‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ receives 5.5 out of 10 stars.
Opening in theaters on July 2nd is ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’, the latest in the long-running dinosaur franchise that originated with 1993 classic ‘Jurassic Park’.
Directed by Gareth Edwards (‘The Creator’), the new movie stars Scarlett Johansson (‘Avengers: Endgame’), Jonathan Bailey (‘Wicked’), Rupert Friend (‘The Phoenician Scheme’), Mahershala Ali (‘Green Book’), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (‘The Lincoln Lawyer’) and Ed Skrein (‘Deadpool’).
Related Article: Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey Lead First Look at ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’
Initial Thoughts
The latest entry in the ‘Jurassic World’ franchise –– all birthed, of course, from the DNA of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel ‘Jurassic Park’ and the all-time classic movie Steven Spielberg made from it –– arrives with plenty of promise.
You have director Gareth Edwards, who has shown an ability to bring humanity to big-scale movies (even if his box office results don’t always align), and original ‘Park’ screenwriter David Koepp back unleashing the dino chaos from the page.
Loaded with references to how the world at large is generally over reconstituted dinosaurs coexisting (and that the creatures themselves are dying in our modern climate), it’s a meta meditation on how the movie franchise itself has evolved (not to mention the various attempts to bring giant creatures to the screen in other monsterverses) and every new effort needs to up the wow factor.
Script and Direction
If you weren’t aware that David Koepp wrote the script for ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’, the initial chunk of the screenplay might make you wonder whether it was someone else who had fed Koepp’s previous work into Chat GPT and asked it to replicate that, while throwing in some truly egregious movie cliches.
Following a relatively effective opening sequence which (briefly) introduces the new big bad dinosaur, we’re treated to expository title cards explaining how the public’s interest in the giant beasties has waned, and how they’re slowly dying out aside from in certain areas near the equator, which have become strict quarantine areas.
Then, the same information is repeated in a news broadcast, and at least one of the main characters says something similar. You’re beaten over the head with the details in such an inorganic fashion that you wonder if it was added in as studio executives panicked that we as an audience might not get it.
Likewise, the vast majority of the characters beyond a couple of leading figures are less one-note, more half-note, and at least two might as well have “dinosaur snack” written on their foreheads in place of personalities. Yes, that’s par for the course in a ‘Jurassic’ outing, but it’s all so poorly laid out here.
Gareth Edwards knows his way around an action sequence, and he’s certainly shot some lush locations here, bringing agreeably crunchy reality to moments. Some of the set pieces, such as an early Mosasaur encounter and one with giant flying Quetzalcoatlus creatures are well-realized, as is the amusing initial appearance of a toothy franchise stalwart.
But some moments are so clearly and painfully ripped off from the original ‘Jurassic Park’ you can almost hear that movie calling this one to demand its toys back. The initial glimpse of the Titanosaurus echoes the Brachiosaurus reveal from the first film, while the human characters trying to evade becoming dino food in a convenience store is essentially that movie’s raptor kitchen scene. In this case, Easter eggs feel like less like fan service and more a lack of original thinking.
Cast and Performances
Scarlett Johansson’s “security and extraction expert” Zora Bennett is at least a more interesting character than some of the ‘World’ movies’ equivalents, and she certainly brings an entertainingly glib style to her initial scenes. But even Johansson can’t rescue a character burdened by first-draft personal pain, and she’s ultimately less successful than she might have been.
Rupert Friend is Martin Krebs, who represents the company looking to profit from the medical material that the team has been sent to retrieve. Friend does what he can with the role, but he’s mostly just a hissable antagonist from word one.
Jonathan Bailey plays paleontologist expert Dr. Henry Loomis, recruited to help on the mission, who blossoms into a more active character in the Jeff Goldblum mold. Still, as with everyone else, he’s limited by the script.
Likewise Mahershala Ali, a man with two Oscars on his mantle at home, who puts all he can into ship captain and all-round fixer Duncan Kincaid. He has some good moments, but the character is lost among a wash of others.
Prime among them is ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, playing Reuben Delgado, a father to two daughters who is sailing with them near the dangerous waters, and whose boat is attacked by Mosasaurs. Garcia-Rulfo is typically good in the role, but even he’s saddled with cliché and convenience, such as one of his kids bringing an annoying, lazy boyfriend along on the trip and an injured leg from the early dino attack that mysteriously heals itself later in the movie.
Final Thoughts
While some sequences and Edwards’ commitment to tactile, real-world locations and some practical effects among the digital soup offer minor pleasures, the hulking weight of a cliché-ridden script and dino action that doesn’t so much as reference what’s gone before but rips it off wholesale, the new ‘Jurassic’ entry is miss.
This ‘Rebirth’ turns out to be largely a ‘saur disappointment.
iDV9ECfrlJVXq7MAkRW8k1What’s the story of ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’?
Five years after the events of ‘Jurassic World Dominion’, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures across land, sea and air within that tropical biosphere hold, in their DNA, the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.
Scarlett Johansson plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure the genetic material. When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on a forbidden island that had once housed an undisclosed research facility for Jurassic Park. There, in a terrain populated by dinosaurs of vastly different species, they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that has been hidden from the world for decades.
Who is in the cast of ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’?
- Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett
- Jonathan Bailey as Dr. Henry Loomis
- Rupert Friend as Martin Krebs
- Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid
- Ed Skrein as Atwater
- Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Reuben Delgado
- Luna Blaise as Teresa Delgado
- David Iacono as Xavier Dobbs
Other Movies in the ‘Jurassic Park’ Franchise:
- ‘Jurassic Park‘ (1993)
- ‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park‘ (1997)
- ‘Jurassic Park III‘ (2001)
- ‘Jurassic World‘ (2015)
- ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom‘ (2018)
- ‘Jurassic World Dominion‘ (2022)
Watching “
1. Ian Malcolm’s line, “I think we’re extinct,” was a late addition to the script. In EW’s oral history of the film, back in 2013, the line’s origins started with dino supervisor Phil Tippet, who was brought on to oversee animating the dinos in stop-motion before ILM’s Dennis Muren presented his first CG animation test in wireframe form. “Steven asked me how I felt after seeing the footage,” Tippet revealed, “and I said, ‘I think I’m extinct.’ He said, ‘That’s a great line. I’m putting that in the movie.’ 
3. Despite the dinosaurs being the biggest selling point of the movie, “Jurassic Park” features only 15 minutes of actual dinosaur footage.
5. One of the reasons Spielberg cast Ariana Richards as Lex is that she screamed so loudly and convincingly during her audition, that Spielberg’s sleeping wife woke up and ran into the room to see what was wrong.
7. One of the most difficult effects to achieve in the film was also among the simplest — the cup of water that vibrates when the T-Rex nears the tour. Special effects artist Michael Lantieri finally cracked the code by attaching the cup to a guitar string underneath the dashboard and pulling it.
9. Despite the fact that the Jurassic Park logo features a skeletal T-Rex, the T-Rex actually lived during the Cretaceous Period. Crichton admitted that he just picked the design because he thought it looked cool.
11. The film greatly exaggerates the size of Velociraptors for dramatic effect. However, during post-production, a new, larger species of raptor — called the Utahraptor — was discovered.
13. The dilophosaurus is never shown walking during its brief appearance as it attacks Nedry, as the puppeteers struggled to properly convey movement. Spielberg eventually decided that simply having the dilophosaurus appear next to Nedry was more effective.
“It wasn’t as good as the first one. But it was very successful.”
1. 
2. Even so, Spielberg and “Jurassic Park” screenwriter 
3. The little girl attacked by tiny dinosaurs in the opening scene (above) is played by 
4. Early in the film, while Goldblum rides the subway, 
5. Koepp got the names for characters Roland (
6. Vaughn was all but unknown when Spielberg cast him. The director had first noticed him while watching a pre-release edit of “
7. While many shots in the film make use of advances in CGI that had occurred in the four years since “Jurassic Park,” close-up shots of menacing carnivores were accomplished as before, with animatronic creatures built by monster-effects wizard 
8. The two T-Rex parents he built were so massive (19,000 pounds each — and they were just head-and-torso) that they couldn’t leave the soundstage, and sets had to be built around them. They were mounted on carts that ran on fixed tracks.
9. The crew had the most fun staging the T-Rex tracks’ attack on the trailer, creature designer Shane Mahan recalled.
10. The cliff over which the damaged trailer dangles was built out of a parking garage on the Universal Studios lot.
11. Most of the outdoor footage was shot in the redwood forests of Northern California. Yeah, in real life, there are no redwood forests in Costa Rica, but the ancient, enormous trees gave the scenes the prehistoric look that Spielberg wanted.
12. The sequence where velociraptors attack in the tall grass had to be planned a year in advance, in order for the seed sown by the production crew to grow tall enough. The crew planted eight full acres, in case scenes required multiple takes, since the grass, once trampled, wouldn’t spring back up.
13. The screenplay’s original ending had the humans fleeing the island in helicopters while being attacked by pteranodons, but the flying lizards wouldn’t get their due on screen until “
14. The idea of ending the movie with a T-Rex attacking San Diego came from Conan Doyle’s novel, whose finale brought a pterodactyl to London, and from Spielberg’s delight at the idea of making his own little “
15. How did the crew of the ship get eaten if the T-Rex was still locked in the cargo hold? Apparently, there was supposed to be a scene showing raptors aboard the ship, but it was never filmed.
16. The “Godzilla” gag isn’t at all subtle, except for the fact that one of the fleeing Japanese businessmen is saying, in Japanese, “I moved from Tokyo to get away from all this!” At least the filmmakers dropped their early idea of printing out that punchline in subtitles.
17. Koepp (above) has a cameo as “Unlucky Bastard,” who is eaten by the runaway T-Rex during the San Diego sequence.
18. We still get a kick out of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em posters for imaginary movies in the San Diego video store: 
19. The budget of “Lost World” was reportedly $73 million, just $8 million more than “Jurassic Park” had cost in 1993.
20. “Lost World” 
21. It’s no wonder Spielberg followed “Lost World” with dialogue-heavy dramas “
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Released 20 years ago this week (on May 10, 1996), “
1. The “Twister” screenplay is credited to “
3. 
5. Tensions flared between de Bont and cinematographer 
7. Much of the film was shot in Wakita, Oklahoma, where producers purchased and then leveled eight blocks of existing houses, as well as flattening 30 homes built for the shoot. According to the 
9. “Twister” was nominated for two Oscars, for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound. It was also nominated for two Razzies, including Worst Supporting Actress (for Gertz, pictured). The Crichtons won the Razzie for Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million.