Rebirth, Reuse, Recycle: A Review of Jurassic World’s latest Attraction
Jurassic World: Rebirth returns to the series’ roots, but the results lack bite.
“Boy, this sure does feel like the seventh Jurassic Park movie,”
Such was my prevailing thought while watching Jurassic World: Rebirth, the latest, and, yes, seventh entry since 1993. If my knowledge of movie sequel law is correct, then the next one should be “Jurassic World: T-Rex Takes Manhattan.”
We get a glimpse of that premise during a scene where a dying brachiosaurus causes a traffic jam in front of the Brooklyn bridge. One of the top few emotionally compelling images, and an apt metaphor for the series after the lukewarm reception to 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion.
More than thirty years have past since the Ingen corporation first cloned these prehistoric animals as doomed theme park attractions. Now they live around the globe in dwindling numbers, as we are told via opening text, they’ve proven to be mostly incompatible with modern Earth’s atmosphere. Not that the people of this “Neo-Jurassic” era really cares about dinosaurs anymore. Where once there was wonder has now turned into indifference, even annoyance. Now these once magical seeming animals are treated like pests rather than miracles.
“I mean, yeah, RIP, and all, but can you hurry it up?” So, muses Martin (Rupert Friend), a pharmaceutical exec and the main instigator of our latest Jurassic adventure when he offers former private security specialist Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and her team of former mercenaries, including ship captain Duncan (Mahershala Ali), the lucrative task of going to one of the few islands along the equator where the dinosaurs still thrive to collect blood samples from the three largest ones, so his can use company can use their bio-data manufacture a cure for heart disease. Oh, and theres also a paleontologist named Dr. Henry Loomis (Johnathan Bailey), because we need at least one of those.
Then there’s the second movie starring the Delgado family, led by Reuben (Manuel Garcia Rulfo), his two daughters, and the eldest one’s seemingly-good-for-nothing boyfriend, who just happen to be sailing by that very island when they are attacked by the Mosasaurs (finally getting to do something after two movies of glorified cameos) and wind up stranded. Of course, Zora and her crew happen by to pick them up, and after tussle with the Mosasaur and his Spinosaurus gang, both groups end up shipwrecked.
Rather than stick together, the two groups veer off into their own separate plot lines. While they do come back together for the third act, for most of the runtime we switch back and forth between the meets and Delgados like we’re switching between two different movies, as though the filmmakers could not decide whether to go with the mercenary story of the family drama. It is puzzling how little connective narrative tissue there is between them, and it makes the pacing feels stuttered and the narrative weak.
There is even a kind of third narrative. See, when the movie first opens we get a flashback to when the island was an R&D site for Ingen's hybrid dinosaur program, and it’s here we’re introduced to a deformed Tyrannosaur that looks like a cross between the Rancor from Star Wars, and El Gigante from Resident Evil 4: the D-Rex. Yet after an admittedly impressive introduction, he disappears for an hour a half. We’ve done this whole hybrid/mutant dinosaur thing a couple of times now, and while appreciate the attempt to bring back the elements of horror missing since the first movie, the D-Rex and his fellow half-raptor, half-pterodactyl cronies the Mutadons, don’t really show up until the last act, there isn’t enough of it, and what there is feels handcuffed by obligatory PG-13 rating.
Of all these plot lines, I found the dinosaur blood quest to be the most compelling. Because while it does feel like a video game quest-line, it was at least something I hadn’t seen before. We’ve done the whole hybrid/mutant dinosaur thing a couple of times now. The Delgado family drama feels like a series obligation, and I got the sense based on a few dropped lines about their life back home that there was a lot more to their story that got left on the cutting room floor. But that is just a theory.
This lack of an original narrative wouldn’t even be that bad if we at least had a reason to care about any of these people. This is the blandest, most cookie-cutter, line them up for the buffet group of potential dino-chow in any of these movies. The cast from the first film may not have had much depth, but they were at least memorable and felt like an ensemble. Alan Grant is a curmudgeon who loves digging up fossils and hates kids, then he learns he might like being a parent after he rescues Lex, a computer hacker and surly teen, and her dinosaur obsessed younger brother. Zora? She’s a mercenary who wants money to retire, I think one of her friends may have died. And when she doesn’t even seem to remember the Delgados existence most of the time. The only lesson she learns is never follow a pharmaceutical executive to an. isolated island. You don’t need to get knocked-off a cliff by a quetzalcoatlus to figure that one out.
The script was written by David Koepp, who penned the first two Jurassic Park movies as well as Blackbag, one of my favorites of 2025 so far, and whose screenplay I greatly admired. Which is why I was so disheartened that the writing here is so lukewarm. There are no risks, clever lines, or a single believable human moment. This is one of the most disinterested plots in any of these movies so far, and if you’ve seen Jurassic Park III, then you know that is saying something.
A few weeks ago, James Gunn gave an interview where he said one of the biggest problems facing modern Hollywood is movies going into productions before having their scripts locked down. I don’t know if that is what happened here, but it does feel like they produced the action pieces, then brought someone in to make up a story that could tie them together.
I will admit, however, that those action scenes can be pretty fun when taken individually. If all you want from your Jurassic Park or World movie is watch cool dinosaurs do cool dinosaur things while people run screaming, then you will get your money’s worth. The T-Rex rafting sequence is one of the most thrilling set-pieces one of these movies have had in a while (based on one of the few non-adapted ideas from Crichton’s original novel). I also did king of dig on the mutants, but that might be because they remind of those awesome toys Kenner made back in the day.
That these sequences work as well as they do can at least partially be attributed to director Gareth Edward’s, whose knack for naturally blending CGI with live action in a style more grounded and seamless way than most of his contemporaries has always stood out to me. I don’t have the technical knowledge to explain how he does it, but it’s a noticeable signature you can find in all his movies. Unfortunately, technical prowess over compelling storytelling is also a signature of his. In his last movie, The Creator, he built a dense sci-fi world, but without any compelling characters to live in it, a problem that was also present in his work on both Star Wars and Godzilla, where it felt like the characters served the effect rather than the other way around.
Despite what the beginning of the movie may claim, I really don’t think people will ever get sick of dinosaurs. Therefore, dinosaurs at the movies are here to stay. I suppose that makes Jurassic Park 8 inevitable (side-note: drop the World and bring back the Park). This franchise needs something to save it from future extinction. Let’s start with a cast of characters where we want to see them not get eaten.