Jurassic World: Rebirth
★ ½
Do people even care about dinosaurs anymore? That line, buried in Jurassic World: Rebirth, may be the most honest thing the franchise has asked in a decade.
In the franchise universe, each film ups the ante. Sequels require bigger, scarier dinosaurs to lure audiences. The fictional corporations that own the parks want to keep guests coming to their attractions, so they resurrect more and more dangerous dinosaurs. With Rebirth, they’ve run out of scarier prehistoric beasts to bring back and must rely on genetically combining the worst of the worst—all to keep attracting audiences.
It’s an act of desperation that plagues both the story and the franchise.
Dr. Loomis examines a dino hybrid specimen
© 2025 Universal Pictures
The film starts in a lab that genetically engineers the DNA of dinosaurs and combines them to create hybrid versions. You’d think the lab techs would be highly trained professionals. They might have white lab coats and hazmat suits but they’re about as intelligent as the keepers of the big, exotic cats in Tiger King.
One lab tech eats a Snickers bar as he’s about to enter the cage of their most dangerous creation. He shoves the bar into his helmet mid-step, dropping the wrapper—which somehow, impossibly, gets sucked into the vents and brings down the lab.
This dinosaur hybrid, and other hybrids, are no longer contained. The other techs escape and shut the main lab door to escape the dino danger. But the Snickers tech is trapped with the mega-beast leading to an overplayed moment where the female tech realizes the Snickers tech is trapped. She is about to open the door to let him out when she sees the massive dinosaur is about to devour him.
This sequence happens so fast, it’s hard to carry empathy for Snickers tech. He should have known better.
Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid
© 2025 Universal Pictures
If you happen to be out in the lobby buying your popcorn and miss this sequence, fear not. It really has nothing to do with the rest of the film except to show us the massive beast that now roams the island. It’d serve the story better for Snickers tech to have survived and had to face the ramifications, emotional or otherwise, of the calamity his Snickers wrapper caused.
The story continues by telling us that the dinosaur islands have been closed, and it is now illegal to even go to an island. That won’t stop this next crew, assembled because there are three different species of dinosaurs on this island that, when their DNA is combined, makes a serum that holds off human heart disease for an extra 20 years. Such an injection, when produced, will be worth billions.
Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) hires a team of specialists to go to the island to procure the samples from the three types of dinosaurs. He hires mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and a crew of mercs, scientists and one boat captain who clearly should’ve said no.
A boat in dinosaur infested waters
© 2025 Universal Pictures
What will follow is some of the most excruciating backstory as told by the characters while they journey to the island on Duncan’s boat. Aside from the fact that this is an astoundingly boring backstory, it fails to further the story or add any depth to the characters. Somehow, after 40 minutes of exposition, they feel less developed than when they boarded the boat. At this point, I started rooting for the dinosaurs.
During their travel, there’s a family on a sailboat. Dad Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), late teen daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise), younger sister Isabella and Teresa’s stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono). Never mind the fact that Reuben is taking his family on a long-sail vacation through dinosaur infested waters, these characters add very little, if anything, to the plot. Again, go dinosaurs!
Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett
© 2025 Universal Pictures
When the dinosaurs do show up, they feel more like contractual obligations than cinematic events. Time will tell if fans agree, but as far as I’m concerned, this is easily the worst film in the series.
I’m surprised that such little story and character development comes from director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter David Koepp. Edwards brought us one of the most thrilling conclusions to a non-trilogy Star Wars film where he expertly showed us why The Rebellion should be terrified of Darth Vader in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Koepp has many screenplay hits under his belt such as the original Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, and Spider-Man.
Do people still care about dinosaurs? Of course they do. They call back to childhood wonder for adults and spark the creative, explorative nature in kids.
Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett and Jonathan Bailey as Dr Loomis
© 2025 Universal Pictures
But a movie must be about more than realistic-looking, on-screen dino chaos. It must have a story that captivates us and characters we want to root for and against.
Jurassic World: Rebirth manages to take a thrilling concept and beat it into the ground so thoroughly that all that’s left is a fossilized echo of what once worked. Not even a second Snickers could save it.
Rated: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language and a drug reference.
Running Time: 2h 14m
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Written by: David Koepp
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Mahershala Ali, Manuel García-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iancono, Phillippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain
Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
