10 Movie Franchises That Never Got Better Than The First Film

2. Jurassic Park

The Franchise: Aren't dinosaurs cool? If you answered anything other than "no, I'm a totally joyless person" then you will love Jurassic Park. Or probably already do, given that until James Cameron started competing for the title with himself it was the highest grossing movie of all time. Using Hollywood pseudo-science to justify their modern day existence and groundbreaking tech to make the creatures look real on screen, the franchise was all about dinosaurs being dinosaurs, wreaking havoc on Isla's Nublar and Sorna, as well as the mainland. Just a shame we can't clone them in real life... yet. Why The First Was Best: Although at the time some criticised Jurassic Park for showing too much of the dinosaurs, lamenting that it should have gone for an approach more like Jaws, the sequels ultimately show how restrained Spielberg was, be it down to directorial decision or technical limitations. For all our trumpeting of how cool dinosaurs are, what really made the first film was its characters, with whom we spent the majority of the run time uninterrupted by the dinosauria-amphibian hybrids. While there were some good actors on board, neither sequel could replicate the interplay of the original and left us with rather unsatisfying experiences; in the first we were so engrossed we didn't notice the T-Rex paddock plot hole.