“Jurassic World Rebirth” (2025) is the seventh in the overall “Jurassic” franchise, fourth in the “Jurassic World” franchise and last in our hearts. Splurging on the best talent in front of and behind the camera, the longest film in the franchise bets on quality and quantity but winds up being the most forgettable of them all. Five years after “Jurassic World: Dominion” (2022), this standalone sequel and shameless reboot that no one asked for returns to the island of broken toys where mutated science experiment dinosaurs run free. An unscrupulous pharmaceutical company rep (redundant?), Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend, whom I always want to call Orlando Bloom) hires mercenaries with a heart of gold and a hot paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey from “Wicked”)—any relation to Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasance)—with Zora “Z” Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to retrieve DNA from the three biggest dinosaurs, but a shipwrecked family complicates their plan. Who will survive? No movie stars were harmed in the production of this film.
My top three in the franchise are obviously the original, “Jurassic Park” (1993), which still looks the best; “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” (1997) because Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his Black daughter, Kelly Curtis (Vanessa Chester), doing gymnastics to escape dinosaurs running amok in Los Angeles is so ridiculous how can I not love it; and last, but not least, the inexplicably gothic meets ”Dark Angel” experiment installment, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” (2018), which even Chris Pratt could not ruin for me. The last two may be considered the worst in the franchise, but I love the unexpected regardless of how absurd it is, and maybe because it swings so big that no one can call it unoriginal. “Jurassic World Rebirth” is “Jurassic Park” for people who never saw the original and have nothing to do for the week of July 4th.
I watch the “Jurassic” franchise for the dinosaurs, Sam Neil and Laura Dern, and the absurdity, and I barely got one. Neil’s character, Dr. Alan Grant, gets a name drop from nerdy hot doc, but it does not count. I personally was not looking for “The Island of Dr. Moreau” for dinosaurs. I’m old fashioned. I do not need dinosaur razzle dazzle, and the mutants look derivative so when Gareth Edwards lists his inspirations (Rancor from “Return of the Jedi” and the xenomorph among others), all I can say is, “Yeah, we know.” Additionally, I’d add that it is less xenomorph, and more sad sack final bis sib “Alien: Resurrection” (1997), which was not fun, but tragic the first time around.
I miss when we were a society, and all the dinosaurs had story arcs. You will have to settle for Dolores, a trafficked baby dinosaur where child labor laws were ignored, and the parents did not give permission for her to work on set. Free Dolores. There are some dinosaurs filmed without their consent while on dates who plan to sue. No intimacy coordinator. They were memorable and transcendent, but they did not appreciate the violation of their privacy. One scene took place in the ocean, which in dinosaur land is a stand your ground space, so two different species of dinosaurs became vigilantes and tried to kill everybody, but “Jurassic World Rebirth” played it off as if it was planned. It is bananas how the dinosaurs were not consulted more and exploited. One innocent dinosaur’s morning routine got ruined, and the filmmakers did not deliver a promised meal. The lawsuits from animal rights activists are going to rival the fallout from “It Ends With Us” (2024). The best part was conducting an informal, impromptu mirror test on one of the mutants. That one is going to be journaling for days and trying to explore their true identity. My favorite scenes are when the dinosaurs are clearly disgusted with their prey whether metal or an empty inflatable boat. In the old days, dinosaurs were professional actors who had an opportunity to develop their onscreen persona, but this day and age of just throwing dinosaurs into a film without preparation or all the signed releases means that this generation’s line of dinosaurs are less likely to be recognizable and have a following.
If you come for the human beings, there is a brief scene on the boat where Z and Duncan (Mahershala Ali, who won the Oscar for “Green Book” and has been paying for it ever since) catch up about their tragic respective lives as a thinly disguised prose dump portending their impending shift in values from greed to goodness. Basically, Johannson and Ali act the shit out of the scene disproportionate from what the material deserved just to show the audience and themselves that they can, but they do not get the Michael Fassbender award of excellence because to qualify, you have to be the best part of the movie, and the only person that can claim that is John Williams, I mean composer Alexandre Desplat, who is never content to let the audience decide how they are going to feel because he is going to tell them with his score. J/k, lol, no, Desplat does not get the Fassbender award. It goes to cinematographer John Mathieson who was determined to make every shot breathtaking in the hopes that people would mistake “Jurassic World Rebirth” for “Kong: Skull Island” (2017).
Anyway, “Jurassic World Rebirth” is supposed to be a battle over the mercenaries’ souls because they are the nicest mercenaries ever. Also on their team is the poor marksman Bobby Atwater (an unrecognizable Ed Skrein), no lines Nina (Philippine Velge) and the French speaking Leclerc (Bechir Sylvain). If you cannot predict which order they are going to die in, you need to watch more movies. To tip the scale in heaven’s favor is the Delgado family, dad Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda). I’m assuming that writer David Koepp, whose every other movie seems to be hit, and the last one was “Black Bag” (2025) so you know which category “Jurassic World Rebirth” falls in, relates to the loser boyfriend, Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), or is otherwise deployed to make propaganda to convince young women to date the lay about because he has potential. Spoiler alert: he has the potential when he is ready, not when she is. Don’t try this at home, ladies. I would literally return to practicing family law to handle the child custody case against Reuben. Talk about child endangerment! More propaganda about trusting parents who take their kids on clearly dangerous trips. Have we learned nothing from OceanGate! I don’t need a family or a kid in danger in every installment. At this point, it would be refreshing to leave them out or kill one for the sake of realism. Kudos to Koepp for not setting up the teams against each other over a misunderstanding to add tension.
The school bus easter egg shouting out Michael Crichton (RIP) was welcome. The shameless product placements are a smidge annoying: Snickers, Twizzlers, which is what “Jurassic World Rebirth,” a giant ATM guaranteed to generate gobs of money. If it works for you, great, but if it does, please try to watch the others in order because then you will be completely blown away. For the rest of us, prepare for the crowd to go mild. It takes one hour before the dinosaurs let loose, and it is a lot of hurry up and wait.
