'Jurassic World: Rebirth' Review: Dinos Run Amuck While the Franchise Tries to Start Over

Why can't we figure out what to do with "Jurassic Park" in 2025?

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A text crawl lays out at the beginning of Jurassic World: Rebirth that it’s been 32 years since dinosaurs returned, and that in those 32 years not only has our climate and viruses killed most of them off but “interest has waned.” Nobody cares about dinosaurs anymore in this world and that certainly feels true of Rebirth, which spends more time focused on its numerous characters rather than how dinosaurs are living in 2025. The end result is a movie that feels more primed to spin-off a Land of the Lost retread than anything passing for Jurassic Park.

Set five years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, an expedition led by mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) travels to an island once used as R&D for the original Jurassic Park. Alongside scientist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), the goal of the mission is to obtain various dino DNAs for a potential life-saving drug.

There’s a lot of time being juggled with in Jurassic World: Rebirth, from the opening that takes place “17 years ago” to the “32 years ago” text crawl and the ingrained audience awareness that this is taking five years after the events of the first movie. It’s one of several instances where the script, written by David Koepp, vomits up something passing for establishment and just hopes you go with it. The opening only exists to set up the big bad dinosaur whose technical name you don’t need to know short of “D-Rex” which is situated prominently on its enclosure. After a Final Destination-esque Rube Goldberg device we get a brief glimpse of some dinosaurs before we get our opening title. There’s less of a Jurassic Park vibe to this and more a variety of other movie influences. That introductory scene feels akin to director Gareth Edwards’s own Godzilla feature, as well as a heavy dose of Alien.

The Alien vibes continue with our Ripley leading lady, Zora. She’s a character whose disaffected cool is indicative of her “I’m too old for this shit” mentality. We know she has trouble keeping friends and that her mom died of heart disease but that has absolutely no bearing on her looking for the dinosaur DNA to cure heart disease (no, really, it doesn’t). Johansson’s performance is a lot of fun, less Sarah Connor and more Quint shooting dinosaurs off the side of a boat. The movie is afraid to make her too venal, leaving Johansson to rely on her charm to make up for her character’s lack of personality, but it works.

In fact, the entire cast—the ones you’re meant to care about at least—is good for what they’re given. Mahershala Ali, in particular, makes a meal of the only defining trait his character has: that he’s lost a child. When Ali isn’t impeccably recreating the Jeff Goldblum flare scene, already spoiled in the commercials, he’s remarkable kind and empathetic to the children placed on the boat. This is all to say put him in another one of these movies (albeit with a better narrative). Bailey is also trapped with little to do, being the nerdy scientist who tries not to sob when he actually sees a dinosaur in the wild. He’s reminiscent of Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, right down to working with Dino bones in a museum at the introduction, but he does little other than be in peril and look awe-struck.

And that is the movie’s biggest problem. For all the emphasis on why everyone is going to meet dinosaurs, there’s nothing else about them that’s particularly interesting. The movie becomes a series of characters wandering in the jungle, having stray encounters with dinosaurs, and trying to reach a central point. It’s like playing a video game where there’s no story other than “Get here and see what happens.” Zora talks about how the park was used for “experimental work” on dinosaurs and this is where all the rejects ended up. (Does that make this an island for the dinosaur disabled?) But there’s absolutely nothing done with this premise. Sure, there’s a dinosaur that looks like a pterodactyl mixed with a pelican, and the main dinosaur baddie gives off Alien/Predator vibes but they never feel particularly thrilling. Some moments play like rip-offs of scenes from the first film—Isabella and her friends hiding in a convenience store a la the raptors—but there’s no belief that anything from this movie will continue on into future installments.

The main narrative with the mercenary team falls apart once they reach the island, transitioning to a secondary plot involving a father, Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and his two children being swept up by Zora’s crew after a dinosaur attacked their sailboat. It’s obvious why the group ends up blending with the main story: to introduce neophyte characters and return the franchise to the view of children. Unfortunately, much of this means the youngest, Isabella (Audrina Miranda) is routinely placed in perilous situations where her family is forced to watch and yell her name. She also gets cute dinosaur friend named Dolores. Garcia Rulfo, Miranda, Luna Blaise (who plays older sister Teresa), and David Iacono (who plays Teresa’s boyfriend), are all okay but they are more inhabiting Land of the Lost than Jurassic Park.

There’s something far more interesting in this movie that gets abandoned within the first ten minutes: dinosaurs are dying, from either disease, climate change or old age, and no one cares. As Zora and pharmaceutical villain Krebs (Rupert Friend) drive through the streets of New York, a lost dinosaur is more of a traffic impediment than anything else. The bloom is off the rose with the dinosaurs, and it’s hard not to wonder if the movie is commenting on its own existence. That’s an interesting concept ripe for a story about the political implications of dinosaurs in today’s day and age, but it goes nowhere. Instead of doing anything unique with the why behind dinosaurs in the “Neo Jurassic age,” as Loomis calls it, better to just refer to the original film and rely on what works. But it feels tired, as tired as that lost Dino at the beginning. There is a whole “do we make medicine accessible for everyone” mini-plot that, oof, is gonna feel weird after this week.

Jurassic World: Rebirth still can’t find an interesting story worth telling with its premise. Content to ride the coattails of the original, Rebirth tries two competing stories, neither of which amounts to much. The cast is fun, at least, and keep the entire film from floundering but it’s hard to think we’ll ever see them again. The world has grown weary of the dinosaurs here, and it seems like screenwriters are too.

Grade: D

Jurassic World: Rebirth is in theaters Wednesday.

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