Jurassic World Rebirth ★★

Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey and Rupert Friend

Director: Gareth Edwards

Writer: David Koepp

Where: Available to rent or buy from 18th August 2025

Jurassic World: Rebirth arrives as yet another ersatz footnote in a franchise that feels nearly extinct. Once roaring into cinemas as a white-knuckle rollercoaster ride (that begat the VelociCoaster, a literal Jurassic white-knuckle rollercoaster ride), it now staggers along as a pale facsimile of its former self—enjoyable enough in spurts, but ultimately unnecessary. The unanswered question lingers: would anyone really miss this sequel?

The storyline concocted for this one sees a ruthless Big Pharma rep, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), recruiting mercenary for hire Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and geeky but idealistic paleontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to collect DNA from three massive dinosaurs for a potential heart-disease cure: Mosasaurus, Titanosaurus and Completebobbinsosaurus, the biggest of their kind in sea, on land, and in franchises running out of credible thrills.

Director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla – 2014, Rogue One – 2016) brings such a fanboy reverence for Spielberg that he doesn’t just homage the original 1993 film; he also tips the wink to the Indiana Jones franchise (“What is this place…some kind of ancient temple?”) and the first third plays out as a veneration of Jaws. Except he fails to import the essential DNA and originality of these classic films. At best, this understudy recycles the magic with less dexterity and conviction.

Scarlett Johansson, as a performer, has charisma to burn – which is helpful as the material does her no favours. Zora feels underwritten to the point of intangibility. She’s a Temu Lara Croft with a heart.

Jonathan Bailey, meanwhile, delivers workaday earnestness as the film’s moral core. Despite his teary efforts to recapture the wide-eyed wonder of the original Jurassic Park, some of his leaden environmental speeches about survival make you more inclined to welcome human extinction any time you like.

Despite having co-written the original Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, so many of the issues with this film are in the tired script. When a writer is wheeling out exchanges like “What do we do now?” “Try not to die”, how can you expect audiences not to groan as loud as a particularly grumpy Tyrannosaurus? Scenes such as the one featuring an inflatable raft certainly manage to add some much-needed tension, but those sequences are nothing you haven’t seen before in a different guise.

The CGI monsters are well executed and if you’ve never seen any other movie in the franchise, then you might have a side of thrills with your popcorn. For the rest of us, Jurassic World Rebirth is a dino-bore.