They say that a film begins with a script, and that means all the problems start with a script too. In the case of Jurassic World Rebirth, the question is, which script? Is it that “look, an island full of dinosaurs!” narrative of the original Jurassic Park, which was then pilfered and relocated throughout the sequels so now there’s at least three islands? Is it the mercenaries getting chomped from The Lost World: Jurassic Park? Is it the “random rich family in peril” story from the eminently forgettable Jurassic Park III? Or the genetically manipulated super-dinosaur from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom?
Maybe it’s all of them, as the worthless and meaningless script for Rebirth from David Koepp steals liberally from them all. Arguably, as the co-writer of 1993’s franchise starter and the writer of 1997 follow-up The Lost World, he’s just playing with the themes he helped establish, but Rebirth feels like he wrote his own spec script for Jurassic Park III and retconned a broken continuity into its pages.
Koepp’s first step is to wipe away the preceding Jurassic World trilogy by pulling away from its one great development: that the returning dinosaurs had found a new ecological niche across the world. Now, due to disease and climate change, they’ve retreated to a narrow band across the equator. If you miss this explanation, don’t worry. It’s repeated three times in the first 20 minutes, as if Koepp didn’t trust the audience or that he didn’t re-read the script after writing it. Either seems plausible.
Having already reunited every surviving franchise cast member for 2022’s Jurassic World Rebirth, there’s no trace of the original Park-era cast or the World crew. Instead, it’s jaunty do-gooding mercenary (yes, you read that right) Zora, played by Scarlett Johansson as if she didn’t know what to do with that character description either. That said, neither does Mahershala Ali as a jaunty, do-gooding gun runner. They’re hired by the most obviously evil corporate executive since Aliens’ Carter Burke (Friend) to deliver a new paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis (Bailey, burdened with a part that’s just portentous lines), to … yes, you guessed, a tropical island filled with new deadly and spectacular dinosaurs.
The boat also carries some obviously disposable supporting characters who have names but may as well be called Snack #1, #2, and #3. But don’t worry, there’s another boat that crashes, filled with the most annoying family in recent cinema history: abstractly rich father Reuben (Garcia-Rulfo), his annoying teen daughter, Teresa (Blaise), her even more annoying boyfriend, Xavier (Iacono), and his youngest daughter, Isabelle (Miranda), who is there solely to wander into peril as the plot requires, and it requires that a lot.
Jurassic World Rebirth struggles to find a reason to exist, so composer Alexandre Desplat peppers in the original, wonderful Jurassic Park theme by John Williams just enough to remind you that you’re watching a sequel, not a rip-off. There’s a subplot about corporate greed, but it’s the ultimate plodding step toward the franchise just being about emulating old shots and old scenes from earlier, better films but with new dinosaurs. That’s not restricted to Jurassic Park films, since there’s a long sequence that’s basically the barrel sequence from Jaws. It’s almost impossible to believe that Gareth Edwards, the genius that reinvented both Godzilla and, through Rogue One, Star Wars, commits such naked plagiarism.
When the final new genetically engineered menace appears, it looks less like a dinosaur and more like the Newborn from Alien Resurrection. That’s fitting since, like the skull-faced freak, both films struggle with inherited nature deep in their DNA but also want to be a radical step forward in its evolution. The result is always a weird-looking mess that one can only hope is an evolutionary dead end. Life can stop finding a way now.
This article appears in July 4 • 2025.
