This article was originally written by Jess Bacon and published on 13 August 2024.In 1993, Steven Spielberg changed the future of cinema with his sci-fi classic, Jurassic Park. Adapted from the 1990 novel of the same name, the story focuses on a wealthy businessman and a team of scientists who create a wildlife park in which previously extinct dinosaurs once again roam the earth.
From close encounters with velociraptors to an iconic chase with a T-Rex, it’s an action-packed adventure that has earned its prestigious place in film history while inspiring a whole genre of prehistoric stories. Read on to discover more about them and use the guide below to find out where to stream each one on platforms like AppleTV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
Jaws (1975)
We can’t talk about Jurassic Park without mentioning Jaws, a film that basically swam so the T-Rex could run. This was the first time that Steven Spielberg reinvented the summer movie. It was also the first of three times in his career that the director made a movie that went on to top the highest-grossing of all time.
Jurassic Park fans who return to that movie for its masterful suspense and that special Spielberg touch (think E.T., Close Encounters) will happily sink their teeth into Jaws, a true classic that has just celebrated its 50th anniversary—so what better reason to watch?
King Kong (2005)
Of course, with King Kong, it’s always worth going back to the 1933 original—a movie that still stands up today—but fans of Jurassic Park’s clash of ancient beasts will probably feel more at home with Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake—an effects heavy movie, perhaps with more in common with the recent Jurassic movies, but also one that boasts the Lord of the Rings director’s unique filmmaking abilities.
Set in 1933, the same year as the original, Jackson’s King Kong is a labour of love and a true retelling. It also features the great Andy Serkis in the titular role.
Godzilla Minus One (2023)
With almost 40 Godzilla movies to choose from (the earliest dates back to 1954), it’s challenging to single one out, but we’ve decided to go for Godzilla Minus One, a wildly entertaining 2023 movie from the Japanese director Takashi Yamazaki.
If you appreciate the clever ways that Spielberg used the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (or the way that Gareth Edwards did in his early film Monsters), you’ll certainly appreciate Yamazaki’s less-is-more approach here. This is a movie that cost less than $15 million to make but managed to beat both Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 to win Best VFX at the Academy Awards.
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
Deep Blue Sea is one of the many copycat movies that sprang up after Jurassic Park’s enormous success. If you’re particularly interested in stories about the awful things that happen when humans play god with nature (there are a few other entries on this list), this is one you’ll want to see.
The plot follows a group of scientists who discover a cure for Alzheimer's in the brains of great white sharks. [Nathan Fielder voice] The plan? Genetically engineer the sharks to have gigantic brains. What could possibly go wrong?
Lake Placid (1999)
Dealing not with a genetically engineered creature but a prehistoric beast, Lake Placid isn’t swimming in the same thematic waters as Deep Blue Sea, but it’s very much in the same lineage of people versus big nature. This is a movie that does for alligators what Deep Blue Sea does for sharks—so if you’re a fan of that movie, or the similarly reptilian Anaconda, this might be one for you.
Bill Pullman, Brendan Gleeson and Bridget Fonda lead a mish-mash gang of cops and scientists attempting to stop a gigantic alligator from terrorising a small town.
The Meg (2018)
The Meg can be added directly to the ‘don’t-play-god-and-mess-with-nature’ subsection of this list. It can also be added to the goofier corner, too: Jason Statham travels to an underwater facility to help a tech billionaire (Rainn Wilson) save some people from a 75-foot-long megalodon shark.
This is also a movie that fans of Statham in particular will love, especially if you like the more recent efforts like The Beekeeper and A Working Man. Honestly, just hearing him say “megalodon” is worth the entrance.
The Fly (1986)
Another in our ‘don’t-play-god’ movies is David Cronenberg’s The Fly, a film I believe to be among the best ever made. If you’re a fan of Cronenberg’s (think Videodrome or Scanners) or enjoy Jurassic Park‘s relatively tidy sci-fi conceit, you’ll appreciate the vibe of this one.
The movie stars Jeff Goldblum (another Jurassic link) as a scientist who discovers teleportation, only to splice his genome with that of a rogue fly that inadvertently hops in the travel pod with him.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
The trio of Planet of the Apes movies released from 2011 to 2017 is not just one of the best reboots of any franchise; it’s also one of the most consistently strong trilogies ever made. Fans of Jurassic Park might be particularly keen on the second instalment, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, in which an ape world on the rise and a human society in decline find each other on relatively equal footing.
This is a movie for fans of speculative science fiction that’s both action-packed and thoughtfully considered—think movies like The Creator or Annihilation.
65 (2023)
Somewhat less thoughtfully considered but no less action-packed is the recent Adam Driver-starring movie 65. This is more of a classic chase and hunt film, like the very good recent Predator movie Prey—except, to put it frankly, this one has dinosaurs.
The story follows an astronaut who must help a young girl to survive after he crash-lands on an unknown planet. Is it Earth? Is it the past? Only one way to find out.
The Land That Time Forgot (1974)
We’ll finish our list with The Land That Time Forgot, a classic from 1974 that I presume was somewhere in Spielberg’s mind when he sat down to make Jurassic Park—it’s also one that fans of some of the older movies we’ve mentioned on this list (like Apes, Kong and Godzilla) might be fond of.
The plot follows a group of British officers in WWI who commandeer a German U-boat only to land on an uncharted island populated by—you guessed it—dinosaurs.
