Jurassic World: Rebirth isn’t a perfect summer blockbuster by any stretch, but it’s a considerable improvement over the last couple of entries in the franchise that spawned it. After a dreadful pair of overstuffed, world building legacy sequels, it’s refreshing to see that returning writer David Koepp (coming back to the series after penning the original 1993 landmark effort and The Lost World) and new director Gareth Edwards (the exceptional 2014 Godzilla, Monsters, Rogue One) have decided to make Jurassic World: Rebirth into a stand alone adventure. It’s still overstuffed, clunky, and averse to basic human logic, but it also has a lot more entertainment value than the films that followed the first Jurassic World and moves the series back to its suspenseful and intense roots.
It’s five years after the events in Jurassic World: Dominion (but you don’t need to have seen that to understand this, thankfully), and most of the free roaming dinosaurs of the world are dying off as a result of the changed global climate, evolved diseases, and general loss of livable spaces. The bulk of the dinosaurs that survive live on a band of uninhabited islands located around the equator, where the temperature is more in line with what the world was like during their original era. On one of the islands is a top secret research facility that once conducted genetic experiments on dinosaurs to create hybrid, advanced beasts. Things didn’t go well there, and now these mash-up creatures roam free.
Enter mercenary-for-hire Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), who’s been laying low after a botched mission in Yemen leaves her shaken. She’s approached by slimy big pharmaceutical suit Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to put a team together to secretly infiltrate the off-limits island to collect DNA samples from three of the biggest dinosaurs still alive (one sea dwelling, one flying, one on land); key ingredients for a lucrative new drug that could put an end to heart disease. Krebs offers the reluctant Zora and her team more money than they could’ve dreamed to take the job, bringing along a civilian dinosaur behaviour expert (Jonathan Bailey) to round out the squad. In typical franchise fashion, not everything goes according to plan, the corporate guy is more evil than anyone anticipated, and a wrench is thrown into their plans when their ship’s captain (Mahershala Ali) decides to rescue a family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, Audrina Miranda, and David Iacono) whose sailboat capsized after a run-in with a dinosaur.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is a retreat to the basics of the franchise, and it’s a smart decision. There’s a clear objective, a core group of characters, and the script plays to the franchise’s greatest strengths. If you’re in the mood for watching people trying to carefully outsmart creatures that want to eat them, gnarly kills that push the boundaries of the franchise mandated PG-13 rating, and large scale set pieces of dino destruction that boast top of the line visual effects, Edwards has audiences covered. Jurassic World: Rebirth succeeds in making the dinosaurs frightening again, offering up some of the best action sequences in the franchise since the original. Edwards’ talents as an accomplished visual storyteller also work wonders for Jurassic World: Rebirth, because it’s the best looking film since Spielberg had the reigns, including some of the best skylines and wide shots in any major studio production this year. In addition to reintroducing the scares, Edwards also finds a way to bring back a sense of wonderment that has been missing for ages from these films.
There are a lot of positives to Jurassic Park: Rebirth, but also plenty of things that hold it back from being on the level of the franchise’s best. Most of the dinosaurs on display aren’t the classics that viewers have come to expect, but rather genetic mutations with dumb names (D-Rex, Mutadon), so they’re more monsters than anything else. Attempts to give the characters some emotional depth are forced and inorganic, as evidenced by sequences where Johansson and Ali’s grizzled veterans have to talk about their feelings and traumas, a scene that grinds everything to a wheezy halt. The inclusion of a family and children in peril is a staple of the franchise, but for most of the film, the stuff involving them and the mercenary plot line are happening divorced from one another, meaning both stories are struggling to carve out their own path and leading to stop-start pacing. Both stories are good enough, but Koepp’s screenplay has been cobbled together from two different ideas being stitched together. But even with the bloated running time, more padding than advisable, and a slow start that keeps the dinos mostly at bay for the first third, Jurassic World: Rebirth remains preferable to any amount of half-assed, corporatized world building.
Jurassic World: Rebirth isn’t the kind of film where you go in expecting award worthy performances, but everyone shows up to put in a full shift. Johansson is a credible action hero lead, Bailey charms, Ali adds warmth, and Friend is a villain that’s easy to hate (and laugh at their misfortunes). They banter effectively together and ground the story in something relatable and human. Rulfo makes a great father figure, and Miranda is a good combination of precious and smart as the family’s youngest. But the biggest impression here is made by Iacono, playing the slacker, stoner boyfriend of the family’s eldest daughter, who’s given the lion’s share of comedic relief moments, including several line readings that absolutely kill and one set piece that’s so bizarre and well handled that it’s hard not to admire it.
None of this makes a ton of sense, the motivations and attitudes of the characters change based on the wind direction, and all of it is unnecessary, but after awhile the sheer spirit of Jurassic World: Rebirth won me over. I can’t praise it as a full on return to form, or even as a great film, but I can value it as a well done monster movie. Like many summer blockbusters it works on the most basic entertainment level possible, and I can appreciate that. I’d rather have a well done bit of mindless entertainment over a bad movie any day. I would also rather have this over the last couple of entries in this series.
Jurassic World: Rebirth opens in theatres everywhere on Wednesday, July 2, 2025.
