July 3, 2025 · Watch the official trailer
Nostalgia only matters when there's something of interest to remember.
Jonathan Bailey's character in the latest installment of the “Jurassic Park” franchise laments how people used to come out in droves, standing in line for hours to learn more about dinosaurs and now no one really seems to care.
A reboot of a spin-off of the 1993 Michael Crichton penned, Steven Spielberg directed classic, “Jurassic World: Rebirth” stretches the bounds of Crichton’s original ideas far beyond what it can probably hold in with a feature that aims to remind viewers about classic moments from the original film while drawing in new audiences.
Most of the visual moments within the original “Jurassic Park” film are intentionally highlighted including the iconic banner falling in front of a Tyrannosaurus Rex as well as children running scared from a raptor in a kitchen like setting, almost to a shot for shot level.
This homage is great if people remember and are actively engaged for more “Jurassic Park” expansion and yet there's a redundancy to the overall narrative that feels like every single twist bringing humans and dinosaurs together has been already played out.
Director Gareth Edwards, whose unique and original take on “Star Wars” films with “Rogue One” has become a benchmark for what spinning off a franchise can be cinematically, brings his take on big creatures with “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” a film whose title suggests renewed life that just that that never really hits home.
Certain moments within “Rebirth” do rise to the level of audience expectation especially in sequences where there's more reverence and awe to these seemingly majestic creatures. Brief flickers of this can be seen in a lush valley where massive herbivores tower over tiny characters or an intense cliffside showdown with a massive pterodactyl.
In fact, the film's narrative MacGuffin, which sees Scarlett Johansson's Zora and Mahershala Ali’s Duncan lead a team of mercenaries and scientists into a remote island seeking to retrieve DNA from the three largest species of dinosaurs for medical research actually makes for the film's most engaging sequences.
But often so much of the over two-hour screenplay is bogged down in minutia and unnecessary side plots that create an uneven storyline or imbalanced storylines.
The film's A-list actors do find themselves at home in big blockbuster action films and the ability of both Ali and Johansson to make the thin backstories of their characters have any semblance of dramatic weight is far more credit to their talent as performers than returning screenwriter David Koepp’s storytelling capabilities.
“Wicked” star Bailey is also solid as a scientist with reservations about the moral quandaries or dilemmas posed, while the one note mustache twirling nature of Rupert Friend’s Martin Krebs leaves a lot to be desired.
Visually, the unique color palettes Edwards brought to “Rogue One” and his science fiction drama “The Creator” are sometimes present in “Rebirth” and help balance out the heavy CGI effects that putting dinosaurs on the big screen requires. Yet like the last two entries in the “Jurassic World” series, these moments are largely forgettable after leaving the cinema.
While having a dinosaur movie does break up the monotony of comic book based action blockbusters for the summertime, it doesn't feel as though “Jurassic World: Rebirth” has enough gas in the tank to provide cinephiles worth making a trip to theaters versus its upcoming competition.
If audiences have any true motivations for heading to the cinema, it may be for the early teaser trailer for “The Odyssey,” director Christopher Nolan’s next film following his Oscar win for “Oppenheimer.”
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