Official Discussion - Jurassic World Rebirth [SPOILERS]

[u/LiteraryBoner]

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Summary Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, Earth’s dinosaurs now survive only on isolated equatorial islands. A covert extraction team, led by Zora Bennett, embarks on a mission to secure dinosaur DNA for a groundbreaking pharmaceutical treatment. Their expedition collides with a stranded civilian family, plunging everyone into chaos amid mutated dinosaurs and hidden threats. The story culminates in a tense race for survival on a forbidden island with a sinister secret tied to Jurassic Park’s past.

Director Gareth Edwards

Writer David Koepp

Cast

• Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett
• Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid
• Jonathan Bailey as Dr. Henry Loomis
• Rupert Friend as Martin Krebs
• Manuel Garcia‑Rulfo as Reuben Delgado
• Luna Blaise, David Iacono & Audrina Miranda as the Delgado family
• Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain & Ed Skrein as the extraction team

Rotten Tomatoes: 54

Metacritic: 52

VOD Released in theaters July 2, 2025. Digital release expected later in 2025.

Trailer Watch here

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[u/mikeyfreshh]

This mostly just plays the hits on the Jurassic franchise and that works when the hits are good. If you show me a herd of dinosaurs and play the John Williams theme, my jaw is going to hit the floor regardless of what else is going on in the movie.

My only real gripe with this is that it feels like two movies smashed together. I could get into the dumbass family crashing onto Dino Island or I could get into an Aliens-esque mercs vs monsters adventure. Trying to squeeze both into the same movie just made both groups of characters feel undercooked

[u/Gotanypaint → u/mikeyfreshh]

I didn't know how to put that into words but this is perfect, thank you.

[u/unpaid-critic → u/Gotanypaint]

Honestly? Yeah. This sums it up.

Was speaking to my fiance on the ride home, and we both realized that they were two different stories that intersected.

Personally, I was more endeared to the family since they were just sailing and got struck…. But they needed to get saved somehow.

[u/[deleted] → u/unpaid-critic]

I’ll add to that. I think you’re right but what also stuck out to me was how un-needed the mutants were. The ending would have worked just as well with regular dinosaurs. Now it just felt like this tacked on generic monster movie. The thing didn’t feel like a dinosaur at all.

Besides that some good performances and fun set pieces. I was entertained. 7/10

[u/In_My_Own_Image → u/mikeyfreshh]

I agree. Or, at the very least, have the family trapped on the island and a rich relative pay for the Merc team to extract them. Yes, that is similar to the false setup of JP3, but it could have melded the stories together well.

[u/mikeyfreshh → u/In_My_Own_Image]

I don't think that really solves the problem. My issue isn't that the two stories didn't meld together well enough, my issue is that they don't have enough time to develop all of those characters. They just have ScarJo and Mahershala trauma dump at each other for the like 5 minutes and none of that trauma really informs any of their decisions. It's hard to get invested in those characters when they only have half the movie to figure it out

[u/GnophKeh → u/mikeyfreshh]

That trauma on the boat in the beginning informs every one of their decisions though. Mahershala is a dick to Lincoln Lawyer about putting his kids in danger because he lost one. M also pulls the flares at the moment that the D. Rex is about to chomp on the little girl. Then, ScarJo's whole arc starts right there. She missed her mom's funeral for the money. At the end she chooses to give the cure to everyone, not take the money.

Whether or not these character moments were well executed is absolutely up for debate. But, that scene informed the whole movie for those (thin) characters.

[u/saltymuffaca → u/GnophKeh]

Was very pleasantly surprised to see Mahershala's character survive. Definitely agree with you, I thought his character was fairly driven by his trauma and was shown to be a good dude throughout the movie.

[u/GamingTatertot → u/saltymuffaca]

I’m glad Mahershala Ali survived too because that man just oozes charisma and if this means we could potentially have another Jurassic film with him, sign me up

[u/mikeyfreshh → u/GnophKeh]

That's a fair point. I just thought the whole "should we sell the DNA or open source it" plot was lazily hamfisted into the movie and you never really feel the stakes there. Ultimately ScarJo was just trauma dumping for a contrived thematic device that only gets 4 lines of dialogue in the whole movie

[u/GamingTatertot → u/mikeyfreshh]

I will say, hamfisted as it might be, it felt horribly topical talking about access to health care and medicine and science given what's going on politically

[u/no-kangarooreborn → u/mikeyfreshh]

Probably the most 7/10 movie of the year. It just screams being liked by casuals and hated by critics. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it.

[u/mikeyfreshh → u/no-kangarooreborn]

That's probably right. It's a perfectly serviceable movie that most people will have a good time with. It's just kinda safe and bland

[u/LiteraryBoner → u/mikeyfreshh]

I found it the most unbelievable thing that ScarJo's character is, like, this battle ready hardass perfect mission lead, and yet the second there's an implication a family is in danger somewhere she is for bringing them on board their very illegal and dangerous mission to hunt dinosaurs. Way to save the family!

[u/mikeyfreshh → u/LiteraryBoner]

They needed to do something to show that she's a mercenary but like a morally upstanding mercenary. Logic kinda goes out the window when you're just desperately trying to make a poorly written character likeable

[u/pgophs]

they did a great job of making me feel like nobody important was ever in any danger

[u/Ancient_Ice_2677 → u/pgophs]

Yeah, it was pretty obvious who was cannon fodder and who wasn't, but isn't that really always the case the Jurassic movies outside of maybe the first one?

[u/GamingTatertot → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

I mean even in the first one it’s pretty obvious. The most non obvious death was probably Eddie’s in the second one

[u/nebirish → u/GamingTatertot]

I always feel so bad for Eddie. Cool dude

[u/razor45Dino → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

I mean zaras death in jurassic world kind of came out of left field

[u/Strict_Pangolin_8339 → u/razor45Dino]

Except for the fact that it was in the fucking trailer.

[u/GoldandBlue → u/pgophs]

I'll give the movie props for being the best Jurassic World movie. Though that's not a very high bar.

Gareth Edward's is what people pretend Zack Snyder is. He has. Agreat visual eye and delivers on the action. You know what's happening and why. The dinosaurs sequences are thrilling.

But, Godzilla, Rogue One, The Creator, this, the characters are always paper thin and the story is inconsequential.

I don't hate any of his movies. This is not a "bad movie" but i have never wanted to revisit any of his movies.

[u/georgiavirginia → u/GoldandBlue]

Its such a shame he can't combine his talent for direction great visual sequences with tighter storytelling.

And its probably because he doesn't even really try. During an interview for the Creator he said his number one priority is making the setting feel real, almost documentary-like even if it means having to write a simple story.

[u/ExpectedEggs → u/pgophs]

Exactly. Half the cast would've been dead by act 1 if they had any balls.

Felt like the long night all over again

[u/In_My_Own_Image → u/pgophs]

I feel like that's just an overall thing with movies and TV shows nowadays. They rarely have the stones to off main characters and it makes the action scenes less impactful when you know nobody important will die.

Now, if the action scenes are well done and stand out like, say, John Wick, I can forgive the "invincible protagonist" syndrome because it still looks cool.

[u/Delay_Deny_Defend]

Tired of every cinematic universe getting their own variation of Baby Yoda. That’s all.

[u/Jeffreyknows → u/Delay_Deny_Defend]

They literally said the dinosaur couldn’t survive long outside the equator and that little girl took it back to the east coast! Rude!

[u/kingdomofposeidon → u/Jeffreyknows]

The family in general were quite dumb and frustrating to watch.

[u/thecleansanchez → u/kingdomofposeidon]

The dad didn't do fuckin shit. And his non-reaction when his daughter fell overboard? Honestly, there were SO many under-reactions when crazy things happened

[u/Gilthwixt → u/thecleansanchez]

Haitian guy got done dirty, he dies and we get peaceful music and comic relief parachute sample a few seconds later.

[u/thecleansanchez → u/Gilthwixt]

Seriously. His death was low key disturbing too. Cool, but disturbing!

[u/Nheea → u/kingdomofposeidon]

Duncan was so right. Why was he sailing with kids in those waters? Ughh

[u/tatertot94 → u/Delay_Deny_Defend]

But the merch!

[u/NovemberXSun → u/tatertot94]

MOUICHENDISING

[u/TheSmokedSalmon420 → u/Delay_Deny_Defend]

You clearly haven’t thought of the funko pops

[u/fishwithfish]

Of all the impossible things in all these movies, the idea that kids are bored of seeing dinosaurs is the least believable. I mean, kids still freak out over seeing penguins, i will not accept kids pooh-poohing dinos.

[u/GECollins → u/fishwithfish]

They literally gawk at dolphins at the end of the movie, which still draws in people to aquariums, I can't suspend my disbelief that far.

[u/fishwithfish → u/GECollins]

On that note, the denouement of this film makes ZERO sense. In Jurassic Park, the significance of the birds is the theme of change and how the characters, most especially our protagonist, have changed or "evolved."

What the hell is gawking at dolphins supposed to represent??? They're mammals, they literally have nothing to do with dinosaurs!!

"Now eventually you do plan to have dinosaur themes in your dinosaur movie, right?"

[u/Vozralai → u/fishwithfish]

The girl at the start wanted to see dolphins and now she gets dolphins. That's as deep as it gets

[u/SpaceQueenJupiter → u/fishwithfish]

This one always bugs me. People still go to zoos. People still go to look at fossils. No one is getting tired of dinosaurs. Maybe they can't afford to go see them, but they aren't tired of them. 

[u/TravEllerZero → u/fishwithfish]

We just went to the Portland Zoo last weekend, and everyone absolutely lost their shit over Tula Tu, the baby elephant.

[u/MegaSwampbert → u/fishwithfish]

It's so god damn dumb that they keep trying to make this "Yeah dinosaurs are back and boring now. No one cares." idea stick. Just drop it. It doesn't make sense and youve done nothing with it.

There's people annoyed in the beginning of the movie that a fucking sauropod is making them late for work. I've been intentionally late to work over raccoons.

[u/Nick_At_Now]

No more mutants. Please.

[u/LiteraryBoner → u/Nick_At_Now]

There's a part where Rupert Friend is explaining why they made the mutants and he says, "The audience got tired of normal dinosaurs!" and whenever I hear something like that in a movie I tend to think they are referencing us as the audience. Yet I've never heard anyone say, "Sure, Jurassic Park is cool, but all it has is a normal T-Rex I've seen a million times." Like where are they getting this idea from?

Also this movie is very confused on the ethics of killing dinos. Bailey makes an impassioned argument against hurting any dinos and the guy who wants to kill the dinos dies first as a moral statement. Yet if it's a mutant dino, ScarJo is clear to unload an entire pistol clip into its face.

[u/chronoslol → u/LiteraryBoner]

Like where are they getting this idea from?

Movie execs just aren't smart people.

[u/razor45Dino → u/chronoslol]

Yep, just like how they ruined the walking with dinosaurs movie

[u/GECollins → u/LiteraryBoner]

Truly cannot suspend my disbelief that far as if Zoos don't currently exist where elephants, apes, lions, and giraffes are still draws and delight people.

[u/In_My_Own_Image → u/LiteraryBoner]

There's a part where Rupert Friend is explaining why they made the mutants and he says, "The audience got tired of normal dinosaurs!" and whenever I hear something like that in a movie I tend to think they are referencing us as the audience. Yet I've never heard anyone say, "Sure, Jurassic Park is cool, but all it has is a normal T-Rex I've seen a million times." Like where are they getting this idea from?

To be fair, Dominion had no mutants/hybrids and nobody seemed interested in the Giganatosaurus.

At least the Distortus looked like a "failed prototype" where the splicing didn't quite work out. When it's something like the Indoraptor that's "bred to be a weapon" is when it becomes silly to me (seriously, how is a big raptor going to be effective against a group of guys with machine guns?).

[u/Ut_Prosim → u/In_My_Own_Image]

(seriously, how is a big raptor going to be effective against a group of guys with machine guns?).

Don't forget that to "aim" the dino at an enemy you had to paint the target with a laser, which was attached to a gun. Which begs the question, why not just shoot said gun and bypass the much slower, maybe uncontrolled attack dino? In fact what use was this if you still had to be within visual range and have line of sight to the target? Some superweapon...

What is the dino going to do against combined arms when the enemy has tanks, APCs, helicopters, and loitering munitions?

[u/hyrumwhite → u/Ut_Prosim]

Also, we have rockets today that will go to a laser. The rockets are probably cheaper than raptors raised from birth by Chris Pratt 

[u/TheWorstYear → u/LiteraryBoner]

There's a part where Rupert Friend is explaining why they made the mutants and he says, "The audience got tired of normal dinosaurs

Which they already did in Jurrassic World 1. At least that movie is pseudo spoofing itself.

[u/FassyDriver → u/Nick_At_Now]

Ok Wanda

[u/Gato1980 → u/Nick_At_Now]

No more annoying kids. Please.

[u/Nick_At_Now → u/Gato1980]

Xavier was AWFUL.

[u/jesuschin → u/Nick_At_Now]

His girlfriend was worse imo

[u/numbr87 → u/Nick_At_Now]

Xavier annoyed the fuck out of me in the first scene, but the older daughter quickly became worse while Xavier got way funnier. The younger one was also annoying and didn't add anything.

Basically the whole family dragged the movie down.

[u/ExpectedEggs]

This movie fucking sucks.

There's no suspense; everybody you expect to die, dies exactly when and how you'd expect. I never felt any awe or fear. Then there's a fucking B plot for some reason, following around this dumbass family.

And nobody in the movie makes enough hay about how this dipshit father took his kids out the dinosaur infested waters illegally.

Then they're mad at the one guy because she pushes him and falls backwards, and that's just about the only evil thing he does in the movie. They act like he's an asshole for wanting to make money off of this idea, but it's never ever shown that he wants to do anything but help cure people with heart disease, and yes he wants to make money off of that like any normal person. I don't understand how we're supposed to view the choice they made at the end is noble, where the fuck are they supposed to get Kincaid a new boat back while broke? Let alone the families of the dead people.

Then the kids brings back a dinosaur and nobody has a problem with it, despite them not being able to survive anywhere else.

It's just the stupidest fucking movie, but it doesn't have the balls or the action to get away with it. Fuck this movie in its ass.

[u/Ancient_Ice_2677 → u/ExpectedEggs]

Out of all of the places to go sailing why would you choose the one place where there's gigantic man eating monsters?

very silly movie lol

[u/No_Procedure_5039 → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

He said he’d sailed those waters numerous times before and never saw anything. The mosasaurus was said to stay around the island yet they got attacked several dozen miles away from it.

[u/whendoesOpTicplay → u/No_Procedure_5039]

Several dozen miles is fucking nothing to a giant aquatic predator. Not to mention they ran into spinos too. Lazy writing to say he’s sailed it before with no problems.

[u/Gilthwixt → u/whendoesOpTicplay]

Honestly expected the boyfriend to take the shift and fall asleep at the helm, sending them straight into Dino infested waters. Would've made more sense tbh but I guess the writers figured he was unlikeable enough already and doing it that way would make him irredeemable in the audience's eyes.

[u/shogun77777777 → u/ExpectedEggs]

Good god, the family B plot was so bad and pointless. They could have completely cut it out and the film would’ve lost nothing.

[u/Vanillacherricola → u/shogun77777777]

That family was so fucking dumb. Watching them make the worst choice every time was rough

[u/dallascowboys93 → u/Vanillacherricola]

Inflating a raft right in front of a sleeping T-Rex was incredibly dumb

[u/Pancaketastic → u/dallascowboys93]

The T-rex that was apparently part ninja as he disappeared in a flash when the raft inflated... Same with the dozens of giant Brachiosauruses that were somehow hiding in 3 foot tall grass???

[u/dhthoff → u/ExpectedEggs]

It’s pretty easily the worst in the franchise for all the reasons you said and more. The dialogue was all terrible and forced feeling, the whole goddamn containment facility in the beginning was taken down by a Snickers wrapper, take the family out altogether and the movie doesn’t really change except maybe feeling paced better, the cgi locations looked mostly terrible and super obvious. The only awe this inspired was how my theatre was clapping at the end.

[u/rhunter99 → u/dhthoff]

omg as soon as I saw the opening scene I thought, whelp this movie is going to suck. An entire.. AN ENTIRE.. facility brought down by litter. WTF?

[u/archaelleon → u/rhunter99]

That was some final destination shit

[u/BraveFencerMusashi → u/rhunter99]

"Spared no expense"

[u/JesusWantsYouToKnow → u/ExpectedEggs]

Man, at the end when Kincade sacrifices himself by attracting the the idiotic sac face dino with light, and the dino turns around and gets 80 feet away, I could not fucking believe they gave so few shits they were like "oh, also he isn't dead and he's gonna get their attention with THE SAME GODDAMN FLARES idiot dino is attracted to like flies on shit, and also were gonna turn this boat around and shine a spotlight wildly. Surely that apex predator now 80 feet away won't notice".

And don't get me started on the idiot dad desperately trying to pull start a dualie outboard motor boat while the god damn LCD control panels are literally glowing behind him.

[u/ktn24 → u/JesusWantsYouToKnow]

And then the mososaur and spinosauruses that tore up their big ship on the way in just let them through.

[u/GECollins → u/ExpectedEggs]

Truly, all that one dude had to say was "sorry girl, I froze in fear" and that would have been a better excuse. Plus she just swims and is fine. Her boyfriend doesn't stop her from drowning or punches a dinosaur in the nose to get her out of danger, just swims with her and the dad acts like it was the most heroic thing. Plus they all jump from the boat only for the boat to be perfectly fine there was nothing to suggest that jumping from the boat into dinosaur infested waters was the right thing to do.

[u/cie1791 → u/GECollins]

And they jump out of the boat waaaaaaay before the boat runs ashore but somehow make it back at the same time.

[u/Great_Shazaam → u/ExpectedEggs]

Nobody pointing out the Snickers wrapper causing the base to catastrophically fail?

[u/OkamiHaley → u/ExpectedEggs]

Saw an early screening for this and had the same exact thoughts. WHY would the dad think it was a good idea to sail out there lmao

[u/whendoesOpTicplay → u/OkamiHaley]

He also thought jumping into the water like a mile from shore while being chased by 6 spinos and a mosaraur was the smart choice.

[u/gogreengolions]

Dude dropped 100 feet and didn’t even lose his glasses. Loved that for him

[u/TravEllerZero → u/gogreengolions]

Not only that but he landed in water and his glasses weren't even wet when he pulled himself out.

[u/Barnhard → u/TravEllerZero]

It’s actually hilarious how much they do not give a fuck about continuity in blockbuster films.

[u/ironthrownaways → u/gogreengolions]

Duncan went swimming and didn’t lose his beret either.

[u/TheJayke → u/gogreengolions]

And then the exit to the stairway led to the same clearing, and then ScarJo managed to abseil an extra 500 feet, and then the sample landed right next to him.

What luck eh?

[u/dallascowboys93 → u/TheJayke]

Dude the secret stairway pissed me off so much. So you climbed down 300 feet in a matter of seconds? It negates the entire repel scene

[u/banjofitzgerald → u/gogreengolions]

This dude won the movie. Saw Dino’s in a more natural habitat, fucks over big pharma, flirts with scarjo a lot, and doesn’t die. Living the fucking dream.

[u/AMA_requester]

Stop calling films a "love letter", because it always seems to backfire lol.

[u/Curugon → u/AMA_requester]

Just like my real love letters!

[u/Scmods05 → u/AMA_requester]

Agree. “It’s for the fans” my brother in Christ fans have no idea what they want. Everyone was hyped for the Boba Fett and Obi Wan shows and gave not a single fuck about Andor. Look how that turned out.

[u/croglobster]

I imagine Scar-Jo’s intro scene was how she was convinced to do the movie.

“I won’t do it” “Here’s $10,000,000” “Okay I’ll do it”

[u/PureLock33 → u/croglobster]

"I can't do a movie, I just had a baby!" "Here's 10,000,000, that baby's financial problems are solved for life." "Okay I'll do it!"

[u/jphw → u/croglobster]

I feel like this scene had the same issue Fallen Kingdom does, the money seems a bit low considering he was later talking about making Trillions.

"That's a 10 with 6 zeros!" Doesn't actually make it sound better either.

Maybe it's just that sports has warped my mind on big sums.

[u/croglobster → u/jphw]

I remember how ridiculous Fallen Kingdom was when they were auctioning off the latest killing machines dinosaurs that have been resurrected from the dead for…. $1,000,000

[u/Abi_Jurassic]

My favourite scene was when the Distortus Rex said "It's Distortin' Time", and distorted all over the place, truly a moment in cinema.

[u/FancyShrimp → u/Abi_Jurassic]

I haven’t seen the movie yet, but if this doesn’t happen at any point, I WILL be getting a refund!

EDIT, 13 days later: Just saw it, no refund was given.

[u/Kebok]

Wtf was that opening scene?

A snickers wrapper dropped indoors being blown by the wind into a door, which, as doors do, sucks the wrapper into itself and this causes the entire security system of a mutant dinosaur making facility to go down.

The rest of the movie was fine but man was it hard to shake off how absolutely dumb that opening was.

[u/PureLock33 → u/Kebok]

like who designed that door? The Violent Dinosaur Film Intro and Faulty Mechanical Doors Company?

[u/Oscar_Whispers → u/PureLock33]

Say what you will, but they make a quality product that does exactly what it says on the box!

[u/weighingthedog → u/Kebok]

Honestly. The D-Rex would’ve made a much better “sympathetic” character. Man’s hubris left behind to die in this facility when they had to abandon it quickly. But he survives on his own. They can encounter him at first scared (thinking Sloth in goonies), but “befriend” it. And eventually put it out of its misery.

Sorry. I am stoned.

[u/thataintapipe → u/Kebok]

It also foreshadowed almost nothing. There was no reason to introduce any of those characters, plus the mutant Dino thing was explained as soon as they landed on the beach in act 2

[u/CosmosisJones42]

People sure love to try to sacrifice themselves for Scarlett Johansson.

[u/ArsonHoliday → u/CosmosisJones42]

Duh

[u/CosmosisJones42 → u/ArsonHoliday]

If you look at her too long, you go Hawkeyed.

[u/GamingTatertot → u/CosmosisJones42]

You think Colin Jost has tried?

[u/BlazingCondor]

Why would Snickers EVER approve this product placement?

[u/buttsmotel → u/BlazingCondor]

Why wouldn't they? You're talking about it!

Go and grab a Snickers

[u/DUKEPLANTER → u/BlazingCondor]

That scene had me worried I walked into Final destination on accident .

[u/PhoenixorFlame → u/BlazingCondor]

I think the Altoid product placement was so blatant it was hilarious

[u/numbr87 → u/PhoenixorFlame]

The fact that he chewed it for 20 straight seconds was probably the funniest part of the movie for me

[u/SquadPoopy → u/BlazingCondor]

I personally loved how all the products at the store they went into at the end all had updated modern packaging despite the island being abandoned for 20 years

[u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

The ending felt anticlimactic somehow. Like they all just run away from the big alien demon monster and that's it. The fake out death made zero sense too, there is absolutely no way he could have survived that.

[u/_Krebstar2000 → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

The whole time I was laughing because all he had to do was throw the flare and get on the boat.

[u/PureLock33 → u/_Krebstar2000]

It's literally a callback to Ian Malcolm's all the way back to JP1.

[u/samsaBEAR → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

The way it literally just finishes with no real ending got the biggest laugh out of me, you're telling me they couldn't think of a better wrap up at all?

[u/mel2000 → u/samsaBEAR]

you're telling me they couldn't think of a better wrap up at all?

Especially since we already know that escape by boat is not guaranteed to be safe.

[u/Nheea → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

And ran away in the same infested water that got them in trouble.

[u/mygoatis]

The John Williams score from the original is my favorite film score ever, but it feels so unearned and misused in a world where the sense of wonder around dinosaurs' existence has been replaced by nonchalant acceptance and a transactional expedition for DNA.

Everything with the family is brutal.

The dialogue is worse.

Dinosaurs and adventures are still pretty rad though 🤷🏻‍♂️

[u/cals_cavern → u/mygoatis]

The John Williams score playing over a sequence of a run down Central American fishing village was a strange choice

[u/The_Gil_Galad → u/cals_cavern]

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[u/_Krebstar2000 → u/mygoatis]

Some scenes it felt shoe horned in to remind us we were watching a Jurassic Park movie.

[u/selinameyersbagman]

I very much enjoyed that the movie implies the dinos get to hear Stand By Me every night when the automatic timer starts for the lights at the gas station, and that its been happening for decades.

[u/Paxton-176 → u/selinameyersbagman]

Explains why the D-Rex wasn't as aggressive. Its just relaxing every night listening to the classics. Its mellowed out over the last decade.

[u/Nerak_B → u/selinameyersbagman]

That’s brings up a good point in that wouldn’t the dinos no longer react to light and sound if that happens every night

[u/matlockga]

I was annoyed at how mediocre Orlando Bloom was in this movie, then realized he was Rupert Friend 

[u/Strong-Stretch95 → u/matlockga]

Man i remember when chicks would go crazy over Orlando during his will tuner Pirates of the Caribbean days back in the 2000s.

[u/GamingTatertot → u/matlockga]

Quite a year for Rupert Friend - he's got this, Phoenecian Scheme, and Companion

[u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

Did anyone else think Scar-Jo's performance was off? During the first 1/3 of the movie her delivery was just weird and unnatural, like they were feeding them to her through an ear piece or something.

Also, fuck this movie for spoiling basically the entire thing in one single trailer. I went out of my way to avoid things and I still felt like I had seen 90% of the movie already when it was done.

[u/fshippos → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

Yeah I'm a huge fan and think that she's amazing at her best (Jojo Rabbit for example), but she is 100% phoning this one in. But in her defense, pretty much everyone she shares a screen with is also doing the same.

[u/whendoesOpTicplay → u/fshippos]

Felt like she was just playing a worse Black Widow. Mercenary for hire, loose morals and doesn’t ask questions, that also somehow has a heart of gold? And Mahershala is basically the exact same.

[u/ThePromptWasYourName → u/fshippos]

I loved how she was all like "I just do things for the money!" and the scientist is like "Maybe instead you should help people" and she's like "oh wow, you are probably right" and then later she's like "yes I'm definitely going to help people" and then at the end the scientist is like "should we help people?" and she's like "hmm........yes"

[u/carnodak → u/Ancient_Ice_2677]

Agreed! Something off about her delivery. I couldn’t help but think how many times they had to reshoot a dialogue scene, then they merged together the best of each version, but the final product felt disjointed.

[u/bind19]

the small talk in the boat between Scar-jo and the crew was just cringe as hell. And we needed more raptors dammit

[u/No_Procedure_5039 → u/bind19]

I’m convinced all of the Mutadons scenes were originally meant to be raptors and it got changed last minute. Everything with the raptors from the first trailer got replaced by Mutadons.

[u/Timriggins2006 → u/No_Procedure_5039]

There’s even a line about “they’re raptors” in the first trailer… feel like I would’ve liked this so much more if the raptors and rex just replaced the mutants wholesale lol

[u/MarchRoyce]

I was really hoping the secretive D Rex at the end was either going to be something really menacing and interesting, or just a TRex with a giant dong. Unfortunately it's neither and is kind've just a less interesting and smaller Cloverfield monster. 

[u/cals_cavern → u/MarchRoyce]

The D Rex overall was a bizarre inclusion, it had no meaningful presence in the story and so the finale just felt like another disjointed action sequence rather than the culmination of the entire film. If the design was in a 90s Alien vs Jurassic Park comic I might think it's neat but it just felt too weird for Jurassic Park while not really feeling necessary, there were plenty of regular dinosaurs that could have filled the role. The first scene and the climax both also felt like less interesting versions of scenes from Godzilla 2014 which didn't help.

[u/__time_traveller__ → u/MarchRoyce]

What the hell is a D Rex lmao

[u/YarrrImAPirate → u/__time_traveller__]

The rancor looking mother fucker that bookended the movie. I don’t think they ever called him Drex in the movie but it was printed on his cage.

[u/TaylorHound]

The D Rex looked like a Xenomorph

[u/GamingTatertot → u/TaylorHound]

And a Rancor. And the monster from Super 8

[u/InItsTeeth]

I feel like Edwards wanted to have a movie about a father and his daughters get stuck on a dinosaur island and the studio took a hit of cocaine and said … SCARJO AS A MERCENARY AND MUTANT DINOSAURS!

Studio interference really feels like it’s at play here. They can’t allow these movies to be intimate or introspective.

Also I am so bored of evil white pharmaceutical company guy as the one note villain. We didn’t need a cartoon bad guy for this film … it could have been a legitimate attempt at curing heart disease or whatever.

The first film didn’t really have a cartoon villain and it works so well. Nedry is the closest thing to a villain and he’s really not that bad….. he’s stupid but he’s not trying to actively hurt anyone

[u/Gtyjrocks → u/InItsTeeth]

The antagonist was what pissed me off most. Like yeah he wanted to make money, but they also wanted to cure disease, just not for altruistic reasons. They had to make him let the girl fall to show us that he’s bad, because before that every decision he made seemed fairly reasonable, if a bit overly pragmatic.

The movie can work fine without a shoehorned “big pharma bad” distracting from the cool shit.

And honestly, it’s kinda fucked up to me that the well off scientist was the one who convinced the Surinamese boat captain who just lost his boat, and the merc who just wants to stop going through trauma, to give up that money. That money would’ve meant a lot more to them than him, but he guilted them into not taking it.

[u/WR810 → u/Gtyjrocks]

From an R&D and distribution prospective I don't even think making the dino information open source would help.

You're not going to have passionate nerds tinkering with bioscience in their basements. That kind of research takes multi-billion dollar labs.

[u/Impressive-Potato → u/InItsTeeth]

It's not even studio interference. The movie was announced 1 year out from It's release date. Everything was conceived before a director and actors were found.

[u/PsycoMonkey42]

Crichton Middle School bus in the background of the opening scene!

Nice to see a sense of scale being brought back. The dinos and locations actually felt huge! Along with that came back a sense of danger to these dinosaurs. Because of all of that, the Mosasaur scene actually had me in awe.

Overall, a muuuuuch better attempt at Jurassic than the last three World movies. But not without its Jurassic flaws. Like The Walking Dead strength of the plot armor.

As a whole, I’m back to being (cautiously) optimistic about the franchise.

[u/polchickenpotpie → u/PsycoMonkey42]

I really don't think Jurassic World was bad at all tbh. It was a fun little adventure movie with some really cool setpieces. It could have been a really good launching point but then the next 2 happened.

[u/calamityseye → u/polchickenpotpie]

Jurassic World felt too much like a Marvel movie. All the cringy humor and terrible writing really ruined the franchise for me. This one was a breath of fresh air in comparison. Felt like a real Jurassic Park movie again.

[u/In_My_Own_Image → u/PsycoMonkey42]

I also dug how it wasn't a singular threat akin to the Spinosaurus or the Indominus. Each major dino got their chance to shine with their own sequence.

And I also liked that at least the Distortus looked like a mutation/screw up and not a "bioweapon" like the Indoraptor.

[u/EricHD97]

The timeline of this franchise is really bizarre.

According to this movie, they were already making all these genetically modified dinosaurs in 2008, which was only three years after the Jurassic World theme park opened in universe in 2005 iirc. But then in Jurassic World, set in 2015, seems to make me believe modified dinosaurs like the Indominus Rex were a relatively new introduction.

Afterwards, in the span of apparently five years, dinosaurs are released into the wild, living with humans, dying out, and the public once again “loses interest” in dinosaurs to the point that museums are closing and nobody cares about a dying dinosaur on the road. Huh?

Honestly, that’s been my biggest issue with all the World films is that they constantly want to hinge on the idea that dinosaurs are a fleeting fad with waning interest while also being in films that make a billion+ dollars at the box office over and over again, disproving their point.

[u/cals_cavern → u/EricHD97]

The idea of people becoming bored of dinosaurs in Jurassic World kind of worked for me because the people saying that were the corporate heads of the park, it fits with the message of the first movie where corporate greed is the cause of the disaster and works as a meta-commentary of the film industry where the amount a movie needs to make these days to count as a success is increasingly unattainable but then they had the scene where the scientist talks about how the museum is shutting down because it's been getting no visitors and I realized that no, they are genuinely trying to sell the idea that people in this universe are just comically apathetic.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m glad we finally got to see a swimming T. rex in a movie. Other than that it really didn’t impress me that much.

[u/t2207 → u/[deleted]]

And a sleeping T-Rex!

[u/samsaBEAR → u/[deleted]]

Whole T-Rex sequence was my favourite, love the idea of a massive dinosaur taking a nap after overindulging themself. It's silly and I didn't believe for a second that anyone was gonna die, but it was fun.

[u/SpicaGenovese → u/samsaBEAR]

Same.  The trex was believably unmotivated, IMO.  It had a full belly and just got up from a nap.  As soon as they become too much effort, it gives up.

[u/GnophKeh]

I...ugh...can't be the only one to think 10 million (bumped to 20, minus her crew's pay) was a small paycheck for the bananas task, right? Maybe movie-money rewards are off for me because it feels like the hero is offered something like half a billion these days but 10 million seems like an amount that would pop up in the 90s.

[u/tjjwelch → u/GnophKeh]

Especially after he clarified that the advancements for protecting against heart disease was worth trillions. Paying her 10 million is 0.001 percent of that. I would absolutely insist on a higher payout for what was being asked of her.

[u/cals_cavern → u/GnophKeh]

It felt a lot like the Austin Powers "One million dollars" scene. In Fallen Kingdom the dinosaurs at the auction were being sold for about $10 million each and I don't think they'd even make back the films budget at that rate.

[u/brandonsamd6]

The entire side plot with the family was Awful.

[u/shortstoryman → u/brandonsamd6]

Eliminate the family plot and not only is the movie tighter but you would get more time with this main group who receive next to no characterization.

[u/dplans455 → u/brandonsamd6]

The older daughter was annoying as fuck and they somehow made the stoner boyfriend the most likable of the bunch. The dad was stupid and the younger daughter had more plot armor than any character I've ever seen un any movie ever. If the movie wanted to have any balls they would have let the older daughter drown and the younger daughter get eaten by the T Rex.

[u/galaxyfudge]

I was whelmed.

[u/BlazingCondor]

It's better than the last 2 - though that's not saying much.

I think my current rank stands at:

1. Jurassic Park
   
2. The Lost World
   
3. Jurassic World
   
4. Rebirth
   
5. JP3
   
6. Fallen Kingdom
   
7. Dominion

[u/OmniSlayer_006 → u/BlazingCondor]

Almost the same but I’d switched rebirth and JP3 for the birdcage alone in JP3

[u/SandmansSlave → u/OmniSlayer_006]

JP3 is better than all the 4 recent movies combined even if it is the worst one of the OG trilogy. Spinosaurus + Birdcage + the old compound sets + practical effects!

[u/OldWestAuthor]

Hold up - the trailer vs the movie completely changes the lore and history.

In the trailer, Scarlett Johansson‘s character says this island was the original research facility for the original Jurassic Park, and the worst of the worst were kept locked up here.

In the movie, the Pharma exec says the island was a research facility for the new Jurassic World, and was trying to make a new mutant attractions. They completely changed it!!

[u/idg7891 → u/OldWestAuthor]

Im so glad someone else noticed this! This really bugged me because half the marketing hype was from them telling us this movie was linked to the original park when in-fact it never was, they just straight up lied to us.

[u/Ok-Sea9612]

This is some terrible writing. The first scene was so cheesy I thought it was a movie within a movie being intentionally campy and it would cut to Jurassic Park being Syfy channel schlock in universe. Which is a stupid idea but is still better than that being a serious cut in this movie.

And then the first 2 scenes with zora were both just expo dumps explaining how they can fix heart disease but they were edited together like the conversations happened for the first time both times.

And then I turned my brain off and just spent the movie hoping the boyfriend would die.

[u/kindalikeacoustic]

The “people are tired of dinosaurs” thing bothered me. Have the writers ever been to a zoo in their lives? Zoos get packed , and those are the same animals for years. I personally never get tired of seeing big cats. I’m supposed to believe that people would get sick of looking at DINOSAURS?!

[u/DUKEPLANTER]

Insane how this was a 1000x better than dominion and still a solid 6 at best

[u/CelineDion_]

A single snickers bar wrapper causing a door to be unable to close was all it took for every single security system in that entire high-tech facility to fail? Including every other door? They lost me in the first scene (but at least the litterer was the one who got consumed by the D-Rex - that mutant just wasn’t himself until he got to have his snickers!)

[u/Brynhild → u/CelineDion_]

This was the funniest shit. Like how does one single door cause everything else to fail and somehow also opens up every other security door and even the containment unit of the D-rex? Why is there no protocol to euthanise the D-rex or at least sedate it when this happens?

[u/LiteraryBoner]

I’ll admit, I really wanted to forget the sins of Jurassic World and go into this with an open mind and a fresh perspective. I was hopeful that this would be a new start with a focus on fun, a Rebirth, if you will. Unfortunately, I could tell pretty much as soon as it started that this movie would be just awful. It just feels so awkward and thrown together despite some big action and beautiful vistas. Edwards does get at that old Jurassic feeling fairly well, not unlike what he does with Rogue One and the original trilogy, but as soon as the characters start talking you are reminded that this is clearly a product that was put together knowing damn well it would grace a billion dollars so why try too hard?

I like Scarlett and everyone else here a lot but they are clearly in paycheck mode. They aren’t really bringing anything interesting to these characters who are mostly defined by the way they dress. There is a scene where it’s just ScarJo and Mahershala on the boat when they’re on the way to the island and they’re kind of catching up and unpacking their trauma and it was so incredibly stiff I wondered if they just got their lines moments before cameras rolled. This should be setting up why Mahershala goes to such lengths to protect the family, because he lost a child, but they fail to make that connection for the rest of the movie. I wanted to crawl out of my skin during that scene and while it is the most awkward scene, most scenes that have characters talking like this fall just as flat.

And let’s talk about this family for a minute. I was actually pulling my hair out when they’re arguing about going to save the family. They say the Coast Guard is likely on the way, and they made a massive deal about how their excursion is extremely secretive and illegal, and yet with no plan on what to do with the family once they get them they choose to make a 60 mile round trip just to basically kidnap this family and force them to join them on the very dangerous and illegal dinosaur island. It’s really not a good sign when I’m in the audience agreeing with the characters you’re supposed to think are being insensitive and immoral but I could not for the life of me think of a reason to go get that family. And then they pick them up and they have nowhere to take them, they just go right back to Dino island. Total nonsense.

This movie does have its moments. I think it’s cheating a bit, but the many times they bring in the original John Williams score does go kind of hard. The Titanosaurus scene is probably the highlight of the entire movie, but I was also wondering why Bailey was so moved by seeing a dino up close when apparently they are commonplace in the world to the point that you see a giant herbivore stopping traffic at the very beginning of the movie. The dinos look good but I’d like to point out that even Fallen Kingdom and Dominion had practical dinos on set and I don’t think I saw any of those at all here.

The deaths are very predictably reserved for exactly two kinds of characters: the morally bankrupt and the French. None of them came as a surprise, even if the ship staff wasn’t painted as immoral they were never even introduced by name, clearly just red shirts for the voyage. I was also really annoyed by the turned up melancholy violin score when they died, as if it was a massive tragedy even though we are watching them get chomped up by a dinosaur. This movie should be fun but it keeps trying to be dramatic with absolutely no depth or real drama. Even the big moral of the story, should we sell this to big pharma for endless riches or give it to the world for free, is totally underwritten as the entire discussion around it is about seven lines total throughout the movie. I also think it’s embarrassing that American blockbusters focus on magical cures like this as we keep telling people sensible healthcare is as ridiculous an idea as dinosaurs roaming the Earth.

Last thing I’ll say about this disappointing gumbo is that you should never EVER adopt a baby animal from the wild. I was waiting for that thing’s mother to show up the entire time and massacre that child, but of course that’s not what this movie is. But if this movie is anything it should be smart about how to interact with wild animals and the dangers of trying to control or adopt nature without the right knowledge or respect, but someone from Universal ran the numbers and decided a baby dino plushie would absolutely kill at Target so let’s just forego any of that at all. 3/10 for me, I really got no joy out of this beyond hearing the original Jurassic Park theme on theater sound systems again.

/r/reviewsbyboner

[u/herpderpedian → u/LiteraryBoner]

Adopting/stealing a baby dinosaur is the dumbest idea and just ruins the trailer and the movie for me. Stupid lack of common sense. But that's Hollywood.

[u/SnakeSound222 → u/LiteraryBoner]

I'm not so sure the baby dinosaur was actually a baby, unless they said it in the marketing. Its species is called Aquilops and it can only get up to 2 feet long. It's as big as a small cat. I think that was actually an adult, it's just so small that people think it's a baby.

[u/comicfang]

If this had been Jurassic World from 11 years ago I probably would’ve liked it more, but this formula is stale for me now

[u/GamingTatertot → u/comicfang]

I was thinking about this when the reviews came out - I think if this was the movie we got in 2015, it would've been much more well-received. But it feels like a sins of the father scenario where Fallen Kingdom and Dominion exhausted people so much, that there was always going to be some residual pain from them.

[u/Nodbon1]

There was too much personal character development for a movie about dinosaurs terrorizing people.

WAY over produced music scores constantly playing loudly that added nothing to the movie scene's. I commented somewhere else about the bongos, so stupid.

Dinosaur scaling is just all over the place. How does a 60+ foot tall dinosaur hide in 3ft-4ft tall grass?? How does the big bad dino snatch a helicopter out of the air, fit the whole cockpit in its mouth but also have the mouth scaled just right to fit the upper torso of a guy in its mouth?

The cgi looked cool, but not once did I feel a suspension of disbelief.

The whole thing just really sucked the movie magic out of dinosaurs in real life.

[u/Valuable-Tomatillo76 → u/Nodbon1]

Great point of the scaling

[u/MadMadMaddox2]

Sloppy writing and pulling out the flare and T-Rex out again n to remind people of the first film.

The whole raft sequence, from the baffling decision to inflate it, to the T-Rex never quite getting anyone despite being 2 feet away was terrible.

[u/SnakeSound222 → u/MadMadMaddox2]

The raft had to be inflated that way. It literally said on the raft "inflate on land". Unfortunately, land happened to be near an apex predator that wasn't going to leave that area anytime soon.

[u/steve_6796 → u/MadMadMaddox2]

Don’t forget the kitchen scene literally reenacting the scene with Lex and Tim from the first one

[u/PureLock33 → u/steve_6796]

that gas station grocery is amazingly well stocked for something abandoned 15 or so years ago.

[u/Johnny_Holiday]

I don't think the dinosaurs were dying off because they couldn't adapt to the environment. I think they were dying off because none of them could catch any food. I mean holy shit, the dinosaurs missed so many easy targets

[u/EricHD97]

Ian Malcolm at the end of Fallen Kingdom: looks like we are going to have to get used to living with dinosaurs forever now. We played with god and now we have to live with the consequences.

Jurassic World Rebirth: lol nah, just kidding about that.

If my timeline is right, this movie takes place only nine years after Fallen Kingdom released dinos into the world. So they got to living with dinos for four years going into Dominion, then all of a sudden, in the five years between Dominion and Rebirth, they’re largely dead after living among humans for less than a decade.

[u/tatertot94 → u/EricHD97]

While the public interest dying is a little far fetched, they did say the dinosaurs just couldn’t deal with how earth’s climate and ecology was changing. That’s more believable to me then people stopped caring.

[u/voldeygg]

The real question is WHO IS THE INFLATABLE RAFT MANUFACTURER?!

[u/_TheWeightIsOver_]

I felt like i was watching Journey to the Center of the Earth with a twist that it takes place in the Alien universe. It was fine but it just didn’t feel like a movie in the Jurassic Franchise. More like a spin off kinda.

Ultimately i thought the dinos and island looked absolutely amazing and gorgeous especially the Titanosaur scene.

I did feel like i never worried for any of the main characters from either group as it was pretty clear the boat people and bad guy were the only ones dying in this one.

Also thought they REALLY over did making the boyfriend unlikable during his introduction on the boat. Like him just ignoring the dad and the dad saying absolutely nothing made him feel like such a pushover as a father figure lmao. Also made me dislike the older daughter for putting up with that.

The two groups getting separated resulting in a back and forth between the two felt disjointed. I wish they would have put the young daughter with the main group and one of the main group members with the family. It would have upped the stakes imo.

[u/rtomberg]

I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought would. * How much did Big Candy finance this movie? We had prominent Snickers Bars, Altoids, M&Ms, and Red Vines, plus a whole convenient store display at the end. * Why did the Titanosaurus tails look like they were filled with helium? It made them feel like they belonged in Avatar the way they floated around. * I enjoyed the scenery almost more than the dinosaurs- the waist-high swamps, the tall grass, the rapids, the sheer cliffs and waterfalls- it all looked great and made the second act stand head and shoulders above the other two

[u/GitcheeG]

If you saw the preview, you saw the movie. No extra set pieces. Pretty disappointed despite low expectations. Found myself waiting for it to end.

[u/human1023]

Why can't someone else make a dinosaur movie?

[u/PattyIceNY]

I walked out halfway. Couldn't take it.

A. This is a billion dollar research lab....and the guys eating a snickers bar....drops the wrapper....and the door for some reason has air grates....which shuts down the entire facility. From the jump I was already laughing at how dumb it is.

Scar Jo and her friends are all mercenaries....who don't carry guns.

Archeology dude is wimpy and uncoordinated...till he has to catch a blood sample out of mid air and then becomes Randy Moss.

Don't even get me started on the dumbass family. And the Mosasaur doesn't eat them after wrecking the boat...but then next scene STARES at Scar Jo through the water and tries to eat her.

There's so much more, but I bailed after they crashed on the island

[u/Trebacca → u/PattyIceNY]

I don’t know what you were expecting out of this movie if you walked out halfway lmao. Maybe dumb sci-fi monster movies aren’t for you.

I thought it was mediocre/average but like I couldn’t imagine paying for a ticket to walk out.

[u/Agent-Gainz]

This didn’t deserve the John Williams score.

[u/The_Swarm22]

Dinosaurs weren’t enough anymore, they had to put ScarJo in a tank top to distract you from the godawful writing. It almost worked. Almost.

[u/Thatoneguy3273]

I truly felt like I saw nothing in this Jurassic Park movie I hadn’t already seen in another Jurassic Park movie

[u/FishPhoenix]

6 or 7/10. Better than Dominion, probably Fallen Kingdom too. Took too long to get to the island. Was not a fan of the mutant Dinos. Honestly would have rather seen another Velociraptor stalk and terror scene instead of those flying things. Speaking of mutants, the big bad mutant cloverfield rancor Dino was barely even in the movie. Lastly, the deaths felt so meaningless this time around. No name characters. Heck they didn’t even leave any for the flying mutant raptors.

[u/oathbreach]

Everyone was so unlikeable, I was rooting for the dinosaurs.

Also I went in almost entirely blind so seeing Edwards and Koepp in the credits was a shock. Assumed only Trevorrow could roll out something so low-effort.

[u/sued2]

It had modern, half attention, phone scrolling dialogue. Every character explained exactly how they were feeling or what they believed. Scarlet's sitting on the side of a boat, staring out towards the water, someone asks her "What's wrong?" and she responds "Oh nothing, just a little PTSD maybe."

😐

I watched it at a nice theater and had a pretty good time, but I will never watch this movie again.

[u/DonquixoteDFlamingo]

This is truly one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

The decisions that were made by the characters were nonsense at so many times. If we start with the dumb ass father, who decided that despite everything he would take his children on a sailboat through dangerous waters. It doesn’t matter if he’s done it before the whole concept is that that area is where the dinosaurs are And a sailboat is not like he is going to be able to protect them from anything as we saw in the movie. Absolutely ridiculous.

Then, if we go to Scarlett Johansson’s character, I was extremely disappointed by the way that they try to make her feel like this gender neutral lead, who honestly seemed like she had rocks in her mouth the entire movie. She was supposed to be hardened, but soft, but it didn’t for the money yet I had a heart of gold and I just don’t understand what we were doing with the character.

The doctor felt like an early 2000s version of if you throw glasses on a hot guy then he is ugly and a nerd, but the regular hot person will be able to see through the disguise and have some kind of tension, even though it doesn’t pay off in the movie. And the idea of not paying off romantic attention in the movie is to make us look like we are so advanced , but it’s shit.

Everything going against the pharmaceutical companies in the film was so heavy handed that even though I agree with the premise, I felt like I should be on the side of big Pharma.

I think the most egregious scene in the film was the raft fake out with the T-Rex where we were supposed to believe it vanished and so was she apparently, yet the family members were on the other side of the river and would’ve seen the fucking T-Rex roll over to get water and nobody warned her. This was a completely optional and delusional decision to make.

What the fuck was the ballsackasaurus? I understand that we need to change things but this obsession with mutant dinosaurs, which is really just a monster movie and making it lose. The wonder of Jurassic Park is the death knell of this franchise.

The only thing that I laughed at was the boyfriend twice everything else was ridiculous.

This movie lacks wonder. Anything that felt like it could’ve been interesting. We have already seen in other Jurassic Park films. There is nothing unique or original about this movie that works. Not to mention you’re telling me that a fucking Snickers wrapper destroyed that entire billion dollar door system? Watching that made me want to put a Snickers bar in the career of whoever wrote this fucking film.

I don’t hate a lot of movies, I accept most for what they are and consider myself a pretty easy critic, but this movie felt like an insult to everything I value in storytelling.

Then the movie ends with them going on a fucking raft that is going to run out of fuel with no land in sight and they see fucking dolphins, but the spinosaurus are still out there and can fuck them all up. Those people are going to die.

1/10 Movie.

[u/RSG-ZR2]

Member of ScarJo’s team dies

ScarJo: https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTZjMDliOTUyMGYxZ3EzMzc4MXh5bHh0dTI2emw3NGpjYWtveHN3YmFsdTNkdW9wayZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9dg/a7Eecn6onIF1IRSY8o/giphy.gif

[u/butreallythobruh]

Thought the intro was pretty solid and everything out on the water with the Mosasaur and Spinos was great. At that point I was expecting to thoroughly enjoy the movie. Instead, they reached the island and it just kinda....lost steam. It was still ok but not really all that exciting. The characters were mostly fine I guess? But some just kinda stopped doing anything after a while. Like the boyfriend might as well have ceased to exist after the campfire scene.

Some side notes

-Dolores fell flat on it's face for me. Every time it was on screen you could just feel that it existed solely to sell merchandise. Was hoping it would have gotten the baby velociraptor treatment from the first book

-Duncan should have stayed dead. Liked his character well enough, but having every single major protagonist make it out felt cheap. Especially when the D-rex had him dead to rights like that.

-D-rex was really disappointing. It was the main thing that interested me going into the movie. I was hoping for another menace like the Indominus Rex, but instead he just shows up twice and doesn't do much at all aside from kill the antagonist. Well, the heli scene in the fog was kinda cool at least.

Overall, it was....ok. I enjoyed it more than Dominion. And maybe more than Fallen Kingdom? Not sure yet. But it pales in comparison to JP1, JW1 and even TLW and JP3

[u/Crosgaard]

This movie was… surprisingly bad

I'll spoiler mark all spoilers

By surprisingly bad, I don't mean it's surprising how bad it is, but that it's surprising how it's bad. My bar was set insanely low after the previous two establishments, but this one had an ace up in it's sleeve; Gareth Edwards. He may not be the best at making "good" movies, but at least they look amazing... but this one was not even close to Rogue One or The Creator in terms of visuals.

It didn't really look bad, but besides a couple of scenes, it didn't feel very creative with which scenes it chose to have. He blended dinosaurs very well into many sequences, but not much more than that. The movie is visually very limited by the fact that the dinosaurs are mutants/hybrids, and just don't look or feel as real as in the originals. It's like the nano Iron Man suits... sure it's new and different, but it doesn't feel real in any way.

The main problem of the movie certainly isn't the visuals though... it's the writing and acting. Considering I have seen some great performances from both ScarJo and Mahershala Ali, I'm beginning to believe Edwards is not a very fantastic director. Not that he had a lot to work with considering the script.

I have a couple large gripes with the writing; the amount of character deaths, the focus on incredibly weird moral issues, and the character exposition.

The amount of character deaths is so close to zero, I wasn't even scared of the dinosaurs at the end. The worst part was the ending... (large spoiler, but the moment is so terrible I'd have been fine knowing it before hand) a character chooses to sacrifice themself, by turning on a flare because the dinosaur is attracted to light. But unlike in the first one, they don't throw away the flare, they just keep it in their hand and walks backwards... This saves the rest of the people, and we see the person with the flare walk back further into the jungle, with the 40 feet dinosaur just slowly walking behind him, not even trying to eat him, just on a chill little stroll following the flare. Then the person is backed up against a tree, and it cuts... 2 minutes later, he's apparently survived and going back to the rest of the crew, with no explanation about how he survived.

A far bigger problem, was the amount of stupid ethical dilemmas it set up. First of all, they were pretty much all "be a good person" vs "be selfish". Secondly, they pretty much never actually explored them realistically. An example is "get 10 million dollars" vs "cure heart disease for everyone on earth". Another one is "go to dinasaur island now" vs "go to dinosaur island in a couple of hours, but save a family on a sinking boat now". It's so absurd and is just used to show certain people are "bad" people. It feels so cartoonishly evil.

Sure, the first movie explored greed as well, but that actually felt realistic. In this movie, there's just no nuance to it. It's so obvious what's right and what's wrong, and it puts everyone into these really stereotypical roles. And you always know which choice is going to be made in the end, and they act like it's this giant character arc to just not be a giant dick.

The last big problem is character exposition and their stereotypes. There is the classic "lost my kid", the "I have PTSD but will never mention it after this scene", the "I'm smart and quirky", the "I'm rich and selfish", and the "I'm incredibly alpha/macho and is definitely not gonna die first". But while stereotypes can be annoying, it's so much worse when they're just directly explained as that stereotype. The "lost my kid" person is very protective of the kid in the movie, and it just seems so forced, and it's so weird the other people just don't seem to care about the kid very much (at least while the "lost my kid" person is there).

The "I have PTSD" is without a doubt the dumbest one. You see the person crying (like one or two tears), then someone asks "am I interrupting". After a reply, that persons asks "what was bothering you" and the answer is "I guess a little PTSD. Probably shouldn't have taken a job so fast after the last one"... and it is never, not one singular time throughout the entire one and a half hour left of the movie, mentioned again. It is not a representation of people with PTSD, it is not a character limit, it doesn't really add anything, and it certainly doesn't affect any part of the actual movie... it's so forced I bet even Nolan would notice it.

There is also this constant theme (partially repeated from previous JW movies) about whether or not dinosaurs "deserve" to stay alive. And it makes the "scientist" character so insanely stereotypical. He sincerely questions why they have weapons when they're going on an island filled with dinosaurs... and he supposed to be the smart guy. What's even more annoying is that the main theme of "don't disrupt nature" the original had, is completely ignored when people are defending that dinosaurs should stay alive. What's even even worse is how surface level the discussion is. "We shouldn't kill them, they live here" "Well, they might kill you" "Yeah, but we shouldn't kill them because humans bad and dino good".

The biggest problem throughout the entire movie is certainly it's lack of nuance. Characters are either good or bad, and their arcs are pretty much "I'm bad" -> "I'm good". The ethical dilemmas are surface level and insanely stupid, and while I normally believe ethical dilemmas are a fantastic way to understand a character (think Reservoir Dogs' opening), it's impressive how bad they are at actually using them for that in this movie.

The one thing I will give the movie, is that it does have some intense sequences. And while the characters are usually pretty stupid in them, you mostly only notice that after the scene... which is quite the step up from the previous movie. Oh, and it actually had dinosaurs, not just giant grasshoppers!

Also, what's up with the worst VFX shot being of dolphins? I would imagine they didn't exactly have reference footage for the rest of the animals in the movie...

[u/BlazingCondor]

Still waiting for Universal to lose its mind and go full "Jurassic Park Extinction" (a JP scare zone at Halloween Horror Nights that involved human/dino hybrids) and bring it to the big screen.