Jurassic World: Rebirth (Theatrical) 2025


JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH was not something I was clamouring for. Where 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion gave a nice send off to both the characters introduced in 2015’s Jurassic world and the original Jurassic Park, JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH as its name suggests, is a soft reboot: it continues with just the basic premise of where Dominion left off but kickstarts a new status quo with new characters and no ties to the originals. No easy feat considering how part of the appeal of the previous Jurassic World movies was the nostalgia factor.

 I went into this with low expectations. For me, I considered the book on Jurassic park/world closed and tied up in a nice little bow. And now it was opened again. The trailers presented two vastly different sub plots that I could not imagine how they would come together: one was a mercenary group sent to a quarantined island of dinosaurs to retrieve blood from specific species, and another was a family who got stranded on that same island and have to survive against the dinosaurs and more. Fortunately I was proven wrong 

 The family subplot involving a father, his two daughters, and the eldest daughter’s boyfriend was reminiscent of Alan Grant and the two Hammond grandkids in the original Jurassic Park. There was a nice simple wholesome charm to it. 

Similarly the mercenary group led by Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan (Mahershala Ali) had decent chemistry going and Jonathan Bailey’s Dr Loomis had that sort of “Stargate’s Daniel Jackson” thing going on for him. Through their journey across the island, they quickly become an endearing bunch. 

 REBIRTH is a brisk energetic story that, for me, recaptures that sense of adventure of the classic Jurassic Park movies, as well as that nice mix of awe and horror when it comes to the dinosaurs. The suspenseful buildups were masterfully done and this was something that I missed seeing in the Jurassic World movies. Thrilling stuff with many genuine edge-of-my-seat sequences. 

 In a slight departure from past Jurassic movies, REBIRTH used predominantly CGI dinosaurs instead of practical effects. Thankfully I found the CGI to be very well done not merely as a convenient replacement to practical effects, but to enhance the experience beyond what animatronics could do. 

We see a sleeping Tyrannosaursus rise to its feet, we see dinosaurs go from walking on land to swimming in water, and there is generally more variety of movement in everything: eyes twitch, fins unfurl, tails whip around rather than stick out rigidly. The dinosaurs also sport a much more varied color palette, reflecting more recent paleontological research. 

 The much advertised mutant dinosaurs especially the D-Rex are indeed terrifying and I am curious how the franchise will go now that a new status quo has been set with the existence of such aberrations. All in all I was pleasantly surprised and look forward to more. This movie does not really the high bar set by Spielberg’s originals but it comes close for me. 


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