Isla Nublar: The Island Behind Jurassic Park and Jurassic World

The first film shows Hammond's park on a remote island at its most hopeful and then at its worst. Hammond invites paleontologist Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm to inspect the park, and a lawyer and Hammond's two grandchildren join the tour. The visitors are amazed by the first living dinosaurs they see, and Malcolm warns that a park built on controlling nature is bound to fail.

The failure comes from the inside. Programmer Dennis Nedry is paid to steal embryos and shuts down the security systems to cover his escape. The power cut disables the electric fences just as the tour vehicles sit stopped in the Tyrannosaurus paddock, and the big predator breaks out. It is one of the great set pieces of the saga, with effects from Industrial Light & Magic and Stan Winston.

The night ends in the main visitor center, where raptors corner the survivors until a Tyrannosaurus rex wanders in and fights them. Hammond admits the park cannot be saved, Grant agrees not to endorse it, and the survivors leave by helicopter. The closing shots of birds over the sea hint that dinosaurs live on, even if the park is lost.

In 2015 the island is no longer a prototype but a full resort, and the film uses that scale to stage its disaster on a much larger canvas. The park's owner, Masrani, played by Irrfan Khan, wants a fresh attraction to keep visitors coming. Claire Dearing, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, runs the park, while Owen Grady, played by Chris Pratt, trains a small pack of Velociraptors there. The park's scientists have built that new attraction, a hybrid called the Indominus rex, which is kept secret from most of the staff.

The Indominus tricks its handlers, breaks out and starts killing. Claire's nephews Zach and Gray leave the main area in a gyrosphere vehicle and end up in the path of the escaped animal, and they eventually reach the abandoned original visitor center from the 1993 film. That return to the old ruins is the neatest link between the two eras of the island.

The finale brings the old Tyrannosaurus rex out of its paddock to fight the hybrid, with help from the raptor Blue, before the park's Mosasaurus pulls the Indominus into the lagoon. The surviving visitors are evacuated, and the film closes on the Tyrannosaurus standing over the empty park.

In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), directed by J. A. Bayona, a volcano on Isla Nublar threatens to wipe out the dinosaurs left on the island, and officials decide not to step in. The danger comes from the eruption, not from the animals.

Claire Dearing, now campaigning to protect the animals, joins a rescue effort backed by Eli Mills, who works for Benjamin Lockwood. She brings in Owen Grady to find Blue, the last raptor. The team does find Blue, but mercenaries betray them, shoot Blue and leave the heroes behind as the eruption starts. Owen, Claire and Franklin Webb escape by sneaking onto the cargo ship carrying the captured animals, and Zia Rodriguez helps save Blue with a transfusion.

The ship carries the captured dinosaurs to the Lockwood estate in California. That raises the question of whether any dinosaurs remain on Isla Nublar, and the film does not say what became of the animals left behind. Jurassic World Dominion moves on to places such as the Dolomites and Malta, and Jurassic World Rebirth is set on Ile Saint-Hubert.

Isla Sorna is the second island, and it is where the dinosaurs were bred. In The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), also directed by Spielberg, John Hammond tells Ian Malcolm that Isla Sorna is where the animals were bred and that a rival group at InGen wants to take it over. Malcolm joins a small team to document the dinosaurs after his girlfriend Sarah Harding goes ahead of them, and his daughter Kelly stows away.

The film ends with the captured adult male T. rex escaping in San Diego, after which the dinosaurs are returned to Isla Sorna and Hammond announces that the island will be protected. Authorities declare it a nature reserve.

Jurassic Park III (2001), directed by Joe Johnston, returns to Isla Sorna. Alan Grant agrees to guide a wealthy couple, Paul and Amanda Kirby, on a flight over the island, only to learn they are really looking for their teenage son Eric. A huge Spinosaurus wrecks their plane, and the survivors cross the island on foot while raptors and Pteranodons stalk them. So, to answer a common question, Jurassic Park III is set on Isla Sorna, while the first film's setup describes only a remote island where Hammond builds his park.

Ile Saint-Hubert is the third island, a restricted former InGen research site that Jurassic World Rebirth (2025), directed by Gareth Edwards, uses as its main location. Five years after Dominion, most of Earth has become too hostile for the revived dinosaurs, and they survive mainly in zones near the equator. Pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs hires Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johansson, to lead a secret expedition there to collect genetic material from three giant dinosaurs.

The team samples a Mosasaurus, a Titanosaurus and a Quetzalcoatlus nest, and meets the shipwrecked Delgado family along the way. The old InGen complex on the island is home to a mutated predator called the Distortus rex, which kills Krebs and destroys the rescue helicopter. Zora and Henry Loomis choose to share the biomaterial openly rather than let a company own it. The island gives the saga a new, unrelated setting, and it is a long way from the park resorts of Isla Nublar.

The difference is purpose: Isla Nublar is where the Jurassic World park operates, while Isla Sorna is the breeding island that the second film ends by making a protected reserve. Nublar is where the visitors, the paddocks and the visitor center live, so its stories are about a business failing. Sorna's stories are about small groups of people stranded among animals that have lived on their own.

The films using each island also differ in tone. The two Nublar films, Jurassic World (2015) and Fallen Kingdom, revolve around a park, a lab creation or a volcano. The two Sorna films are rescue and survival stories built around a family member who has gone missing or a team that has gone in after a loved one.

In my opinion, Isla Nublar is the better setting because it gives the monsters rules and gives the humans a place to be wrong. In the 1993 film the security systems and electric fences fail the moment Nedry shuts them down, and that makes the T. rex paddock scene frightening because the audience understands exactly why the animal is out. The 2015 film shows the same weakness at resort scale, with a hybrid kept secret from most of the staff.

Isla Sorna has a different strength, which is freedom. The Lost World can go from a hunters' camp to an old InGen compound and eventually a city street, and Jurassic Park III can wreck its characters' plane and leave them to cross the island on foot. Perhaps the clearest comparison is with television: Nublar is a well-staged drama with a fixed set, while Sorna is closer to a survival reality show with no producers around to help.

It could be argued that the 2015 film got the most from Nublar by bringing the old visitor center back as a ruin. Ile Saint-Hubert is the newest island and Rebirth makes good use of its former research complex, but it has had only one film so far. If you only watch two, I would pick Jurassic Park (1993) for the original park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park for the contrast. For a full ranking of the films, see the Jurassic Park movies ranked page.