10 Best Michael Crichton Movies & TV Shows, Ranked

Robot cowboys and reborn Dinosaurs blasted and roared across the silver screen because of the writing brilliance of Michael Crichton. A great deal of how the ideas of science fiction manifested and were stylized on film was initially inspired by this novelist’s cautionary tales about potential futures and the technologies therein. It wasn’t enough for Michael Crichton to just be a writer of his books which were so often adapted to the screen, but he also directed a good number of them as well.

Michael Crichton is often known for his large influence on science fiction action films. However, he has also had his hand in hospital dramas and westerns as well, fostering and featuring some of Hollywood’s biggest names. Despite his passing in 2008, his legacy of books and films has continued, with the most prominent titles being Jurassic Park which has now spurred its own multi-film franchise, and HBO’s Westworld. Amid this decorated bibliography and filmography are some truly memorable works, but which have stood the test of time as classics?

10 ER

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• ER spanned 15 seasons and 331 episodes.
• ER won 23 prime-time Emmys in its entire run.

From 1994 to 2009, the hit hospital procedural dramaER took over evening television. This show was a huge springboard for George Clooney’s rise to stardom, which was hard to do from television considering the still great divide at the time between the television and film markets.

The show was Created and written by Michael Crichton and he drew inspiration from his own experiences as a medical student in an emergency room. Originally, his initial title for the show was ED for “Emergency Department” Luckily for Michael Crichton, it didn’t end up that way.

9 Timeline

Based on Michael Crichton’s 1999 bestseller novel of the same name, Timeline explored the idea of how the multiverse theory could bring archaeologists to the medieval ages to experience history, not just excavate it. With such hits as Jurassic Park already flying high as a franchise, Timeline was a study of how humanity’s earlier eras and mentalities are dangerous and terrifying enough to create drama and action instead of needing giant dinosaurs.

Featuring a stacked cast including Michael Sheen, Paul Walker, David Thewlis, Billy Connolly, and Frances O’Connor, this romp through a pivotal point in the 100-year war in France is a riveting popcorn film. Unfortunately, it does suffer from a weaker script and doesn’t stick to the elements that made it an incredible book. That said, it has a lot of fun moments and great practical effects and set pieces.

8 Futureworld

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A sequel to the film Westworld, Futureworld was an extension of the story originally written and created by Michael Crichton. It opened up the world of the resort to show the different parks and themed areas and showed its eventual downfall into chaos as the Gunslinger’s initial falling domino topples the system with revolting robots.

Although surprising that a sequel was made at the time due to Westworld‘s mild success, and Hollywood’s distaste for sequels at the time, Futureworld‘s worldbuilding continuity about the greater resort is important to note considering it is the source material for later seasons of HBO’s own Westworld series.

7 Sphere

With darker science fiction films becoming hotter on the market through the late 70s with Alien and finding a revival in the 90s, Sphere is a film derived from one of Michael Crichton’s Novels about a spaceship found buried deep under a thick layer of coral that is calculated to be 300 years old. Starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and Samuel L. Jackson, the casting and stylistic vibe of this sci-fi suspense film is a time capsule of the 90s audience’s taste for heady plots led by big names.

The film is full of practical effects and claustrophobic deep sea interiors that hark back to James Cameron’s incredible filmThe Abyss. Even with a stacked cast and a seasoned writer, the adaptation did well enough but didn’t quite capture audiences in the same way The Abyss had almost 9 years before.

6 The Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery (1978)

Director

Michael Crichton

Release Date

December 14, 1978

Cast

Sean Connery , Donald Sutherland , Lesley-Anne Down , Alan Webb , Malcom Terris , Robert Lang , Michael Elphick

Writers

Michael Crichton

Runtime

110 minutes

Main Genre

Adventure

Cinematographer

Geoffrey Unsworth

Producer

John Foreman

Production Company

Dino De Laurentiis Company, Starling Films

Sfx Supervisor

Gerry Johnston

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Directed and written by Michael Crichton, this wild caper that feels like it should be a hidden western, takes place in 1850’s England and stars Donald Sutherland and Sir Sean Connery. A fun romp with a charming and seductive thief played by Sir Sean Connery carries this film’s tone throughout and makes the journey entertaining as he creates a plan to rob a huge cache of gold from a train.

The film plays as a sort of mix of James Bond and the original Italian Job, full of colorful characters and stakes being raised as the plan goes wrong in all the right ways. It’s a remove from Michael Crichton’s usual form of storytelling, but a fun film to mix up his repertoire.

5 Westworld

Westworld (1973)

A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.

Director

Michael Crichton

Release Date

November 21, 1973

Cast

Yul Brynner , Richard Benjamin , James Brolin

Writers

Michael Crichton

Runtime

1 Hour 28 Minutes

Main Genre

Action

Production Company

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

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One of the more influential of Michael Crichton’s work in recent years has been echoed into a huge HBO television series from 2016-2022. Westworld was a film about a resort where the wealthy could live out their biggest and unhinged fantasies in a simulated Wild West setting. Although filled with classic tropes of Westerns on purpose, the film quickly dived into the question of AI and robotics and how much abuse of technology was too much.

Eventually, as in the film and show, the robots revolt and begin killing guests of the resort, putting the entire operation on alert. With technology spurring ever-faster towards AI tools, theme parks striving for more immersion of their guests, and automation of software services being released before they are perfected, Westworld is one of the most relevant cautionary tales about the future that Michael Crichton has written.

4 The Andromeda Strain

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One of Michael Crichton’s bestsellers, The Andromeda Strain, has seen both the big and small screen. Although outbreak films are more niche in the Hollywood suspense thriller genre, The Andromeda Strain is a book that would be the inspiration for other offshoot action-suspense films like Outbreak in 1995. The film is about an alien virus found in space that is experimented on in a high-security lab but inevitably gets out with little hope of containment.

The film and television miniseries did not see much success, Michael Crichton does have the uncanny ability to sometimes hit the nail pretty close to the head when it comes to predicting near-future consequences for humanity’s hubris going too far with technology. He wasn’t alive for 2020, but he’d certainly have some interesting takes on how it all happened and was managed.

3 The 13th Warrior

The 13th Warrior

A man, having fallen in love with the wrong woman, is sent by the sultan himself on a diplomatic mission to a distant land as an ambassador. Stopping at a Viking village port to restock on supplies, he finds himself unwittingly embroiled in a quest to banish a mysterious threat in a distant Viking land.

Director

John McTiernan

Release Date

August 27, 1999

Cast

Antonio Banderas , Diane Venora , Omar Sharif

Runtime

1 hour 42 minutes

Main Genre

Action

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Another one of Michael Crichton’s more unusual films was the cult classic low-fantasy historical fiction film The 13th Warrior. Jumping off from Antonio Banderas’ The Mask of Zorro fame, The 13th Warrior adapted one of Michael Crichton’s novels Eaters of the Dead. The film was also inspired by some of the looser story strokes of the classic Beowulf legend.

Antonio Banderas plays a man sent on an intentionally dangerous diplomatic mission that gets thrown off course and in league with Norsemen who are trying to banish a horrible tribe of raiders that ravage their lands and attack in inhuman and monstrous ways. Although it was met with mixed reception at the time, the film’s music and moody tone were very different for the time and featured stylized Norse themes in Hollywood long before they revived it heavily in the 2010s.

2 Twister

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  Twister

  Director

  Jan de bont

  Release Date

  May 10, 1996

  Cast

  Helen Hunt , Bill Paxton , Jami Gertz , Cary Elwes , Philip Seymour Hoffman , Alan Ruck , Todd Field , Jeremy Davies

  Writers

  Michael Crichton , Anne-Marie Martin

  Main Genre

  Action

  Producer

  Ian Bryce, Michael Crichton, Kathleen Kennedy

  Production Company

  Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment

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  Twisters

  An update to the 1996 film ‘Twister’, which centered on a pair of storm chasers who risk their lives in an attempt to test an experimental weather alert system.

  Director

  Lee Isaac Chung

  Release Date

  July 19, 2024

  Cast

  Glen Powell , Kiernan Shipka , Maura Tierney , Daisy Edgar-Jones , Katy M. O’Brian , David Corenswet , Sasha Lane , Anthony Ramos

  Writers

  Michael Crichton , Mark L. Smith

  Producer

  Frank Marshall

  Production Company

  Universal Pictures, Warner Bros., Amblin Entertainment

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Inspired by the real-life work and experiments of storm searchers at the National Severe Storms Laboratory, Twister is about storm-chasing scientists trying to use a new technology to scan and track the activity of tornados by driving close to, and in them. Full of overcast and ominous skies, Twister built a newfound fear in audiences in the same way quicksand and sharks did in the early days of Hollywood blockbusters.

Starring 90s greats like Cary Elwes, Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Philip Seymour-Hoffman, the film blended practical and special effects and incredible sound to create a truly terrifying moviegoing experience. A new generational sequel,Twisters is set to release July 19th of this year.

1 Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

Scientists bring back dinosaurs for an amusement park, but everyone learns that the dinosaurs cannot be contained in the Jurassic Park franchise.

Created by

Michael Crichton , Steven Spielberg

First Film

Jurassic Park

Latest TV Show

Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous

Cast

Sam Neill , Laura Dern , Jeff Goldblum , BD Wong , Chris Pratt , Bryce Dallas Howard

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Of all of Michael’s works, none come close to the vast success and continuation of the original Jurassic Park film. Based on his best-selling novel of the same name, this story of a park and laboratory that genetically clones and revives dinosaurs to create a dinosaur amusement park. Things go predictably awry quickly as the facility undergoes a power outage as a smokescreen for a traitorous employee who tries to smuggle cloning samples out of the park.

Still considered one of the best feats in special effects and CGI of the ’90s, Jurassic Park‘s effects still hold up decent for modern audiences as Steven Spielberg’s magical production design and use of practical effects blend them with very few seams. Starring Laura Dern, Sam Niel, Richard Attenborough, and Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park was catapulted into a successful action-suspense franchise and continues to create sequels to this day.