Every Jurassic Park Movie, Ranked By The Brutality Of The Dinosaur Killings

No Jurassic Park or World movie takes a bigger nosedive in quality purely because of how absurd its death scenes are than Fallen Kingdom. This is the movie where a random mercenary gets his arm chomped off by a tranquilized raptor because he casually walks into its cage—as if he forgot he was in a dinosaur movie and not working security at a mall. Then there’s the rich auction guest who stands motionless under a cage as the Indoraptor lines up the kill like it’s posing for a horror movie poster. And let’s not forget the rooftop scene where the Indoraptor literally stalks a child like Dracula before impaling itself on decorative horns. These aren’t just far-fetched deaths—they’re cartoonishly choreographed in a way that makes it hard to take any of them seriously. It’s like the writers asked, “What’s the dumbest way someone could die?” and then made it canon.

Jurassic Park III isn’t the worst movie in the franchise, but it’s hanging onto second-to-last by the claws of a raptor—and even those feel a little dulled here. The deaths just don’t hit as hard. Sure, there’s a moment or two worth replaying, like the Spinosaurus tearing through a plane crash like it’s made of tinfoil and then slamming its teeth into M.B. Nash (Bruce A. Young) mid-sprint. And the raptor snapping Udesky’s (Michael Jeter) neck after using his screams to lure the others to its trap was terrifyingly cool, and a chilling introduction of the dinosaur’s enhanced strategic intelligence. But when you stack it against the rest of the franchise, where people get ripped in half, stomped into the dirt, or juggled mid-air like chew toys before being swallowed by sea monsters, this one feels tame. It flirts with the chaos, but never commits to the carnage—and in a franchise famous for spectacular deaths, that just doesn’t cut it.

Few Jurassic movies waste their potential quite like Jurassic World: Dominion. It’s not that it lacks dino action—on the contrary, the Therizinosaurus vs. Giganotosaurus showdown is an apex predator brawl worthy of the franchise’s legacy, and the locust swarm burning across farmland like biblical vengeance is straight-up haunting. But when it comes to the franchise’s trademark death scenes? Dominion blinks. Characters are snatched, mauled, or incinerated—and yet somehow, we’re usually watching it from behind a tree or right as the camera cuts away. In a series that once let a raptor tear into Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) offscreen because it was the ‘90s, it’s wild that a 2022 blockbuster felt the need to censor itself. For all its scale and spectacle, Dominion ends up in the bottom half of the franchise rankings simply because it forgot what made the chaos so thrilling in the first place: letting us watch.

If there’s one Jurassic sequel that leans into the brutality, it’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Eddie Carr’s (Richard Schiff) death is both gruesome and gutting—after heroically holding the trailer in place to save Ian and Sarah from falling, he’s yanked from his SUV by two T-Rexes and torn in half like a rag doll. Dieter Stark’s is slower but no less disturbing—separated from the group, he’s stalked through the jungle by Compies that chip away at him bite by bite until his screams fade into silence. Also, poor Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard) gets dragged into the juvenile Rex pen by the adult and left to be mauled, whimpering, by the baby in what feels more like a training session than a kill. Where other films glance away from the gore, The Lost World stares straight at it, making every death feel earned, brutal, and unforgettable.

Look, no Jurassic Park/World film’s ranking on this list is as dependent on the majesty of one death as Jurassic World. But, there was no one death in this movie (and arguably any other movie from the franchise) than the choreography of Zara being tossed around in mid-air by two Pteranodons, dropped into the sea where another Pteranodon dives in to snatch her up (THEY CAN SWIM TOO?!) before a fucking sea-dwelling Mosasaurus emerges from the sea to swallow them both whole in a gorgeously executed example of the cycle of life. The fact all of that happened in less than 40 seconds is a testament how much gruesome detail you can pack into a scene when you don’t cut away from the mayhem.

Compared to the glossy CGI bloodbaths that would follow in future Jurassic Park/World films, the OG that started all looks almost prehistoric, and that’s what makes it the most gruesome. Without advanced special effects producing swarms of Pteranodons and Quetzalcoatluses or toothy battles between gigantic T-Rexes, Steven Spielberg relied on giving us an unflinching look at the struggle to live. A man being snatched off the toilet and into the jaws of death feels more visceral than one computer generated dinosaur gorging on another. The stakes feel more real. Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) stealthily being outsmarted by a Velociraptor in the jungle, before conceding the she’s a “clever girl” as his final words, might be the most iconic death in Jurassic Park/World history. In Jurassic Park’s case, less is more: human suspense will always trump CGI theatrics when it comes to blood and gore.