Few blockbusters are as legendary as “Jurassic Park,” and few franchises are as disappointing as “Jurassic Park.” In 1993, Steven Spielberg revolutionized Summer blockbuster filmmaking — a field he helped pioneer almost 20 years earlier with “Jaws” — by bringing to life Michael Crichton’s hit novel. He turned the book about genetically recreated dinosaurs as a thrilling, shocking disaster movie. Revolutionary use of computer-generated effects to create the dinosaurs, brilliant filmmaking, and a perfectly cast ensemble led by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum combined to create a cultural phenomenon that was (briefly) the highest grossing movie ever.

When a movie is that big, a movie studio simply has no choice but to follow up on it. And so, for 30+ years, Universal Pictures has tried to make a “Jurassic Park” sequel worthy of Spielberg’s original dino feature. They brought the man himself back to direct an ambitious, flawed sequel that was torn between recapturing the magic and taking the story in darker directions. They made a more back to basics third film that proved fleeting and insubstantial. After a long, long hiatus, Universal returned to the franchise as “Jurassic World,” and have since steadily released installments in three to four year increments.

These films have been consistently successful at the box office; the original 2015 “Jurassic World” grossed $1.6 billion, and its sequels starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard both managed to crack the billion mark. The latest “Rebirth,” which ditches the old cast for a completely new group led by Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey, already looks likely to repeat its predecessors’ success.

What these movies lack, though, is imagination, spark, ingenuity. With practically every film, it’s become increasingly clear that the creators behind the “Jurassic World” movies don’t know how to evolve this franchise into something creatively fulfilling rather than just commercially successful. Every entry plays the hits from the first movie, with increasingly less finesse and precision. It’s resulted in a series of films that are paradoxically huge and forgettable, movies that make a giant splash in theaters just to fade from memory as quickly.

Still, we come here to praise “Jurassic Park,” not bury it like a fossil. There’s a reason these films consistently do so well: Audiences love the thrill of seeing dinosaurs on screen, of seeing brave heroes face a dinosaur head on. It’s a formula that the original “Jurassic Park” nailed to perfection the first time, and it’s hard to begrudge audiences for hoping that that magic can be recreated. All the elements for the “Jurassic World” movies to be good are reachable: Universal just needs to figure out how to unearth them.

Here are all seven “Jurassic Park” films, ranked from worst to best.