While the Jurᴀssic Park movies are famous for their dinosaurs, the Jurᴀssic World movies prove there is a reason that Spielberg’s original blockbuster used them sparingly. By the time Jurᴀssic Park’s ending rolls around, no viewer can reasonably complain that the movie didn’t feature enough dinosaur action. As such, audience members might be surprised to learn that the prehistoric creatures aren’t onscreen for as long as it seems. There are only 15 minutes of dinosaur screen time in Jurᴀssic Park’s 127-minute runtime, as shocking as this might sound.

Although Jurᴀssic World Rebirth might redress the imbalance, the Jurᴀssic World trilogy failed to embrace Jurᴀssic Park director Steven Spielberg’s “Less is more” approach. By Jurᴀssic World: Dominion’s ending, viewers have spent a whole lot more time in the company of dinosaurs, but the effect isn’t what the movie’s creators intended. The Jurᴀssic World movies managed to make dinosaurs dull, while Spielberg’s sparing use of them made the original movie one of the best blockbusters of all time. Its earliest teaser trailer explains how.

Jurᴀssic Park’s First Full Trailer Didn’t Even Need Dinosaurs To Sell You The Movie

Spielberg’s Original Blockbuster Held Off On Revealing Its Biggest Draw

The first teaser trailer for Jurᴀssic Park took a major risk by featuring no footage from the actual movie itself. Instead, the promotional video depicts a miner unearthing a piece of amber from a mine and filing it down before a scientist places it beneath a microscope. The narrator explains that this chunk of amber found in a South American mine contained a perfectly preserved mosquito that carried dinosaur DNA. As the camera zooms in on the mosquito’s eye, the narrator promises that this DNA will be used to bring dinosaurs back to life in the eponymous theme park.

Jurᴀssic Park’s first trailer features no dinosaurs at all, and the sequence depicting the miner finding the amber doesn’t appear in the finished movie. However, the teaser is as exciting as anything from Jurᴀssic World Rebirth’s trailer and proves just how much Spielberg’s approach to the dinosaurs paid off. As he did with the shark in Jaws, the director waited for as long as possible to reveal the main attraction of Jurᴀssic Park. Much like a real theme park, the movie saved its main attraction for paying customers.

Jurᴀssic Park’s promotional teaser promises a lot but doesn’t unveil anything, underlining just how confident Spielberg was in the movie’s story. Jurᴀssic Park itself follows suit, keeping the screen time of the dinosaurs to a minimum and waiting a long time to reveal major players like the T. Rex in all their glory. While Jurᴀssic World Rebirth’s hybrid dinosaur monster looks interesting, it is worth asking whether the creature would be even more intriguing if its existence was only hinted at in the reboot’s trailer.

Spielberg’s Jurᴀssic Park Is A Textbook Example Of How To Make A Monster Movie

The Jaws Director Is A Master Of Monster Movie Filmmaking

Although many blockbusters leap from set piece to set piece as quickly as possible, the surprisingly patient pace of Jurᴀssic Park is a big part of what makes the original movie work. It is a long time before viewers reach the тιтular park, even longer before we see dinosaurs, and longer still before the T. Rex puts in its first iconic appearance. If the T. Rex was shown in the movie’s opening moments, as happened in Jurᴀssic World: Dominion’s opening scene, viewers would expect something new to outdo this spectacle shortly after.

Although Jurᴀssic World Rebirth can revisit some scenes that didn’t make it into Jurᴀssic Park‘s movie adaptation, this pacing is the main takeaway director Gareth Edwards’ reboot should take from the original movie. Other iconic monster movies like Spielberg’s earlier blockbuster Jaws or director James Cameron’s The Terminator are similar case studies in patient, suspense-centric storytelling outdoing pure, unbridled spectacle. Director Ridley Scott’s iconic Alien makes it almost halfway to the end of its runtime before the тιтular monster appears on-screen for the first time.

The Jurᴀssic World Trilogy Lost Track Of What Made The Original Film So Special

The Jurᴀssic World Sequels Featured Too Much Action And Not Enough Suspense

This is a message that the reboot trilogy desperately needed to hear, as the Jurᴀssic World movies traded tension for spectacle. With indestructible heroes who jumped from one life-threatening set-piece to the next without a scratch, the Jurᴀssic World movies often felt more like superhero movies than suspenseful survival thrillers. This might have made financial sense after how successful 2015’s reboot Jurᴀssic World proved, but it would leave viewers yearning for even the underrated Jurᴀssic Park III instead of these weightless, tension-free CGI extravaganzas.

Jurᴀssic World: Fallen Kingdom featured more screen time for the dinosaurs than ever before, and their increased exposure made them less impressive, less awe-inspiring, and less threatening with each pᴀssing minute. Meanwhile, Chris Pratt’s central hero went from Jurᴀssic World‘s particularly well-trained, over-prepared expert to a veritable superhuman over the course of the trilogy, meaning viewers were never worried about his survival by the final film. By the time he was driving a motorbike onto an airplane to evade velociraptors running free in a busy city, the franchise had lost any connection to observable reality.

Jurᴀssic World Rebirth Seems To Be Bringing Back The Best Things About Jurᴀssic Park

Jurᴀssic World Rebirth’s Approach Brings Back The Franchise’s Best Qualities

The Jurᴀssic Park and Jurᴀssic World franchisees are both about dinosaurs roaming free in the modern world, so it goes without saying that they don’t need to feel entirely realistic. However, the Jurᴀssic World sequels lost their stakes when they made the heroes indestructible, and this issue was closely tied to over-exposing the franchise’s dinosaurs. If the movies hadn’t made dinosaurs an uninteresting inevitability, Jurᴀssic World: Dominion’s Fast & Furious-style chase wouldn’t have been necessary to keep the audience’s attention.

Fortunately, Jurᴀssic World Rebirth appears to have learned from the mistakes of its predecessors. Even the marketing campaign looks more similar to that of the original film, with viewers barely seeing the dinosaurs in its publicity stills before the first trailer was released. The trailer does reveal a lot of dinosaur action, but the story is at least confined to one remote location and features a handful of characters who are woefully unprepared for their predicament.

For every expert like Mahershala Ali and Scarlett Johansson’s characters, there is a nebbish scientist or a stranded vacationer. This strikes at the core problem with the reboot trilogy, which is also the best thing about Spielberg’s original movie. In Jurᴀssic Park, seeing lifelike dinosaurs was still a breathtaking shock to the main characters and the audience alike, whereas, in the Jurᴀssic World movies, this experience was par for the course.