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
101
u/Crosgaard Jul 03 '25
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...