Review:
"Jurassic World Rebirth"
Release Date: July 1, 2025 Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 133 minutes Another Jurassic Park/World sequel, another wasted opportunity. After that T-Rex demolished the Port of San Diego at the end of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, hopes grew that we would soon watch cloned dinosaurs take a bite out of the Big Apple or stomp Tokyo, Godzilla style. But the promise offered by The Lost World remains unfulfilled seven films into the franchise, with the new Jurassic World Rebirth once again taking the action back to the jungles where it all started. Well, not quite. Deftly directed by Godzilla and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’s Gareth Edwards, Rebirth follows an illegal scientific expedition to Ile Saint-Hubert, the remote island where Jurassic Park parent company InGen experimented on and crossbred dinosaurs. Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion and the dinosaur population around the world has begun to die out, with Ile Saint-Hubert one of the few places where John Hammond’s creations still thrive. The purpose of the expedition—led by Jonathan Bailey’s paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis and Scarlett Johansson’s mercenary Zora Bennett—is to retrieve DNA and blood samples from three of the biggest surviving dinosaurs in a bid to find a cure for heart disease. Rebirth adds nothing new or inventive to a well-worn franchise as Johansson, Bailey, and the rest of this sequel’s new cast track down and then become prey for the dinosaurs they seek in the ocean, on land, and in the air. While more mission specific than past entries, Rebirth quickly falls into the same old routine of forcing its island interlopers to run around a jungle and then hide in and around a research center to avoid being devoured by dinosaurs. There’s even one sequence in a supply store that too closely resembles Jurassic Park’s kitchen encounter with those pesky raptors. And, of course, there’s the inevitable subplot about the expedition team having to rescue and then protect a family shipwrecked at sea. Which allows screenwriter David Koepp—returning to the franchise for the first time since Jurassic Park and The Lost World—to once again indulge in terrorizing a pre-teen with no business being near an island that’s home to some very hungry dinosaurs. That said, Koepp knows what works when it comes to the franchise he helped originate with Steven Spielberg, and he plunders the best of both Jurassic Park and The Lost World to keep the proceedings moderately intriguing and the stakes high. Still, Koepp remains limited to where he can take Rebirth because of the franchise-altering events of the Jurassic World trilogy headlined by Chris Pine and Bryce Dallas Howard, so Rebirth always feels more of an addendum than a new beginning. And the mutant dinosaurs are disappointing creations, especially the dreaded D-Rex, which looks like the human–xenomorph hybrid from Alien: Romulus in dinosaur form. Luckily, Rebirth benefits from the presence of Gareth Edwards, who knows a thing or two about rampaging giant creatures having followed up his 2010 directorial debut Monsters with 2014’s Godzilla. If he seemed too tentative to reveal Godzilla in all its glory in that inaugural Monsterverse entry, Edwards shows no hesitation in putting the dinosaurs front and center in Rebirth when necessary. He executes Rebirth’s multiple dinosaur encounters with command and intensity, especially the ocean attack on the expedition boat by a territorial Mosasaurus and a river chase involving a ravenous T-Rex. While many of the cast members end up inside the belly of the beast, Edwards refrains from offering any kills scene that are as cruel or as prolonged as the assistant’s death in Jurassic World. And, as he did with Monsters, Edwards takes time to show his awe at some of the magnificent creatures on display in Rebirth. The fresh cast also invigorates Rebirth—no more of Chris Pratt running off in search of his beloved Blue. Scarlett Johansson eases back into Black Widow mode as the take-charge mercenary with a conscience. Wicked’s Jonathan Bailey’s brings a mixture of fear and astonishment to a paleontologist who finally receives his opportunity to see dinosaurs in the wild. Rupert Friend channels Paul Reiser’s Carter J. Burke from Aliens as the equally slimy and unscrupulous corporate executive Martin Krebs. Sadly, Mahershala Ali has little to do as noble ship captain Duncan Kincaid the moment Rebirth moves from ocean to land. And the rescued family in Rebirth—led by The Lincoln Lawyer’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo—is nothing more than a distraction. Whether the core of the new cast returns for future installations remains to be seen. Rebirth does not explicitly follow Jurassic World in setting up a new trilogy—it feels more than a standalone installment with an unambiguous ending. But, as we all know, you can’t keep a cloned dinosaur down, so the franchise will continue in one form or another. But for it to survive beyond Rebirth, the franchise must venture into uncharted territory. Perhaps the concrete jungles of the United States … Aired: July 2, 2025. Web site: https://www.jurassicworld.com/ |
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