Film Title: Jurassic World Rebirth
Director: Gareth Edwards
Writer: David Koepp
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein
Distribution: Universal Pictures
Release Date: July 2, 2025
Review by: Mother of Movies
This review discusses specific scenes and creature designs without revealing major plot points. If you prefer to go in completely fresh, bookmark this for later.
Director Gareth Edwards, known for his creature-feature mastery in Monsters and Rogue One, brings his visual prowess to the dinosaur playground, crafting spectacular sequences that remind us why this franchise remains beloved. Yet something fundamental feels missing from the genetic code.
The film opens with what can only be described as a Final Destination-esque moment of cosmic irony. A laboratory worker, munching on a chocolate bar while suited up in full hazmat gear, inadvertently triggers catastrophe when his wrapper gets sucked into the sophisticated door mechanism of a high-security dinosaur facility. It’s the kind of Rube Goldberg disaster that makes you question not just the engineering of these billion-dollar installations, but the basic common sense of anyone who’d snack during such precarious moments.
The resulting mayhem is heard rather than seen, with the worker’s screams echoing through corridors as teeth find flesh off-screen. This opening gambit exemplifies the film’s confused identity. The off-screen violence is clearly a purposeful choice. This franchise has always belonged to kids as much as adults, and keeping the gore implied rather than explicit maintains that accessibility. Yet the film seems torn between honoring this family-friendly tradition and trying to appeal to adult audiences with what the filmmakers presumably thought would be a scarier main antagonist.
The result feels mundane in both directions. The D-rex’s Giger-esque design has been done better in Alien, while the catalyst for chaos (a chocolate wrapper) feels disappointingly trivial for such a high-stakes scenario. That’s the point for Final Destination, but not Jurassic Park World.
Jurassic World Rebirth’s Nostalgic DNA Sequences
The film’s relationship with its predecessors borders on the obsessive. Remember that iconic moment from the original where a glass of water ripples with the approaching footsteps of a T. Rex? Rebirth serves up multiple variations on this theme. It’s franchise comfort food, delivered with the mechanical precision of a theme park ride. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the kitchen sequence that directly mirrors the original’s raptor stalking scenes.
Here, we watch a child and her sister squeeze into areas of the kitchen where the smaller child squeezes into an industrial fridge to escape prowling raptors. It echoes the cupboard hiding spot from Spielberg’s original. Somehow, the tension that made the original sequence legendary is absent. It’s the same setup executed with technical competence but missing the raw terror that made our hearts race decades ago.
Scarlett Johansson’s Zora Bennett anchors the film with the kind of steely determination we’ve come to expect from her action roles, though the script saddles her with exposition about Owen Grady’s out-of-movie death in a war bombing. It’s a clunky way to address Chris Pratt’s absence, and highlights how the film misses opportunities to bring back beloved characters like Blue or other almost-helpful dinosaurs from previous installments. Instead, we’re left with a budding romance between Zora and Jonathan Bailey’s Dr. Henry Loomis, the film’s newest dinosaur expert, who brings little beyond lectures about freeing science from financial advantage.
Where Jurassic World Rebirth’s Budget Actually Roared
When Rebirth hits the water, it truly comes alive. The aquatic dinosaur sequences represent the film’s crown jewel, a stunning showcase of creature design and practical effects that justify whatever astronomical budget Universal threw at this production. These naturally water-adapted prehistoric predators feel organically evolved, their movements through water captured with a fluid grace that makes every scene they inhabit pulse with danger.
The boat chase sequences in the first half are genuinely exhilarating, showcasing Edwards at his creature-feature best. It’s almost a shame when the action inevitably moves to land, driven by the plot necessity of retrieving blood samples from two other dinosaur species. The transition from the dynamic aquatic environment to terrestrial locations feels like trading the film’s greatest strength for more familiar franchise territory.
Edwards, whose background includes the oceanic terror of monsters emerging from the deep, seems most comfortable in these moments. The sound design during these sequences is particularly exceptional; the way sonar pings mix with creature calls creates an underwater soundscape that’s both beautiful and menacing. In a theater equipped with proper surround sound, these moments are genuinely immersive, pulling you into the aquatic prehistoric world in ways that feel fresh for the franchise. And the orchestra inclusion was worth the wait.
The Franchise’s Missing Educational DNA
What’s most frustrating about Rebirth is how it abandons one of the franchise’s core strengths, the educator characters who ground us in the science and wonder of these prehistoric creatures. Previous films succeeded because characters like Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm, or even Dr. Wu served as our guides into this world. Their paleontological expertise, botanical knowledge, and ethical concerns about genetic manipulation didn’t just provide exposition; they gave us the intellectual framework to understand what we were witnessing.
Despite the introduction of military personnel, a family unit, and covert operatives, we’re given very little context about the current state of dinosaur-human coexistence or the science behind these new creatures. The absence of a paleontologist or geneticist, someone to explain what we’re seeing and why it matters, is a noticeable gap. This feels especially important considering we’re told that leaving the country is both illegal and a “bad idea.” But who’s making these rules? Was there no vote? Anyone paying attention might’ve enforced stricter regulations about, say, crossing oceans. Oddly, no one seems particularly surprised, or not surprised, when it’s revealed that the dinosaurs have migrated to the water.
During the first attack, my attention drifted away from the central family, including Rueben’s daughter and her boyfriend, Xavier. Audrina, the daughter, even managed to adopt a pet mid-chaos, as one apparently does while running from prehistoric predators. That said, the family themselves were compelling, with well-drawn story arcs. Honestly, I could write an entire review just on their dynamic alone.
While Mahershala Ali (Duncan Kincaid) and Jonathan Bailey deliver solid supporting performances, none of these characters fills the educational void that feels essential to the franchise’s identity. Each previous installment, including the underappreciated Dominion and Fallen Kingdom, understood that part of the joy comes from learning alongside characters who can illuminate the science behind the spectacle. The film’s final act centers around the D-rex (Distortus rex), a six-limbed biomechanical nightmare that feels like H.R. Giger designed a T. rex after a fever dream. This hybrid represents the polar opposite of the film’s swarming and calculated aquatic creatures, where the water-adapted dinosaurs feel naturally evolved, the D-rex embodies pure manufactured horror.
It’s a concoction of multiple dinosaur DNA strands gone wrong, creating something genuinely unsettling in its twisted familiarity. Yet despite its nightmarish design, the creature feels underutilized, more like a design showcase than a fully realized antagonist with clear motivations or capabilities.
Jurassic World Rebirth’s Technical Excellence Can’t Mask Story Problems.
From a technical standpoint, Rebirth is undeniably impressive. Edwards’s eye for scale and composition serves the material well, particularly in establishing the vastness of these prehistoric environments. The orchestral score pays appropriate homage to John Williams’ iconic themes while introducing new motifs that signal approaching danger with Pavlovian efficiency. The performances, while solid, feel constrained by a script that’s more interested in moving pieces around a predetermined board than exploring character dynamics.
Johansson brings her A-game to material that doesn’t always deserve it, while Ali and Bailey feel underutilized given their considerable talents. What’s missing is the sense of wonder and scientific curiosity that made the original Jurassic Park feel like more than just a monster movie. The film touches on themes of not wasting your life and running out of time unless you build something meaningful, but these philosophical underpinnings never develop beyond surface-level acknowledgments.
Rebirth delivers stunning aquatic sequences that justify the price of admission, but fails to evolve beyond the shadow of its predecessors. For a franchise that has consistently found ways to evolve while honoring its roots, Rebirth feels oddly disconnected from the foundation that makes these films special. Each previous entry, from the original through Dominion, understood that the wonder comes not just from seeing dinosaurs, but from understanding them. The Dr. Grants and Malcolms bring the levels up. Sure, we got Loomis, but he didn’t get nearly enough screentime.
The dinosaurs, particularly the new aquatic species, continue to amaze and terrify in equal measure. It’s the human understanding that feels extinct. The film succeeds as a technical showcase and fails as a meaningful addition to the Jurassic mythology. Edwards has crafted something that looks and sounds like a Jurassic film but lacks the genetic material that made the originals feel alive. It’s evolution without purpose, spectacle without soul. Even though this feels like a rant instead of a rave, I still loved Jurassic World Rebirth. It feels like the exhale after the jump. They’re coming, and they can swim.
Jurassic World Rebirth Review – Evolution or Extinction for the Franchise?
Jurassic World Rebirth is rated:
4 Chocolate wrappers that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Out of 5
Read another review of Jurassic World Rebith on FlixChatter, or for another movie wth a giant beast, check out Beast or Boar (also brought to you by Universal Pictures).
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- Jurassic Park (1993)
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
- Jurassic Park III: (2001)
- Jurassic World (2015)
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
- Battle at Big Rock: (2019)
- Jurassic World Dominion: (2022)
- Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
