Review: ‘Jurassic World Rebirth,’ starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono and Audrina Miranda

June 30, 2025

by Carla Hay

David Iacono, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey in “Jurassic World Rebirth” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment)

“Jurassic World Rebirth”

Directed by Gareth Edwards

Culture Representation: Taking place near South America, the sci-fi/action film “Jurassic World Rebirth” (the seventh feature film in the “Jurassic” series) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people and a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A rogue group of explorers and an unsuspecting family get trapped on an island where dinosaurs live and attack.

Culture Audience: “Jurassic World Rebirth” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the “Jurassic” movie series and the movie’s headliners, but the movie rehashes many of the same themes and storylines.

A Spinosaurus in “Jurassic World Rebirth” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment)

“Jurassic World Rebirth” should be called “Jurassic World Rehash.” It delivers plenty of action, but it borrows heavily from the plot of “Jurassic World III,” with no real innovation or surprises regarding who lives, who dies, and what the dinosaurs do. “Jurassic World Rebirth” has a lot of awkward acting and unconvincing scenes. And the product placement in the movie is just obnoxiously ridiculous. You can immediately spot many of the product placements by how certain brands of candy, breath mints and potato chips are pushed into the forefront of a scene so that they’re impossible to ignore.

Directed by Gareth Edwards and written by David Koepp, “Jurassic World Rebirth” is the seventh feature film in the “Jurassic” movie series that began with 1993’s “Jurassic Park,” which is still the best movie in the series. “Jurassic Park” and 1997’s “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” were based on, respectively, Michael Crichton’s novels “Jurassic Park” (first published in 1990) and “The Lost World” (first published in 1995). The “Jurassic World” movies are sequels to the first three “Jurassic Park” movies.

“Jurassic World Rebirth” takes place in five years after the events of 2022’s “Jurassic World Dominion.” Do you have to see any of the other “Jurassic Park” movies to understand “Jurassic World Rebirth”? No, because “Jurassic World Rebirth” has an entire cast of characters who were not in the previous “Jurassic” movies and “Jurassic World Rebirth” is essentially about people trying not to be killed by dinosaurs.

According to the “Jurassic World Rebirth” production notes, here is what Earth is like in the story: “The planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind. And so, in ‘Rebirth,’ dinosaurs are in danger of extinction once more. The only places they continue to thrive are the tropical climes along the equator.”

“Jurassic World” begins by showing a catastrophe that happened 17 years ago on Ile Saint-Hubert, located 227 miles off the northeastern coast of South America. (“Jurassic World Rebirth” was actually filmed in the United Kingdom and in Malta.) The island had a secret research and development facility operated by InGen, the company known for cloning dinosaurs in the previous “Jurassic” movies. The movie’s opening scene shows that a worker in the facility unknowingly left a discarded candy bar wrapper on the floor.

This candy bar wrapper got stuck in an air vent and caused a giant glass-enclosed research lab to reboot the system and then explode, killing most of the people inside. The research lab housed dinosaurs that were being used for illegal experiments. After the explosion, the facility was shut down permanently, but the dinosaurs and their offspring remained on this secret island.

In the present day (2025), certain people have discovered that each of the largest types of dinosaurs left behind on Ile Saint-Hubert have genetic DNA that can cure heart disease in humans. The three types of dinosaurs are Quetzalcoatlus (avian), Mosasaurus (aquatic), and Titanosaurus (terrestrial). With this confidential knowledge, it’s only a matter of time before a greedy corporate type wants to get this dinosaur DNA and profit from it.

Martin Krebs (played by Rupert Friend) is the corrupt leader of a major American pharmaceutical company that wants to obtain this DNA, which would be illegal. Martin doesn’t care, and he’s got the wealth to buy their services of a team that will go to Ile Saint-Hubert and get the DNA. Martin wants to personally go on this mission too because he doesn’t trust anyone else to handle the DNA once it’s extracted.

Leading this extraction mission is no-nonsense Zora Bennett (played Scarlett Johansson), a longtime mercernary/special operations agent, who agrees to for this job for Martin for $10 million. Martin and Zora then convince Dr. Henry Loomis (played by Jonathan Bailey)—a museum-based paleontologist whose specialty is colossal dinosaurs—to join the this covert team.

Zora then visits a longtime friend and former colleague named Duncan Kincaid (played by Mahershala Ali), the captain of a camouflaged military patrol craft named The Essex. Duncan is very skeptical but Zora persuades Duncan to join this mission with select members of Duncan’s crew. The three members of Duncan’s crew who are part of this mission are adventurous co-pilot/deckhand Nina (played by Philippine Velge), reliable co-pilot/deckhand LeClerc (played by Bechir Sylvain) and daredevil security chief Bobby Atwater (played by Ed Skrein). All of them are enticed by the money they will be paid.

Why such a small crew for a big mission? Martin explains the less people who know about this mission, the better. The team has giant hypodermic needles to collect the samples when the needles are shot from arsenal into the dinosaurs. Once a needle filled, the needle self-ejects and triggers an attached parachute that will presumably float into hands of the person who wants the needle. This needle parachuting has some of the most ridiculous “too good to be true” moments in the movie.

Not long after The Essex sets sail for Ile Saint-Hubert, a group on a very different boat excursion will cross paths with the people on The Essex. Divorced father Reuben Delgado (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is contuinuing their annual tradition of taking his two daughters on a sailing trip. Teresa Delgado (played by Luna Blaise), who is 18, is going to be a first-year student at New York University and feels she has outgrown these father-daughter excursions. Isabella Delgado (played by Audrina Miranda), who is 11, very much wants to be on this trip with her family.

Someone else has joined the Delgado family for this boat trip: Teresa’s eccentric boyfriend Xavier Dobbs (played by David Iacono), who comes across as a weirdo stoner. Reuben doesn’t know what to think about Xavier, who doesn’t talk much and seems to be the opposite of intelligent and goal-oriented Teresa. But in a movie where people of different backgrounds find themselves fighting for their lives against dinosaurs, you already know that certain characters who were at first uncomfortable with each other will be forced to work together and see each other in a different way.

Terror comes quickly to the Delgado group when a Spinosaurus in the ocean attacks and capsizes the group’s boat. After a harrowing sequence (one of the better parts of an otherwise formulaic movie), the Delgado group is rescued by the people on The Essex. None of this is spoiler information because the trailers for “Jurassic World Dominion” lready show the Delgado group and The Essex group in peril together.

The Delgado group just wants to go home. However, some people from The Essex group want to continue to push forward to Ile Saint-Hubert and drop off the Delgado group to safety after the dinosaur DNA samples are obtained. After much debate, it’s decided that the Delgado group will have to wait until people in The Essex group get what they set out to get. The people in the Essex group are secretive about why they want this dinosaur DNA, but they can’t hide the fact that they’re acting suspiciously.

With the Delgado group forced to tag along on this mission, you know what that means: More people for the dinosaurs to attack. “Jurassic World Rebirth” just has a series of attack scenarious that look very familiar to the “Jurassic” movie franchise, but with different-looking dinosaurs. It should come as no surprise that the dinosaurs that were used in experiements look very different. (Can you say “mutant”?)

The personal stories of the human characters are basic, scant and unremarkable. Zora is a loner who’s still dealing with the trauma of a combat colleague dying in a car bombing. It’s also mentioned that Zora did not attend her mother’s recent funeral. Duncan, who is a divorced father of an underage son, is experiencing heartbreak because of his failed marriage.

Self-professed “dinosaur nerd” Henry doesn’t seem to have a personal life at all because he’s so consumed with his work. Martin is the movie’s obvious heartless villian, so the movie doesn’t even mention who his loved ones are. And the people in Duncan’s crew are generic characters whose fate in the movie can be easily be predicted.

And so that leaves the Delgado group to give “Jurassic World Rebirth” viewers an immediate and visible sense that they are the people with the most at stake in staying alive for their loved ones. The movie sometimes struggles between giving attention to The Essex group versus the Delgado group, who are each separated from each other at different points in the movie. In between all the dinosaur action, there’s some tedious drama about whether or not Xavier will be fully accepted by Reuben.

“Jurassic Park III” also has a plot about dinosaurs needed for research to improve human lives, with people hiring a rogue group to take them on a secret private visit to the “forbidden” island populated by dinosaurs. “Jurassic Park III” also has a family with siblings who are trapped on the island, but the siblings are brothers in “Jurassic Park III.” And just like in “Jurassic Park III,” there’s a Spinosaurus and there are Velociraptors in major attack scenes.

“Jurassic World Rebirth” does introduce new dinosaurs that weren’t in previous “Jurassic” films. Not all of them will be described here, but one is a baby Aquilops, who follows the Delgado group like a stray puppy and has a mischievous-but-cute personality. Isabella grows attached to this female Aquilops, names her Dolores, and wants to keep Dolores as a pet. It’s all very “Lilo & Stitch.”

The visual effects in “Jurassic World Rebirth” do not disappoint, but the action scenarios and chase scenes are just retreads of other movies. Similarly, there’s nothing terrible about the acting performances in “Jurassic World Rebirth,” but the dialogue is often just witless drivel. No one is expecting a “Jurassic” movie to be intellectual, but at least these movies should make the dialogue sound like realistic conversations, not something that could have been generated by cheap artificial intelligence. “Jurassic World Rebirth” is a movie that is ultimately stuck in the birth canal of creativity and shows no interest in evolving past its predecessors.

Universal Pictures will release “Jurassic World Rebirth” in U.S. cinemas on July 2, 2025.

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