Jurassic World Rebirth is the seventh – yes, seventh – installment in what is arguably the most well-known depiction of dinosaurs ever created. Nobody really knows if we’ll ever reach a point in cloning to revive the ancient colossal beings, but Steven Spielberg got pretty damn close with his 1993 masterpiece, Jurassic Park. Arguably the most recognizable adaptation of author Michael Crichton‘s works, the original Jurassic Park is practically perfect in every way, but you probably knew that already. A challenging ethical narrative, human characters you actually care about, and jaw-dropping special effects that still hold up today make it a timeless classic that stands the test of a land before time.
Being the hit that it was, it’s unsurprising – and upsetting, depending on who you ask – that the 1993 original soon spawned a sprawling franchise. The Spielberg-directed The Lost Kingdom: Jurassic Park exhausted the original source material in more ways than one, and the critical failure of Jurassic Park III put the series in hibernation for a number of years. Universal successfully shocked the franchise back to life with the record-breaking and decently entertaining Jurassic World, but things immediately went downhill again with arguably the worst installment of the series, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Not even solid directing from J.A. Bayona could save a script that fundamentally misunderstands the thesis of the original, and the downward spiral only continued with the sixth and once-final installment, Jurassic World Dominion. “Final” until Universal remembered how much money these movies make and fast-tracked the seventh installment, Jurassic World Rebirth, which overall manages to be a passable, if not unnecessary, stomp in the right direction.
What Is ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ About?
The world left behind by Jurassic World Dominion is a much different place than in Jurassic World Rebirth, with most of the globe’s dinosaur population struggling to survive in the modern world. The human population isn’t doing too great either, which is why pharmaceutical sleazebag Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) hires charismatic mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), neurotic paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), and suave boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) for an important mission – collecting DNA samples from three of the largest dinosaurs on Earth that could lead to unprecedented medical advancement. Conveniently enough, all three of these dinosaur species coexist on the same island, which is yet another secret location left behind by InGen for their various attempts at amusement parks. Once the team arrives, however, they soon learn why this island was abandoned and come face-to-face with some creatures that send fear down even a T. rex’s spine.
Bar a few niche examples, it’s business as usual for the Jurassic series, which is both a brachiosaurus-sized gift and a tyrannosaurus rex-sized curse for Jurassic World Rebirth. The only colossal change that Rebirth makes to the more expansive Jurassic Park universe gets about as close to retconning Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom as it can get, perhaps making that film’s already abysmal ending even worse, making the prior trilogy’s cast of characters almost irredeemable. Everything else follows the usual beats of the more vintage Jurassic works. While it retreads a lot of familiar territory, original Jurassic Park writer David Koepp, who returns for the newest installment after several decades, proves to be the right choice to reboot the series, at least from a tonal standpoint. Koepp successfully manages to bring the original’s sense of romantic tragedy to the film that the last two installments in particular got too far away from, treating its legendary dinos (the non-mutant ones anyway) as wild animals who make decisions on an instinctual survival basis rather than as weird character archetypes.
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Where Jurassic World Rebirth stumbles is in its derivative characters and some abominably slow pacing. All the performances are solid, with Mahershala Ali standing out as the most charming, but their characters are about as bare-bones as the dinosaur Dr. Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Sattler (Laura Dern) are digging up in the first movie. This is in spite of one scene where Zora and Duncan have an entire conversation about people from their past, for whom we get zero context and never even get mentioned ever again. The film’s obligatory “this creepy guy is a villain” moment is also about as fig of a twist as a straight line.
Pacing-wise, Jurassic World Rebirth moves at a snail’s pace, with almost the entire first half of the movie taking place on a boat instead of a dinosaur-infested island. Things somehow get even slower when an entire new family’s worth of characters, who are mostly completely separate from the aforementioned crew, are introduced. They only serve to make an already slow-moving movie even slower, only adding a genuinely pretty funny comic relief character and a cute little dinosaur companion who desperately wants to be the next Baby Yoda, substance or not. The pacing becomes even more jarring in an ending that keeps the slow pace for a good portion before things rush to a halt in a speedy and unsatisfying conclusion.
Narrative Problems Aside, Gareth Edwards’ Direction Is the Star of ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’
Jurassic World Rebirth also has a new director at the helm with Gareth Edwards, who has plenty of experience directing epic sci-fi tales with films like Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Creator. Even if he’s completely behind the camera, Edwards is the true star of Jurassic World Rebirth, as his signature sense of scale serves him remarkably well here. While the slow moments with bland character drama fall flat, Edwards locks in during the film’s few notable action setpieces, utilizing plenty of creative camera placement and blocking to create some of the most tense and suspenseful sequences the series has had since the original movie, thus also making it one of the scariest in recent memory. Some of the classical movie monster shots are genuinely breathtaking at points, even if sometimes a suspension of disbelief is required, such as when a T. rex manages to do a magic trick and completely disappears from thin air. It’s also a much more vibrant, colorful, and visually appealing movie, especially when the last few entries seemed hell-bent on this gray and sepia-tone color palette.
Edwards even manages to make the now-notorious D. rex look intimidating, even though it may be the single most out-of-place creature the series has introduced yet. For starters, the “genetically engineered super-dinosaur” schtick is getting old, as there have already been two movies that introduced hybrid dinos that look much more in line with the Jurassic aesthetic. The D. rex looks like some bizarre concept art from an Alien movie, and it never gets a chance to feel like a distinct and memorable monster. The decision to only keep the film’s big marketing creature at the very beginning and the very end of the movie also makes its conclusion in general feel superfluous.
‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Isn’t the Worst Jurassic Movie, But It May Be the Most Pointless
The biggest compliment that can be given to Jurassic World Rebirth is how it accomplishes its emulation of the tone that made this franchise such a beloved one to begin with. In large part, thanks to Edwards’ mesmerizing eye for visual splendor, no other film in the Jurassic World timeframe of the series has been able to strike that ever-so-difficult combination of whimsy and wonder mixed with horror and terror. It might take a little longer than it should to get to the dinosaur setpieces, but when they hit, they hit hard, and they filled this reviewer with something close to that warm and fuzzy feeling we all had when we first saw these CGI wonders in 1993.
But that’s also part of the problem. While the film does make the admirable attempt to keep connections to the other movies at a minimum, the actual events still feel overly reminiscent of things we’ve seen already. Awe at the long-necked dinos? That’s one of the most famous scenes from the original. A secret island used for testing? That’s just from The Lost World. A hybrid/mutant dino that becomes the big threat? We got that both in the first Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom. While it has some standout moments that will make fans happier than a T. rex in a goat farm, Jurassic World Rebirth never really feels like it justifies its existence, and that might just be because the Jurassic franchise isn’t one that’s ripe for worldbuilding and innovation.
Regardless, we’ll almost certainly get another one of these movies one day, so is Jurassic World Rebirth a stomp in the right direction at the very least? Tonally and visually, absolutely, as it’s the first Jurassic movie in a long time to capture the unique look and feel of the series’ glory days. Narratively and pacing-wise, though, there are a lot of problems, and a lot of that seem motivated by this series’ constant urge to make bigger and badder dinos, even if they aren’t always better. There’s some fun to be had here, but overall, Jurassic World Rebirth feels indicative that this franchise is not dissimilar from what the original film is trying to say about the ethics of cloning dinosaurs. Another one coming back might sound exciting or even revolutionary, but the hypothesis around the scenario never seems to account for the practicality. For the dinosaurs, it was being let loose into a modern world that they and their human neighbors were woefully unprepared for. For the Jurassic film series, it is a seemingly endless cycle of movies being made because they can be and not because they should be.
Jurassic World Rebirth roars into theaters on July 2.
‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ is not extinct on arrival, but it may be time for this series to be laid to rest and preserved.
- Release Date
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July 2, 2025
- Runtime
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134 Minutes
- Writers
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David Koepp, Michael Crichton
- Gareth Edwards does a marvelous job from the director’s chair.
- Great action sequences that bring the series back to its horror/thriller.
- David Koepp’s script feels more in line with the balanced tone and themes of the original.
- Far too long with slow pacing and too many generic conversations.
- The human characters lack depth and development.
- The D. rex is an out-of-place addition to the series.