Jurassic Park III (2001)

Palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill) is paid to act as a guide on a fly-by of Isla Sorna, an island off the coast of Costa Rica populated by InGen's genetically engineered dinosaurs. It is a ruse: before long the plane has landed, half of the crew has been eaten, and Grant is left to help two parents (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni) find their missing son - who was last seen visiting the island with his step-father.

There are not too many ways in which one can be kind to Jurassic Park III. The plain and simple truth is that it is not a good movie. It is a sequel in the unsatisfying and tired way all mediocre sequels are: it does very much the same sorts of things as the earlier films did, only varied just a little bit and with far less enthusiasm as it does them. Occasionally a glimmer of entertainment pokes through - a scene here, a joke there - but none of it compensates for a weak storyline, cardboard cut-out characters, and some uncharacteristically weak visual effects. It took four years between films to make The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. It took Universal Pictures another 14 to return with Jurassic World. I honestly think after the third film the franchise needed a long break to reset.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Four years after the disaster on Isla Nublar, Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is summoned to meet with Jurassic Park owner John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). Hammond reveals the existence of "Site B", a second facility on the neighbouring island of Isla Sorna, where the dinosaurs are continuing to breed and thrive. When Hammond loses control of his company to his ambitious nephew (Arliss Howard), Malcolm is thrown into a race to stop the dinosaurs from being taken off the island.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park marked a rare sequel for Steven Spielberg. Other than his Indiana Jones films, this remains his only follow-up in a career running through its fifth decade. It is a much darker, more complex film that its predecessor, a direction that both benefits and damages it. All things considered it is a step down in quality from Jurassic Park, and yet of the four films in the series it is the one to which I return the most often.

There is an amazing amount of good stuff to be found here, even if its assembly is a little scrappier and more haphazard.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Palaeontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), palaeobotanist Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) and self-proclaimed chaotician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldbum) are invited by billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to inspect his brand-new theme park. Jurassic Park is a state-of-the-art wildlife reserve on a small island off the coast of Costa Rica. The wildlife is genetically engineered dinosaurs, recreated through dna manipulation, and they have just broken out of their cages.

It was impossible to avoid Jurassic Park back in 1993. It was the biggest film of the year; indeed at the time it was the biggest film of all time, at least unadjusted for inflation. Pretty much everybody in the developed world saw it. Many went and saw it multiple times. Its combination of dinosaurs, action and thrills made it a huge popular hit, and its ground-breaking use of computer-generated images (CGI) made it a watershed in Hollywood filmmaking.

It has now been 23 years since it was first released, so it seemed high time to take a fresh look and see how 1993's biggest movie blockbuster was standing the test of time.

Jurassic World (2015)

22 years after the original Jurassic Park disaster, InGen has successfully forged ahead with a new theme park on Isla Nublar. Unlike its predecessor, Jurassic World has been a phenomenal success. It has been so successful, in fact, that park visitors now take dinosaurs for granted. They're more likely to read social media on their smartphones than marvel at a Tyrannosaurus Rex right in front of them.

That's the first of several genuinely clever ideas in Jurassic World, the much-delayed fourth film in Universal Picture's action-thriller franchise. It's clever because it's believable, but it's also clever because it mirrors the film-going audience. Jurassic Park was a jaw-dropping visual marvel. Jurassic World is just another action flick with dinosaurs. Like the park visitors in the film, as movie-goers we now pretty much take visual effects for granted. Showing us some dinosaurs rampaging through a Central American jungle probably doesn't cut it any more.

Spinning the plot out from park visitors being unengaged is a cool concept, but it's also a double-edged sword since showing us some dinosaurs rampaging through a Central American jungle is by-and-large all that Jurassic World does. Anticipation for this much-delayed sequel may have been high, but the film itself is just a standard sort of sequel. There are some great scenes, and some good actors, but all in all it's just a weaker copy of an earlier and superior film.