From ‘Jurassic Park’ to ‘Jaws’: 10 Best and Worst Movie Superbeasts

In this summer’s highly anticipated franchise reboot/nostalgia machine Jurassic World, scientists and corporate stooges conspire to invent the Indominus Rex — a genetically modified “new” creature meant to be larger and deadlier than anything the modern world has ever seen. (“No one’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore!” claims Bryce Dallas Howard’s Type-A executive, summing up the entire if-it-moves-overkill-it ideology behind modern summer blockbusters in a single meta-line.) Several stories tall, this giant beast has the killing instincts of a great white shark, the toothy fearsomeness of a T. rex and a sadistic streak that would make a high-school gym teacher envious. But forget whether this is the alpha predator of the movie’s amusement park; the real question is whether it’s as big and bad as all the other movie behemoths we’ve spilled our popcorn over for decades?

We’ve crunched the numbers on 10 films featuring giant lizards, bugs, snakes, robots, aliens, and the like — taking into account the viciousness of the creatures, the survivability of their attacks and their preference for delicious Homo sapien flesh. For anyone wondering which kind of city-stomping, world-ending, supporting-character-consuming superbeast is the best of the blockbustery bunch, look no further.