At the heart of Jurassic Park, the classic book and now heptalogy of films, is an ethical debate. From the first, Dr. Ian Malcolm spells it out with crystal clarity: “God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.” By Jurassic Park Rebirth, a film that prefers to show rather than tell, such moralizing about genetic engineering is found in the appearance of “D-Rex.” This mutant abomination with a set of human-proportioned arms, a bulbous cranium, and endless appetite for humans lets us very clearly know that tinkering with dino DNA is simply not a good idea.

In other words, this series tells us, even if we could bring back dinosaurs, we shouldn’t.

Not that it really matters. The possibility of bringing back dinosaurs IRL is and will likely forever be entirely fictional. DNA is fragile. As soon as it’s outside the comforting confines of a living cell, it starts to break down. So far, the oldest DNA anyone’s ever found is 2.4 million years old — nowhere close to the youngest dinosaur fossils ever found at 65 million years old.

That’s not to say such lessons in genetic engineering don’t have teeth. After all, bringing back other species isn’t a sci-fi concept — it’s something real-world geneticists and conservationists are doing today. Their goal is to save species that are on the verge of extinction or even bring back some that were lost long ago. So even though we can’t bring back dinosaurs, the question that Jurassic Park raises is an important one: Should we?

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“I thought the remake was a cynical cash-grab. Not much cash to grab it seems.” Those are the words of director Alex Proyas writing on Facebook in response to the opening weekend box office for Lionsgate’s 2024 remake of The Crow.

Proyas directed the original 1994 cult classic, which starred Brandon Lee and became a hit even after the actor’s untimely passing on the set of the dark and gritty comic book adaptation. Whether or not Proyas’ jab was in poor taste is up for debate, but one thing is undoubtedly true: There was not much cash to grab.

Directed by Rupert Sanders, last year’s The Crow opened to just $4.6 million on its opening weekend, barely cracking the Top 10 at the U.S. box office. Less than a month later, it was out of theaters entirely, having grossed a grand total of $24 million worldwide against a reported $50 million budget. By anyone’s definition, it was a flop.

But why? What exactly turns a would-be blockbuster into a flop? And who makes that call?

“Sometimes, there is the financial version of missing expectations and then there is the court of public opinion,” Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango, tells Inverse. Robbins, who is also the founder and owner of Box Office Theory, which specializes in forecasting and analysis, adds: “A hit in financial terms is not always a hit in audience terms.”

A movie can open big but then fall off very quickly, often due to lackluster reception. Think Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which posted a record opening for the Ant-Man franchise but then fell off a cliff in its second weekend and never fully recovered. Unfortunately for Lionsgate and The Crow, it opened poorly and continued to sink from there. The Crow offers us a case of the most clear-cut flops in recent years. What went wrong with this remake reveals a lot about Hollywood financiers, the fickle needs of moviegoers, and why movie-making is such a big risk, no matter how beloved or large the franchise.