10 Movies That Tried To Exploit Nostalgia (And Won)

10. Jurassic World

2015 was most certainly the year of the nostalgia-baiting sequel, and few films have resurrected an ailing franchise as successfully as Jurassic World.

Though on the surface the fourth Jurassic Park movie appears to be a slick retooling of the series' formula, it is for all intents and purposes another case of a "soft reboot."

Jurassic World introduces audiences to a new host of characters...while relentlessly dining out on and exploiting the series' most iconic imagery, almost all of which is ripped wholesale from Steven Spielberg's original - the only good one, if we're being honest.

Though the film invokes musical cues and set-pieces right out of the first Jurassic Park - including the arrival of a certain T-rex to help save the day - it rather cheekily tries to lampshade its own laziness by passing meta-commentary on the insatiable hunger of audiences, all while one of the park's employees (Jake Johnson) is effectively a Jurassic Park fanboy.

This is a film that feels algorithm-tuned to stimulate the nostalgia receptors in your brain: when the iconic Jurassic Park jeep is literally dusted off later in the movie, it's meticulously engineered to evoke those warm feelings we all have towards the 1993 original.

And while the film itself is relatively mediocre, it would be naive to deem its release anything but a win, given that it went on to gross a staggering $1.672 billion worldwide.

And proving that audiences simply love paying to see dinosaurs, last year's rancid sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, grossed a ridiculous $1.309 billion.

With the upcoming third film reportedly bringing back original cast members Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill, Jurassic World 3 - aka Jurassic Park 6 - is going to drop even the faintest pretense of subtlety as it milks the nostalgia for every drop.