Jurassic World Rebirth review
The sixth Jurassic Park sequel is one of the better ones. If that hold any meaning to you whatsoever.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Jurassic World Rebirth
Directed by Gareth Edwards
Written by David Koepp
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise and David Iacono
Jurassic World Rebirth Review
What are people looking for in a Jurassic Park movie in 2025? That’s the question I kept coming back to while watching the seventh installment of the long running franchise. Jurassic Park was amazing. It was also 32 years ago. The arguments surrounding which of the other five films ranked second have always felt like they’ve had to come with a lot of qualifiers and asterisks. Are any of the sequels good? A couple of them are fun. Most of them have some memorable moments. Overall…I think I enjoy the series. But…are any of these movies, save Spielberg’s original, good? You might be sitting here saying “this is crazy…The Lost World is good!” or “I love Jurassic World!” or…well…actually I can’t imagine anyone jumping on their soapbox to expel the hidden virtues of any other installment.
If you feel that way about either of those films…I’m happy for you. I’m even happier to report that you now have another flawed but entertaining picture to add into the argument for the second best Jurassic Park movie. Jurassic World Rebirth sets out to answer the question that opened this review. I’m not sure it ever manages to…but it has a lot of things going for it anyway.
First, there is…for the first time in what feels like forever…a good reason for people to return to an island where scientific experimentation led to unstoppable dino-killing machines. Jurassic World Rebirth tasks its quasi-heroes with attaining living blood samples from three monstrous creatures…so they can be used as the basis for a drug that will save lives. A clean cut…efficient…meaningful reason for humans to interact with dinosaurs. What’s left of them, anyway. Most of the dinos running around have begun to die off. The only sustainable place they’ve flourished is around the equator. We are told this a dozen times in the first twenty minutes for some reason.
One such place is a facility that was going a little extra-Frankenstein with the creatures. Crossbreeding mutated genetic freaks and leaving them to their own devices when something called a D-Rex escaped containment and ran amok. I’d hoped to see a lot of mutated dinosaurs running around…but the D-Rex and his multiple long limbs and head that looked like a T-Rex had a baby with an alien from the Alien franchise is the main one. There are others, of course, but the D-Rex becomes the group’s inevitable antagonist.
That group is actually two groups. Zora (Scarlett Johansson) leads a troupe of mercenaries that includes Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and the in over his head, not at all a mercenary, but excited to be their Dr. Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). Yes. Dr. Loomis. The three characters and their respective actors are a highlight of Jurassic World Rebirth. They elevate some of the same silly decision making and odd choices we see in all these movies. The second group is a family that the mercenaries save when their boat is capsized in the middle of the ocean. Most of the cute/funny moments come from this gang’s attempt to traverse the dangerous island.
Director Gareth Edwards rose to prominence with a pair of large creature movies. Monsters and Godzilla (2014). His uncanny ability to shoot fake kaiju from a ground level perspective makes him a natural choice to helm a Jurassic movie. You may recall seeing those same ground level shots in Rogue One…as At-Ats made their way through battle. I remember the trailer for that movie dropping and recognizing Edwards’ work immediately. He is surprisingly reserved with the trick in Jurassic World Rebirth…only unleashing it when it will have the most dramatic effect. Still, Edwards knows how to do large scale action scenes.
What he struggles with here is cutting down some unnecessary bloat. Jurassic World Rebirth starts off incredibly slowly. We hear about the equator a bunch of times…learn all about Zora and Duncan and Loomis…and then cut away to the family on their boat for what feels like a completely different story for a while. Seriously…I wondered more than once if they stuck the wrong reel on this part of the movie before remembering we don’t use film reels anymore. The dialog isn’t strong enough to cover the boredom of Jurassic World Rebirth’s first act.
Things pick up when the group closes in on their first target. They require a sample from the largest dinosaur on land, in the air and in the ocean. First up…a monstrous aquatic dinosaur for some hijinks on the high seas. There’s a thrilling scene that plays out as you’d imagine Quint would have liked things to had he ever acquired a boat big enough to take on his mighty adversary. From there…we’re off to the island of mutated dinosaurs for more blood heists and survival scenes. It’s certainly more entertaining than whatever Dominion was doing. And it is a lot less dark than Fallen Kingdom. It begs the question, however…is what people want from a Jurassic Park movie in 2025 to simply avoid as many of its predecessor’s pitfalls as possible?
If so…Jurassic World Rebirth is mostly a success. Not Jurassic Park level success, of course. But enough to firmly sit in that second tier that we all pretend to have conviction on which movies are good, actually. Rebirth overcomes enough of its slow start…and delivers enough fun moments…to land in the good with asterisks and qualifiers tier of the franchise. Which has always been enough to qualify for the top half of the sequels.
Scare Value
No one is going to recapture the magic of Jurassic Park. We’ll have to settle for movies that manage to avoid the missteps of the franchise’s lesser outings. Jurassic World Rebirth features a strong cast, mutated dinosaurs, a genuine purpose for sending people into danger…that’s better than half of them. And it’s about all we can ask for seven movies in.
3/5
Jurassic World Rebirth Link
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