Review: Jurassic World Rebirth

Synopsis
Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.

What We Thought:

If I had high expectations for Jurassic World Rebirth then it would surpass 28 Years Later as my biggest disappointment for 2025, but since I didn’t even watch the trailer I had no expectations for it. Somehow even without expectations it did nothing for me. It’s easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen this year.

The biggest issue with the film is that it’s unnecessary. Sure you can say that about a lot of movies especially sequels, but this adds nothing to the franchise. When Jurassic World revised the Jurassic Park series it brought in new characters, but with a similar world building. This tries doing that with new characters as well, but it has no world building. It’s years after the events of the last Jurassic World movie with dinosaurs living on Earth, but more secluded. There’s no legacy characters in it and it’s more an adventure film than Jurassic Park/World story.

The story is about hired black ops types and a museum nerd trying to get blood from three of the biggest dinosaurs still around so they can make a medication for heart patients. I’m literally a heart patient in real life so it should have resonated with me, but it didn’t. The problem is, they bring in a family towards the beginning of the adventure who are absolutely unnecessary. I wanted the father, two daughters and stoner boyfriend killed immediately. They are tacked on for no reason. I didn’t need humanity in this film because it’s not set in a park so you don’t need a family or real world risk. The adventure was about the blood samples, the family was useless to that plot. It could have been fun like Brendan Fraser’s The Mummy series or even Indiana Jones.

If you got rid of the family it might have worked. The black ops and museum nerd go on their adventure to get blood, things go sideways, some die, some survive, the world is safer with better heart pills, the end. That should have been the movie. Throw in a few Easter eggs for JP/JW fans and call it a day. Instead we got a boring film with only one decent action set piece (the T-Rex of course).

That’s another issue with Jurassic World Rebirth, no one involved in it seems to like dinosaurs. The film is about mutant dinosaurs and not cool ones. We remember the T-Rex, raptors, Indominus Rex and previous dinosaurs in the franchise, but we’ll laugh at the new ones in this. The mutant D-Rex looks ridiculous as does most of the CGI in the film. Between the subpar story, bad script, bad acting and lackluster score, there is nothing I can even praise in the latest film from the franchise. I hope it’s the last one for a while because none of these characters should return. We won’t care about these characters or any of the events that take place in the movie. I really don’t think diehards will like it.

Cast:
Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Ed Skrein

Director:
Gareth Edwards

Screenplay by:
David Koepp, based on characters created by Michael Crichton