We all enjoyed being terrified and exhilarated by dinosaur movies when we were children, and the fact that a new Jurassic World movie is coming out in a matter of days suggests that no one ever really grows out of that stage. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a ranking of all the Jurassic movies’ greatest hits, from Dilophosaurus to Dimorphodon. Since they’ve taken plenty of liberties with their dinosaurs, adding body parts and changing sizes willy-nilly (and don’t even get me started on feathers), we’ve graded each on its accuracy to the fossil record, and its overall dopeness.
One disclaimer before we dive in: I am not a paleontologist. I am just very enthusiastic.
One of those dinosaurs you look at twice and still might not believe it ever existed. It looks like something created for a game like Monster Hunter: essentially a smaller T. rex, but with these two big devil horns growing from the sides of its head. There’s only one fossil, discovered in Argentina in 1984, so there’s still a chance it might just be a prank. In the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom trailer, a Carnotaurus menaces Chris Pratt and his buddies before it’s swiftly dispatched by a T. rex.
Accuracy: 7/10, a face you won’t soon forget.
Dopeness: 4/10, no human kills, but a very sinister look.
The first dinosaurs we meet at the beginning of Jurassic Park, the Brachiosaurus act as a foil for the rest of the dinosaurs, as if to remind us that they’re not all teeth and claws and hunger for human flesh. They’re sort of like the whales of the land, hysterically tall (85 feet!!!) but only interested in eating plants and taking long, leisurely looks at all the human characters.
Accuracy: 8/10, iconic, tell me you didn’t have a little Brachiosaur plushie when you were a kid.
Dopeness: 5/10, they’re huge, but they never get a chance to do anything.
One thing Jurassic Park III (a good movie, fight me!) does is it makes dinosaurs like Pteranodons actually scary. That scene on the footpath through the aviary where that too-tall shape walks out of the mist? Terrifying! JPIII succeeded in making some of the least scary dinosaurs actually menacing, and that whole sequence in the aviary is as insane and thrilling as these movies get.
Accuracy: 4/10, they ate fish, not people.
Dopeness: 7/10, watch that scene on the bridge and tell me it’s not as scary as Killer BOB climbing over the sofa.
Dimorphodon is another one of those creatures you look at and ask, was that… real? They sure were, and lived at the very start of the Jurassic period. They were those big-headed flying things that terrorized the strip of shops and may or may not have carried off Jimmy Buffett. One question that haunts me: Is Jimmy Buffett dead in the Jurassic Cinematic Universe?
Accuracy: 7/10, they really did look like that.
Dopeness: 6/10, able to drag screaming people around a theme park, but easily dispatched by the park rangers’ machine-loaded tranquilizer guns.
The Compys are these wily little guys that travel in large groups and are pretty cute, before they start getting hungry. They’re like chickens with no feathers that hunt by continuously harassing their prey until it falls over from exhaustion. They also had poisonous spit in the books (Michael Crichton liked his dinos to resemble him, in that awful things would come out of their mouths), a hunting technique stolen from Komodo dragons. In the book they kill John Hammond, the creator of the park, but in the movie he survives. In The Lost World, one of the minor members of the expedition gets this death. Lucky him!
Accuracy: 4/10, they were considerably bigger than how they appear in the movies, and they also didn’t eat anything nearly as big as a person.
Dopeness: 6/10, they’re deceptively deadly, but they’re so cute!
Silly name aside, the Indominus rex was a scary, ugly creature created by InGen by combining the DNA of all the scariest, most bloodthirsty dinosaurs they had, because they wanted to… make their guests… excited about dinosaurs again? But it can also turn invisible, because they used cuttlefish DNA to fill in some gaps, along with a bunch of other scary stuff. They added genetic material from Majungasaurus, a T. rex-like carnivore that’s one of the rare dinosaurs to show evidence of cannibalism. It’s like one of the geneticists called a meeting and asked all of his underlings to make a list of the worst, scariest things, without telling them they’ll all be mashed together in the worst Frankenstein’s monster ever created.
Accuracy: N/A, this never existed (thank god).
Dopeness: 6/10, a very bad idea, but it could control the raptors with its roar.
Definitely the one dinosaur Jurassic Park took the most liberties with. There’s no evidence in the fossil record for that big frill around its neck, or the poison spit it uses to kill hapless Dennis Nedry, but it did have a big double crest on its snout that looked very original. It stood about as tall as a short person, and, unlike T. rex and Velociraptor, actually did live in the Jurassic era. No one really knows what the crests were for, but maybe they were a snazzy color!
Accuracy: 3/10, they got the size right, but it never spat acid or had a frill.
Dopeness: 8/10, scary as hell, hunts in the dark, I was convinced for weeks that there was one in my closet.
Pachycephalosaurus gets a big moment in Fallen Kingdom, and is characterized as basically a large, two-legged goat. Pachycephalosaurus had a thick, bony skull with all kinds of jagged protrusions, the better to fight its rivals with. Paleontologists believe it probably cracked skulls with its enemies in territorial displays, much like today’s horned mammals like goats and antelopes do.
Accuracy: 8/10, it probably didn’t just run around wrecking stuff.
Dopeness: 9/10, very cathartic to see a dinosaur literally use its head to break out of prison.
The Mosasaurus was one of the many, many ill-advised creations made specially for Jurassic World, when the park was resurrected by some of the very same people behind Jurassic Park. (Apparently InGen’s motto is “It’ll work this time.”) Essentially a giant predatory whale, it’s one of the largest hunters that’s ever lived on the planet. Jurassic World’s Mosasaurus snaps up an entire great white shark, a mutant dinosaur hybrid, and, memorably, at least one unfortunate person. Poor Zara. All she wanted was a nice wedding.
Accuracy: 7/10, unlikely you could train something that big to do SeaWorld shows.
Dopeness: 8/10, the biggest creature in the whole series, the stealth MVP of Jurassic World, always waiting to snatch someone unsuspecting down to the depths.
Without spoiling too much, Indoraptor is Indominus rex Part 2, another mutant dinosaur hybrid created in a lab to be exploited by bad men in suits for profit. It’s smaller and sleeker than the Indominus, with the intelligence of a raptor and the laser-focus of a killing machine. You’d think that the scientists would be too preoccupied with all the other dinosaurs running around the park to create another new one, but, look, this is the fifth movie in a series about a park that goes wrong in pretty much the same way every time. Learning from one’s mistakes is not in the Jurassic Park handbook.
Accuracy: N/A, this one also never existed.
Dopeness: 7/10, the sleekest dinosaur in the series, with a face that tells you exactly when and how you will die before it’s even started to chase you.
Spinosaurus was the largest land predator that ever lived, a scary-looking beast with a long crocodile snout and a huge sail on its back. It makes its first and only appearance in Jurassic Park III (again, a good movie, I will die on this hill) as a cloned dinosaur that InGen never intended to release into the park, and instead kept on a second island. It has beady little eyes and a scary roar, and it kills one of the Tyrannosaurs by snapping its neck with those huge jaws, so you immediately know that this is one of the villain dinosaurs.
Accuracy: 5/10, this one also probably primarily ate fish or scavenged corpses.
Dopeness: 8/10, it kills a T. rex!!!
The raptors are a fun bunch. In the Jurassic series they’re pack animals, like smart wolves with no hair that communicate by coughing and can kill you with their sharp toes. Since the very first movie, folks have been clowning on the Jurassic series for making their raptors too big—Velociraptor, in reality, was the size of a much less intimidating small dog. The ones in the Jurassic Park movies are more like Deinonychus, another raptor-related theropod (the carnivorous, two-legged dinosaurs) that stood about as tall as a person. But Velociraptor sounds way cooler, and it’s easier for kids to say.
Accuracy: 4/10, the big toe claw is right but these guys are way too big.
Dopeness: 9/10, the secondary stars of the series, one point docked for the Jurassic World movies trying to make us believe a dude would hop into a raptor cage and train them like circus animals.
It’s the one we watch these movies for, the big bad king of the jungle. Or queen, technically, since the first one we meet in Jurassic Park is a female. In reality, T. rex lived during the Cretaceous period, the last of the three dinosaur eras. It’s estimated to have the most devastating bite force of any predator ever, but there’s a rival camp of scientists who believe T. rex might have actually been more of a scavenger. Not much you can do with those teeny tiny little arms, but it was also so big that it could take on pretty much anything it wanted. Imagine being eaten by something that could swallow your entire body at once.
Accuracy: 9/10, paleontologists have tons of T. rex fossils so it’s pretty easy to create one that’s at least physically accurate.
Dopeness: 10/10, it’s not a Jurassic Park movie until Rexie shows up.
Illustrations by Simon Abranowicz
