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The Jurassic Park/World franchise is a curious one to me, largely because it has the quality ratio of a direct-to-video franchise, while its most hated movies tend to earn over $1 billion at the box office. Like, Fast & Furious fam (like yours truly) have one or two movies in the line-up that we don’t claim1, but Jurassic Park fans (also like yours truly) seem to openly loathe most of what the franchise puts out. I’m not sure what keeps bringing us back. Is it nostalgia? Self-loathing? An inextinguishable love for seeing dinos stomping around?

To me, nothing exemplifies the shockingly diminishing returns of the Jurassic franchise like the child characters. Steven Spielberg is unmatched in his ability to put kids in peril onscreen without making us hate him for it2, and every single sequel has attempted to do the same thing. But with nine kid characters across seven movies, few have come close to the high-water mark that Spielberg established early on.

I get the thought process behind having one child and one teen—besides it being exactly what the original did, you want to appeal to the whole youth market. I even almost get making Zach completely unimpressed with dinosaurs, since the operating theory behind Jurassic World is that “no one is impressed by a dinosaur anymore,” despite the boatloads of people spending thousands of dollars to come to this dinosaur park for dino-seeing purposes. But I absolutely do not get the thought process behind making your teen an aspiring sex pest. Why why whyyyy do we have so many shots of him leering stonily at girls?

The least successful of the Tim knockoffs, I fear! I totally buy Gray’s enthusiasm for dinosaurs; less so his devastation over his parents, David Wallace and Kitty Sanchez, getting divorced. Gray also brings seemingly zero survival skills to the table, his only real contribution being a suggestion that they need “more teeth” to defeat the rampaging Indominus Rex. Which means he’s actually responsible for getting Bryce Dallas Howard outrunning a Tyrannosaurus Rex in high heels. Not cool, kid!

It is not Maisie’s fault that the writers made her the least interesting clone character imaginable. It’s not her fault that she’s in the movies I hate the absolute most in the franchise. But it is what we’re dealing with here. She’s also the most globally destructive tween since the 28 Weeks Later kids, unleashing a bunch of dinosaurs unto the world with the push of a button because “they’re alive. Like me.” So now all the dinosaurs and a lot of people can die scared and confused, because of your little existential crisis. Girl…

One really gets the feeling that screenwriter David Koepp realized his “mercenaries on a fetch quest” plot was reading a bit too soulless, and added an entire sitcom family plot for some “heart.” Unfortunately, teen daughter Teresa suffers the most for being such an afterthought. Her character boils down to “inexplicably fond of her lazy boyfriend,” and she doesn’t get any kind of arc.3 But she does get a great interaction with an inflatable raft and a napping T.Rex, which is pretty tuff!

The blandest of the Tim knockoffs, I fear! Eric lands himself on Isla Sorna on a parasailing trip with his would-be stepdad, and evidently leaves said stepdad to rot in a tree while he fucks off into the center of the jungle. Heartless? Perhaps. But Eric is the only character in this franchise to survive multiple weeks in dinosaur territory, armed only with a memory of Dr. Alan Grant’s books and some mysteriously procured T.Rex urine, so I gotta give him some props.

The most successful and adorable of the Tim knockoffs! This little muffin got the first laugh out of my Rebirth audience (every attempt up to that point had the cadence of a joke, but none of the humor), and had a whole entire arc (she hates “those things” at the beginning of the movie, then befriends, names, and adopts a baby aquilops, lucky thing). She also gets her own one-on-one time with the T.Rex, in a scene that had me equal parts thrilled, anxious, and full of rage towards her bad dad dino dad for endangering her in such a fashion.4

Our proud vegetarian. Our beloved computer nerd—I’m sorry, she prefers to be called a hacker. Lil mama knows her UNIX system, and she’s a great caretaker of her little brother, despite being terrified of dinosaurs…and despite that one time she shone a flashlight right into that T.Rex’s eye. In her defense, we now know that being smart at computers does not make you smart about literally anything else.

The disrespect that my girl Kelly gets in these streets is egregious, I tell you. First of all, she’s played by '90s It Girl Vanessa Thee Chester. She’s an icon, she’s a legend, and she IS the moment. Second of all, she runs her dad Ian Malcolm’s whole life; their relationship is one of the few bright spots in The Lost World. Third, being a stowaway to Dino Island is unassailably cool, and I would absolutely have done it if I could’ve. Finally, she’s the only one on this list—and in the whole franchise—with a confirmed raptor kill on her ledger. Y’all are just jealous because your little 4th grade gymnastics routine wasn’t it.

Little Miss Cathy only gets the one scene, so she doesn’t really count for this list. But her one scene is such a standout that I had to give her some time here. She gets the trailer line—“mummy! daddy! come quick! I found something!” She is the only child in the franchise who we see actually get chomped by dinosaurs (she does survive. This isn’t an Alex Kintner situation).

And, thanks to her mother’s reaction to seeing her brutalized by a pack of Compys, she gives us one of the weirdest and most hilarious match cuts in Spielberg’s career. Thank you for your service, Cathy.

We have seen imitators. We’ve also seen duplicators. But now it’s time for the originator. And this was only ever gonna go one way! The Rebecca “Newt” Jorden Award for Cutest and Pluckiest Imperiled Child could only ever have gone to my darling Tim. Tim, with his mini-Alan Grant outfit. Tim, who approaches a dessert table with as much gusto as he approaches a sick triceratops. Tim, whose only fear—despite being on a malfunctioning Dino Island—seems to be heights. I love every single thing this kid says and does, and every cute little kid in the franchise has tried to fill his tiny lil shoes. But, quite frankly, nobody’s doin it like Tim.

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