The Jurassic World Trilogy (2015-2022) was one of the best examples of modern Hollywood at its most wasteful, lazy and cynical. Nostalgia-bait by committee, it was best characterised by the hollow misogyny at its core and Chris Pratt’s charisma-free Owen Grady — a deeply unpleasant man who spends an inordinate amount of time putting his hand out in front of dinosaurs with all the enthusiasm of a traffic conductor. The visuals were lazy, the characterisations were terrible and the plotlines insufferable, extracting all the wonder and joy out of what made the original Jurassic Park trilogy (1994-2001) so special. They were just so, so, so garbage.
As a result, it makes me proud to announce that Jurassic World Rebirth (Gareth Edwards, 2025) — replacing the entire sordid cast of the original trilogy — puts the awe back in dinosaur. Auteur Gareth Edwards remembers that the real joy in these films lies in their sheer monstrous possibilities, using the premise as a means to play endlessly with form, even if the script and characters lack much bite.
It’s been five years since the events of Jurassic World Dominion (Colin Trevorrow, 2022) and the collapse of BioSyn and its nefarious plans to control the world food supply. Dinosaurs, once freely roaming through most of the northern hemisphere, find that this climate isn’t to their liking, migrating towards unpopulated islands near the equator, where, we are told by scientist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), the weather most resembles that of the world when dinosaurs used to fully roam the earth. Likewise, the world isn’t that interested in dinosaurs anymore; even the local New York museum is closing its exhibit.
It’s a handy metaphor for this franchise at large, which, in making three abysmal movies in a row (despite each film making over a billion each), has made this type of monster movie seem rather pedestrian. Gareth Edwards seems to know that he has to regain the trust of the audience, thus sending the dinosaurs back to mysterious tropical islands that harken back to the childlike discovery of the original.
Yet at the same time, the team assembled by the rich representative of the capitalist corporation, ParkerGenix’s Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), does give off a strong Kong: Skull Island (Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017) energy. Loomis aside, they are not idealists, but cynics in search of a buck, led by the enigmatic and compelling mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson). She’s accompanied by introduced-playing-cards cad Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and the arrogant Ed Skrein (Bobby Atwater), as well as a couple of other no-name actors who aren’t given much detail because we all know that they aren’t going to last very long.
Their mission is to extract the DNA of three specific dinosaurs from Ile Saint-Hubert, once home to a laboratory that was run over after an unfortunate Final Destination-esque product placement disaster. These blood samples, we are told, could delay heart-related diseases by over twenty years. But they have to navigate Frankenstein-like dinosaurs that often owe more to the Alien (1979-) movies than anything from Amblin Entertainment, making for a film that is often as creepy as it is downright thrilling, especially as this extraction gang comes into contact with a family holiday gone terribly wrong.
The most striking aspect of Edwards’ approach to the material, working closely with cinematographer John Mathieson, is his investment in making the film look as good as possible. Shooting on 35mm film, he has a real eye for characters’ faces, shimmering on the big screen, as well as a great sense of spectacle. The film looks beautiful even in moments where it doesn’t need to be, such as a shot of Ali standing on the side of the boat, the sea and sky a pinkish riot, evoking documentary footage about seafarers more than conventional Hollywood cinema. Then, when it comes to the moments with the dinosaurs themselves, Edwards delivers on genuine thrills, a fantastic use of scale, moments of sheer, bloody terror and fine comic timing. It’s during these parts that Rebirth might actually be the best of the Jurassic films since the second one.
If only the screenplay, penned by Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) scribe David Koepp, was up to par with his best work. I simply was not sold on any of the characters or interested in any of their motivations. Rupert Friend’s evil corporate representative dripped with cliché while his eventual “adversary,” Bennett, should be more of a lovable rogue, yet she moves to the “good” side so quickly, it was a wonder she was ever a gun for hire in the first place.1Making things more complicated is her weird past. She said she lost a partner in Yemen? What on earth was she doing in Yemen? She can’t be doing anything good in Yemen. The rest of the gang never rises beyond one-line motivations either, with very little bite or edge. Where are the truly unlikeable bastards? It’s all the more frustrating given the natural movie star charm and chemistry of both Ali and Johansson; they should reunite again with a much better screenplay.
This one is littered with clunky dialogue, falling into modern Hollywood’s obsession with explaining everything about three to four times. We know that there are three dinosaurs to extract blood from. But once they get the blood from one, Scarlett Johansson looks behind her, basically to the camera, and says: “Two to go!” We are also told an evac copter will only turn up for about two minutes before leaving. Easy to remember, to be honest, but just in case we were looking at our phones while watching from home, once the helicopter arrives, we are told once again: “Just two minutes, guys.”
It would be nice sometimes to watch a film that is as literate as it is visually stunning. But considering the original Jurassic World trilogy was as compositionally wasteful as it was brain-dead, this return to the genuine shock and awe of the Park movies is definitely more than welcome.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.