Movie Review: Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)

Synopsis: Years after dinosaurs repopulate the planet, the climate proves to be incompatible in most regions and they die out except for a few isolated regions near the equator that have been declared off limits to humans. Needing dinosaur DNA for a heart disease drug his pharmaceutical company wants to produce, executive Martin Krebs hires a covert extraction expert, Zora Bennett and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis to lead a team to collect DNA from three giant dinosaur species. Their already difficult and highly illegal task becomes even more complicated when they rescue a family from their overturned boat and then end up shipwrecked themselves.

Who's in it? The movie stars Scarlett Johannson, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Luna Blaise.

Review: While my wife and I are both fans of the Jurassic Park franchise, our disappointment over Jurassic World Dominion was a bit reason why we didn't pay to see Jurassic World Rebirth at the theater (I didn't hate the last installment, I just didn't think it was good enough for the price of a theater ticket). We did, however, still want to watch it and did so last night when I found it on Peacock. 

As it turns out, we were right not to see it at the theater. While we didn't hate it, we also weren't all that impressed by it either.

As someone who will visit the same zoo every year to see the same wild animals I've seen dozens of times, I still find it hard to believe people would get sick of seeing real-life dinosaurs, as this film franchise has suggested multiple times. However, I am starting to see how a movie series about dinosaurs can get both repetitive and a little boring.

The movie's premise isn't bad. It's just not all that much different than Jurassic Park II, Jurassic Park III or Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. You have a team visiting a dinosaur-inhabited island and instead of trying to return with actual dinosaurs (the premise of two of the three mentioned films), they are just trying to collect DNA using a technique that doesn't even require them to be closer than 10 meters (about 32 feet) to the dinosaur they are targeting.

I'm not saying there weren't some entertaining dinosaur action sequences, because there were. However, there were quite a few times when those scenes felt more than a little forced. For example, I'm still not sure why retrieving DNA from a Quetzalcoatlus egg was any safer than just shooting a dart into one of the winged creatures when they flew by.

Not to mention, it wasn't too hard to figure out which characters were going to be killed, and which were going to survive. Zora (Johansson) and Loomis (Bailey) were the stars and had a budding romance starting, so there was no way either of them wasn't getting off the island. LeClerc (Bechir Sylvain) in comparison, didn't have much of a backstory and the movie already had another, more prominent, Black guy in Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), so I knew it was only a matter of time before he became dinosaur food.

Oh, and don't even get me started on the Delgado family. Little, if any, survival experience, zero dinosaur expertise and no weapons. So, naturally, they manage to cross through the jungle unscathed, despite a run-in with a T-rex. Not to mention they somehow even manage to turn one of the dinosaurs into a pet. I'm sorry, no!

The movie also has a lot of head scratching gaps toward the end. It's an island that has been abandoned for 17 years but still somehow has power, gas engines and battery-powered cars still work, along with a gun that has been exposed to the jungle for more than a decade. The beforementioned domesticated dinosaur gets left behind but somehow gets to the village at the same time as everyone else despite its small size. Plus, one of the crew goes from clearly being killed to just fine while the big baddy dinosaur (which gets way too little screen time) decides to just give up for some reason. It was as though the writers had an ending in mind and just made it happen despite the numerous plot holes.

Final Opinion: I like dinosaur movies as much as the next guy, but you can have too much of a good thing, and this Jurassic Park/Jurassic World installment was a good example. It's a new movie but has a plot that is far from unique and ultimately just winds up being a bit too predictable. Even some decent action scenes weren't enough to make this anything I'd describe as memorable and Hollywood clearly went to the well too many times.

My Grade: C

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Here are some reviews of other movies from 2025:

Movie Review: The Naked Gun (2025)

Movie Review: Final Destination: Bloodlines (2025)

Movie Review: Until Dawn (2025)

Movie Review: The Monkey (2025)