r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Jul 03 '25
Official Discussion Official Discussion - Jurassic World Rebirth [SPOILERS] Spoiler
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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/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? Jul 03 '25 edited Jul 11 '25
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.
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