Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Premise: Set five years after Jurassic World: Dominion, a group of mercenaries and a shipwrecked family are stranded on an island populated by dinosaurs.
What Works: Jurassic World: Rebirth continues its predecessor’s trend of reworking the concepts of the first three Jurassic Park films. The first Jurassic World was a reboot of the original Jurassic Park and Fallen Kingdom was a superior version of The Lost World. Rebirth borrows a lot from Jurassic Park III and in some respects it is superior to the 2000 dinosaur picture. The better Jurassic films possess a mix of adventure, horror, and wonder and sections of Rebirth recapture those elements. There are a few standout set pieces, namely a sequence in which the survivors raft downriver while pursued by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The characters of Rebirth are likable enough. The highlight of the human side of this movie is the shipwrecked family. A father and his two daughters are stranded with the older daughter’s lay about boyfriend. The tense relationship between the two men adds some humanity to the movie and the boyfriend must rise to the occasion. The opening of Rebirth introduces an interesting idea. Fallen Kingdom unleashed dinosaurs upon the world but in Rebirth humanity has lost interest, regarding the animals as pests, and many of the dinosaurs are dying due to their inadaptability to the contemporary climate.
What Doesn’t: The new ideas that Rebirth suggests never really go anywhere. The conceit of dinosaurs going extinct again is at best tangential to the story and a way to force the action back to the equatorial islands. It’s a frustrating step backward for the series. Fallen Kingdom aggressively moved the Jurassic franchise forward, closing the door on returning to Isla Nublar. Rebirth undoes all of that for no good reason except to return to the familiar. And that is the key flaw of Rebirth. The movie feels like a greatest hits reel, rehashing scenarios we’ve seen in six other movies. Nothing about it feels fresh or inspired. The pacing is start and stop. Rebirth plays as though its set pieces were created separately from the rest of the film and the human moments are bland filler. Unfortunately there is a lot of that. The film is slow to get going and the human characters are mostly flat and uninteresting.
Bottom Line: Jurassic World: Rebirth is a competent but bland rehash. It is the kind of sequel that exists solely because of the familiarity of the brand rather than any creative inspiration. All the familiar Jurassic elements are there and it is satisfactorily entertaining but the film feels hollow.
Episode: #1056 (July 13, 2025)