I can make a personal argument for the Jurassic reboot. It came at just the right time for my son to be genuinely excited about it - with a summer release also perfectly in synch with his birthday for I think two of the new Chris Whichever movies.

Neither Indiana Jones nor Star Wars - the two 'franchises' (eughh!) from my youth achieved this - but Jurassic World provided a fantastic link between the blockbusters of my day (though the original JP was too late for me to be dino-giddy about it) and the event movies shaping his cinescape as he grew into his pre-teens. We watched the original batch at home before seeing the new one, in between card games of dinosaur Top Trumps.

It worked for us as a family, and for him in terms of creating a sense of cultural and historical context.

Admittedly, 300 million bucks or whatever it cost is a lot for that very small-scale experience, but the various films' success suggests that they also worked similarly for many others.