Jurassic World Rebirth (Photo -Universal Pictures)
Thirty-plus years after the first installment, they’re back.
Jurassic World Rebirth
Directed by Gareth Edwards – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
Dinosaurs, that is, big ones with big teeth and strong lungs. In Jurassic World Rebirth, they’ve apparently fallen out of public favor, now confined to their own island, isolated, useless, until a pharmaceutical company realizes they can be exploited.
Enter Scarlett Johansson in a power suit and white tennis shoes, playing a mercenary who leads a team tasked with collecting dinosaur blood in three separate samples for DNA extraction.
I hadn’t seen a Jurassic movie since the first one in the theater and the second one on tape. To my untrained eye, the computer effects don’t seem to have improved in any noticeable way. The formula remains about the same: narrow escapes from snapping jaws that always seem to just miss their prey. Only a Scylla and Charybdis sequence and a final showdown with a particularly loathsome monster rise above the fray as standout action pieces. Death is reserved for bad people, or good people who aren’t near the top of the cast list.
The action follows a lot of pro forma character development, including the usual troubled past for the main characters, giving them a shot at redemption. Stretches of spoken exposition and a secondary plot involving a stranded father and his family chew up scenery.
Between the bursts of action, I found myself noting product placements, Snickers, M&Ms, Altoids, and later recalled the King Kong and Godzilla movies I watched growing up. They made a lasting impression. The stop-motion puppetry of King Kong had a faintly jerky, almost stuttering effect that somehow bypassed disbelief in my adolescent mind, while rubber-suited Godzilla stomping a miniaturized Tokyo was my first glimpse of apocalypse. These films had action, yes, but also served as metaphors, for exploitation, for science gone wrong, and more.
This Jurassic Park remake, despite a few nods to global warming and corporate malfeasance, is just a moneymaker, or a time-waster. Two hours and fourteen minutes, though it often felt longer. That includes the credit roll, which revealed that Scarlett Johansson had something like half a dozen personal assistants tending to her. No wonder movies cost so much.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regal Paseo, IPIC Theaters, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal UA La Canada, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance and Laemmle Glendale.
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