Jurassic World: rebirth
Released July 2, 2025
Directed by Gareth Edwards
Written by David Koepp
* No Spoilers - but I do touch on the basics of the plot *
Jurassic Park was the first movie I ever saw in theatres, while not as obsessed with dinosaurs as I was then, I am a lifelong fan and will always come back to this franchise…even when I know it won’t recapture the magic of Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece. I’ve long given up expecting anything close to that, especially with how the Jurassic World series was. Fallen Kingdom and Dominion were trainwrecks. Still, with Rebirth being a soft reboot, part of me had a sliver of hope.
A new cast of A-listers. No real connection to the past films. Gareth Edwards directing. David Koepp writing (yes, the same guy who co-wrote the original). This was a real chance to start fresh. I didn’t expect greatness, but I expected better than this.
There’s no story. None. The plot is a glorified video game fetch quest. The characters are sent to collect DNA samples from three dinosaurs. They do it. They leave. That’s the movie. There’s a weak attempt at adding stakes, with samples being used to potentially cure heart disease but it’s just an excuse to find the dinosaurs. There’s no tension beyond the immediate survival monster-movie situations, no intrigue, no real questions raised or answered. Sure, there’s a single conversation about our species’ place in nature, and a vague nod to greed and the ethics of scientific research, but that’s it. It’s hollow, flat, and pointless. Just a series of set pieces loosely stitched together.
Fine, a movie can be a series of cool action sequences, but if that’s all it is, it better have some other hook. It better have purpose. This has neither. It’s just noise. Quoting Ian Malcolm: “They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think whether or not they should.” That line sums it up perfectly. This movie shouldn’t have been made, it offers nothing new, unique, or interesting.
The characters are insufferable. Every last one of them. There’s zero development. No arcs. No growth. Just exposition dumps and hints at backstories that never go anywhere. People die, but you don’t care. The film doesn’t give you a reason to. The only “growth” we get is from a comic relief side character, the loveable idiot who turns out to be more loveable and less of an idiot. That’s it. And it’s not enough.
Mahershala Ali (The Green Book) is one of the best actors working today. He’s good here but he has absolutely nothing to work with. Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton/Wicked), the obligatory scientist on the mission, delivers a few philosophical monologues that sound good but have no connection to the plot. Rupert Friend (Companion) as Krebs had potential, he could’ve been the darker version of Hammond from the novels, but the movie doesn’t commit and leaves those threads undercooked and surface level. Scarlett Johansson (Fly Me to the Moon), a massive star and draw for audiences, delivers one of her worst performances in recent memory. Her character is smarmy and has an inexplicable smirk throughout most of her dialogue. None of it works.
The humour is abysmal. The timing is off, the tone is inconsistent, and the jokes, especially after serious moments, are the cringey quips that people criticize Marvel for. Speaking of which, why are we still doing hybrids? Dinosaurs are already cool. This franchise made them cool. I don’t need weird bulbous-headed creatures that look like Rancor knockoffs. The only velociraptor in the movie is blurred out in the background before being immediately killed by a hybrid.
The direction from Gareth Edwards is mixed but overall strong in the dinosaur action sequences. There’s a T-Rex river chase straight out of Crichton’s original novel that’s brilliantly staged and full of tension. The Jaws inspired water scene was also tense and exciting. In isolation, these scenes work, but without stakes, without characters you care about, and without a meaningful through-line, they’re just spectacle. Tension for tension’s sake. The execution is impressive, buut it doesn’t matter if nothing means anything.
Visually, the movie looks great. It’s a little over-saturated and digitally glossy for my taste, but the cinematography is beautiful. There’s one genuinely “wow” moment, when we see the herd of giant Titanosaurs it’s a slower moment full of awe, probably the only memorable scene that was not action focused, yet it was still derivative of the original Brachiosaurus reveal from Jurassic Park. Sound design is excellent too: the clanks, the growls, the snapping jaws, all spot on. The score is functional, with the reused original Jurassic Park theme the only one that hits emotionally. Unfortunately, even that is used poorly. They drop it way too early when the characters are just arriving. You can’t use that theme if you haven’t earned it. It’s just manipulative nostalgia bait.
The older films were groundbreaking both in the technology as well as elevating the action monster movie to something truly deep, philosophical, and more than just thrills and spectacle. Rebirth is so far from that legacy, it’s a shameless milking of a franchise that’s already had three sub-par sequels. To quote Ian Malcolm again, “[They] stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you’re selling it, you wanna sell it.”
Rebirth is a disjointed mess of disconnected scenes and missed opportunities. It teases ideas, sets up characters with potential, but follows through on none of them. There’s no character work, no thematic weight, and no reason for it to exist beyond putting more dinosaurs on screen. And yeah, I love dinosaurs. They’re cool. They’ll always be cool, but that’s not enough, not anymore…and hybrids monsters are not the answer.
In the end, this felt a lot like Jurassic Park III, flat, basic, pointless. but somehow with less personality. I want to say this is worse but dinosaurs are still awesome and a few sequences are genuinely exciting. It’s been three years since Dominion, ten since Jurassic World, and I don’t want any more of these movies if they’re going to be hollow like this. My expectations were low but even those weren’t met.
5/10* - In keeping with using Ian Malcolm quotes I think one really sums it up, “That’t one big pile of shit!”
* Honestly could be lower, but it earns at least a full point because I still love dinosaurs and the action scenes are good.
A spoiler-free review of the character-driven drama Marvel’s First Family has always deserved.