reality mobile game, Jurassic World Alive.
The franchise has also been ever-present in the online casino industry over the last decade, with various branded titles. It has even inspired other developers to create their own spinoffs. For instance, some of the top casino online Canada titles include Jurassic Giants and Jurassic Kingdom, which are clearly inspired by the Jurassic World franchise and are riding the same cultural zeitgeist surrounding dinosaurs.
Rebirth Has Underperformed Compared to Other Jurassic World Instalments
Compared to the other Jurassic World films, Rebirth has underperformed so far and is not projected to hit the $1 billion mark that its predecessors achieved at the box office. As it stands, it’s only the fifth highest-grossing offering in the entire Jurassic series, behind all the Jurassic World films and the first two Jurassic Park movies.
One of the reasons why Rebirth has underachieved could be because the Jurassic World films were running out of ideas by the time the third picture came along. Despite boasting an all-star cast that included franchise veterans, the Dominion story was seen by many as being stale and repetitive.
Universal may have expected Rebirth to outperform the others, though, as it was clearly framed as a standalone offering with a fresh new story. What’s more, it had Johannson heading the cast, which is generally a huge draw for blockbuster movies. Indeed, the 40-year-old is the highest-grossing actor of all time, with her movies earning a combined total of more than $15 billion.
According to Rebirth reviews, the A-lister’s performance in the movie was exceptional, and she had some excellent chemistry with co-star Jonathan Bailey. The Bridgerton star was also seen as a wise casting addition, as he’s one of the top up-and-coming actors in Hollywood.
On top of these exciting leads, Rebirth also boasts the two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali. The picture clearly had the firepower to bring in huge crowds, so it seems strange that it hasn’t had the same success as the Jurassic Park entries that came before it. Some reasons for this are that there isn’t much originality in the new film, and that it failed to recapture the magic of the original.
If the latest Jurassic World picture had just been a follow-up to Dominion with the same actors in place, it would probably have performed worse than Rebirth due to the franchise fatigue that viewers were experiencing. It could be argued, however, that the inclusion of Johannson and Ali in the cast has nevertheless helped Rebirth perform better than many analysts expected it would.