Movie Thoughts: Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)

• Released: June 29th, 2025
• Directed by: Gareth Edwards
• Running time: 2h 14min
• Rating 2/5

Synopsis

In order to make a great medical breakthrough happen, a group of people travel to an island inhabited by mutated dinosaurs and pterosaurs to get their DNA, as well as get the DNA of a mosasaurus. 

My Thoughts

Sigh. I wanted to like this one. Really did. I know a lot of people aren't too fond of the World movies, but even the first three I am willing to cut a lot of slack because I do enjoy them to an extent. But this one...yeah, it didn't do anything for me.

I'll first get the good stuff out of the way. It is visually pretty good-looking (except for the mutant dinosaurs), the environments are pretty, and I liked Henry as a character. But that's really most of the compliments I can give it.

This movie did nothing to hook me otherwise. I didn't feel much during the action scenes because the only characters who die don't matter to the plot. It's obvious from the start that the family with the kid characters isn't going to die, so why should I worry for these characters? Neither would they kill off our other main characters. Of course it's only the villain and the nobody background characters that bite the dust.

The D-rex escape being facilitated by a Snickers wrapper is also just so lame. Seriously, you'd think that such a highly professional facility would have better security protocols in place and wouldn't have a door that jams because of a piece of plastic. 

Speaking of the D-rex and the Mutadons, sigh, yeah, I'm also just so tired of the hybrid/mutant dinosaurs by now. I come to the Jurassic movies to see dinosaurs, not these Hollywood monsters I don't care about. I genuinely don't get this whole "dinosaurs don't appeal to the masses anymore" the director is saying, because people in circles I know love dinosaurs and want in fact less of these made-up creatures. Why is it so hard to just put some cool actually existing dinosaurs on screen, instead of nonsense like the Indominus, Indoraptor, and now the D-rex and Mutadons? It just doesn't appeal to me at all and feels antithetical to the appeal of the original Park trilogy. People come here for dinosaurs (and to a lesser extent pterosaurs and mosasaurs), and you're giving them bullshit nonexistent Hollywood monsters.

The characters are also, eh, not terrible but genuinely I didn't care about most of them. Not to say that the previous World films had a perfectly likable and unique cast or anything, but I at least feel more for those characters than the guys here. Zora and Duncan are fine, like I said before I do like Henry, but most of the other characters are A) background characters who die unceremoniously B) a boring villain or C) that one family who just feels kinda pointless to the plot. I honestly would've liked if the film was without the last few characters. Sure, they do contribute a few times, but otherwise they're not very relevant to the main story of getting the dinosaur's DNA and the family can also get a bit annoying from time to time. So the characters didn't exactly win me over, either.

There's also a few shots of dinosaurs just randomly disappearing/appearing when they definitely should've been visible from both a perspective of the audience and/or the other characters. Such as the Titanosauruses randomly emerging from tall grass (they're some of the biggest dinosaurs ever? How the heck did the main characters not notice them straight away?) or the T-rex disappearing behind that boat. Sure, it makes for some cool reveals, but it goes against all logic and the characters should obviously be able to see the dinosaurs from these angles even if we as the audience do not.

I also dislike how much this movie goes against the previous Jurassic World movies, particularly Dominion. Say whatever you want about that film, but it did really change up the status quo by having dinosaurs roam freely on the planet. This could present so many cool new opportunities for future installments. But nope, by this movie it's all "humanity no longer cares about dinosaurs" and "dinosaurs can only survive in tropical climates" despite Dominion clearly establishing that this isn't true. So yeah, I'm not sure why this movie feels the need to drop the ideas previous two movies present so hard, but it does and it's annoying. You can just feel the director not giving a shit and being like "I'm going to do things my own way" against all canon and logic.

Finally I want to add that I think the main villain's (Krebs) name translating to "cancer" in German feels in poor taste to me. And way too obvious. I get that you want your bad guy to have an evil sounding name, but you can still keep it tasteful and respectful. 

So yeah, definitely the weakest of the World movies if you ask me. It's not terrible or anything, but there's also barely anything I really enjoyed in here.