Post-Viewing: Could Jurassic World hail a resurgence of dinosaurs in popular entertainment?

Jurassic World marks the prehistoric franchise’s thunderous return to cinema and I’m clearly not the only one who was looking forward to it; despite not being too much of a hit critically, the film has been incredibly successful with audiences everywhere. Clearly the franchise has a place in modern cinema and World is far more popular than I could have imagined.

For the few who have known me from a young age, I used to be a huge fan of dinosaurs as a child; I loved learning their names, I loved looking at all the skeletons and exhibits in the Natural History Museum in London and I enjoyed watching films and documentaries about them such as Walking with Dinosaurs from the BBC. Just why have dinosaurs struck a chord with so many people in this way? They’re simply fascinating, astonishing creatures and the fact that they’ve been lost to the world for millions of years has only fuelled a more intense interest in them. The journey of discovery for dinosaurs and other pre-historic animals has been a constant staple of palaeontology as well, meaning that there’s always a new find lurking just around the bend, which re-sparks interests with every news story published on the subject.

The Jurassic Park film franchise has always played on our fascination with dinosaurs and the premise of them co-existing with us in a modern world. Seeing dinosaurs fully realised on the big screen in the 1993 original was a truly awe-inspiring experiences for audiences the world over. It also made such a huge impact because audiences had never seen anything like it before; before Jurassic Park, dinosaurs on such a massive scale in films were a rarity. Some would argue that film audiences hadn’t been so enthralled by prehistoric creatures in film since 1925’s The Lost World which featured a stop-motion Brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus (albeit rather inaccurately portrayed based on the findings of the time). Audiences had never seen anything like the dinosaurs featured in Jurassic Park and that’s why it gained such a strong success.

Jurassic World itself is clearly set to be a smashing success over the coming weeks; it’s already beaten multiple records for profit intakes, including June opening weekend and June opening day in the US and Canada. It’s managed to outperform other blockbusters such as The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises in terms in gross profits and has even topped Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 for the strongest worldwide opening weekend with a whopping $511.8 million taken. There’s no denying that dinosaurs are still incredibly popular with audiences and that the franchise is more than capable of making a full comeback.

Already we’re seeing plans for future sequels to Jurassic World with Chris Pratt signed on for an undisclosed number of films. But it doesn’t stop at film; video games are also beginning to bring back the dinosaurs. Titles like ARK: Survival Evolved and Primal Carnage are experimenting more and more with the use of dinosaurs in a multiplayer environment and so far this has shown to have a very dynamic effect on online play. In the years Jurassic Park has been mostly absent from the entertainment world, the likes of zombies, remade slasher villains and ridiculous B-movies have filled in. But now we may be seeing the welcome return of the dinosaur, and audiences should be in for a treat in the years to come.