The Jurassic World series ran as a trilogy from 2015 to 2022, with the last one (Dominion) being pretty dreadful. We thought the Jurassic Park series was done, but the films make a lot of money and so we got a new one in 2025!
The result? Jurassic World Rebirth, this time with a new creative vision at the helm. It’s written by David Koepp and directed by Gareth Edwards, with Koepp one of the screenplay writers for the 1993 original film.
It means Rebirth returns to many of its roots and… guess what!? The result is actually damn good fun! We had a great time with it, despite some glaringly obvious issues.
Mutations and Roars in Jurassic World Rebirth
If you follow Professional Moron, you know we don’t cover too many blockbuster films (as it’s a bit too obvious to review them). What’s different here is Rebirth got very mixed reviews, with the film getting panned as “terrible” across YouTube and social media from many film buffs.
The negative feedback was so strong across YouTube we figured it must be awful and to skip.
But we were in a sleepy, turn-your-brain-off type mood on 24/05/26 and decided to give it a whirl. After the opening 30 minutes of good acting and solid screenplay writing, we were waiting for the terrible stuff to kick in. And it largely didn’t, instead we got quite well developed characters, some excellent set pieces, and we enjoyed the hell out of it.
There’s a daft plot, of course, which is heavily contrived to get a bunch of scientists and covert operatives onto an island to gather biomaterial (dinosaur blood).
It means Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) gets her action pants on, headed by her team leader Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), and palaeontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). All enlisted by somewhat evil ParkerGenix corporate shill dude Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). Throw into that mix a family in distress and you’ve got another Jurassic Park movie.
This time with genetically muted dinosaurs! Hurray!
One of the reasons it works so well is because it, quite blatantly, steals famous scenes from other action films. Including:
- Jaws
- Deep Blue Sea
- Aliens
- The Meg
- The original Jurassic Park
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park (the 1997 one)
- Predator
These nicked ideas are so blatant we were baffled they were in there, but most younger viewers wouldn’t pick up on it. And we didn’t mind too much, as the scenes are good fun.
Such as here (the bit obviously nicked from Jaws), with Scarlett Johansson in a suspiciously tight t-shirt for one quarter of the film. Oh, and then a minor character called Bobby gets eaten.
One of the key things is Rebirth isn’t scared of killing off its cast, which creates a genuine sense of uncertainty with the story. The characterisation is pretty good, so the traumatised aftermath of survivors we found genuinely quite affecting.
This is helped along as Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali are great in their roles.
Rupert Friend’s bad guy complex isn’t developed out very well in the script, but he’s great in this regardless and has a redemptive arc.
Plus, the family that’s tagged on aren’t too annoying and viewers get some genuinely life-affirming, familial building stuff going on. Even if it’s obvious the family aren’t going to get eaten at any point.
Downsides? If you’ve seen one Jurassic Park film, you’ve seen them all. It’s entirely predictable and the plot is self-aware in its stupidity. These people go to an island they know is insanely dangerous and all hell breaks loose. Shock horror!
Plus, although it was Oscar nominated for its special effects, they aren’t half ropey at times. Some of the CGI is awful, which makes it odd as other times the films looks incredible.
But at two hours it doesn’t outstay its welcome and we just found it all very entertaining, helped considerably as the acting was (most of the time) impressively good. Roarsome!
The Production of Jurassic World Rebirth
Rebirth is a PG-13 so this was all primed as a family-friendly type action film. One for all ages! The thing about the franchise as a whole is… they keep making masses of money.
Rebirth was no different, with around a $200 million budget leading to $869.1 million at the box office. We think one thing going on is parents who saw the 1993 original as kids wanting their kids to experience that sense of awe. Thus, they take their sprogs to the cinema.
That and it’s a massive blockbuster with a huge marketing campaign.
The difference here is Steven Spielberg intervened with a new film idea. On the original 1993 film, he worked closely with David Koepp. The latter had more influence on Rebirth and fleshed out Spielberg’s ideas, working with the famed director for six months.
Gareth Edwards then got the directing job after two others passed on it (including Edgar Wright).
He suggested the film be shot in Thailand, with the shoot beginning in June 2024 and the cast and crew were out there for a month. There are some beautiful locations, including Khao Phanom Bencha National Park in Krabi, Ko Kradan, where everyone had to deal with venomous water snakes and other insects.
The film then moved to Malta across July 2024, before wrapping in up in London across August 2024.
A new thing in Rebirth are the mutated dinos. Of particular note is the new mutated dinosaur thing the Distortus rex (because it’s distorted) and how this monstrosity came to be.
But yeah, reviews were incredibly mixed. They range from the film being:
- Abysmal
- Fine
- Good
The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw (who we often disagree with) gave it 4/5 and we were in agreement there. Whereas other critics dismissed it as “fine” (Dr. Mark Kermode), then Empire gave it a positive review, The Telegraph gave it 5/5 (a tad excessive), and the LA Times thought it was rubbish.
Many film buffs have been eager to leave negative online reviews, too, which is their opinion and all that.
We don’t watch a huge amount of blockbusters, but for us this one did the job and its glaring flaws aside we think anyone in the right frame of mind can have fun with it.
