Driving & Parking- JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH (2025)

Could there be a Hollywood habit more aggravating and nerve-wracking than the obsession– now a set-in-stone by-god Policy–  of remaking movies every 20 to 30 years? I refuse to call it a reboot, soft or hard as it may be. I refuse to dignify nepo-babies with the word Legacy Artists (it makes me laugh every time, although of course nepotism has always been a huge force in Hollywood– Drew Barrymore comes from an acting dynasty, after all) .

I do understand that even in my own dim and distant childhood, Rainbow Brite was the TV advertisement franchise for the Hallmark Cards character--a multimedia polychromatic assault on toddlers that America is now pretty good at, but Japan has perfected into a weapons-grade science. I am compelled by my blood-pact with the soil of Nippon to mention here that Korilakkuma is very cute and important and we should all buy reusable bags with Rilakkuma on them. 

A media franchise is nothing new, and JURASSIC PARK (now called Jurassic World™, as in The Jurassic Park Cinematic Universe) was one of the first in America to really grab the country by the McNuggets and dig its nails in. 

If you were alive in 1993, you saw JURASSIC PARK. And I don’t just mean in the theater, but you probably did, because everybody did. It was a cultural phenomenon that literally does not and can not exist any more in America, due to the fragmentation of culture and media. With the internet now serving up increasingly personalized and bubble-fied isolated media catered precisely to your individual tastes– pushing you further and further away from the median, the pop, and the possibility of shared culture– we are broken up into subcultures that then become our only culture. There is no longer even a movie or a TV show that everybody watches (like Friends or Taxi) because there are no longer just five or six cable channels. There are now infinity channels, on TikTok, Kik, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter* or whatever the hell have you. But I assure you, in 1993 this was not the case, and if you were beyond the age of gamete, you saw JURASSIC PARK. 

You physically could not escape from JURASSIC PARK.

By the way, give it a re-spin– it has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. Take it out for a drive. Sink into the squeaky pleather seats. Cuddle up with Spielberg at the top of his career, a plateau that lasted years and years, god bless the man. Then pause and consider that the sequel, THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK holds a 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, and  Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars and said: "I was disappointed as much as I was thrilled because 'The Lost World' lacks a staple of Steven Spielberg's adventure films: exciting characters. [...] Even in the original 'Jurassic Park', the dinosaurs – not to mention the human beings – had more distinct personalities than they have here. Save for superior special effects, 'The Lost World' comes off as recycled material". 

He wrote this in 1997. He could have just kept this in his outbox to auto-send every time some piece of shit decided to keep trotting out this franchise for the rest of time. Shit, I barely have to write a review of JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH. They did it for me in 1997:

"The Lost World demonstrates how far CG effects have come in the four years since Jurassic Park; unfortunately, it also proves how difficult it can be to put together a truly compelling sequel." - Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango Media

“My sequels aren't as good as my originals because I go onto every sequel I've made and I'm too confident. This movie made a ka-zillion dollars, which justifies the sequel, so I come in like it's going to be a slam dunk and I wind up making an inferior movie to the one before.” - Spielberg himself.

With this kind of pressure, the studios worked really hard and thought in their brains about what made JURASSIC PARK such a thrilling, moving, heart-stirring film that inspired people, that made them cry (might have been John Williams’ score) ---and then pooped out JURASSIC PARK III (2001, 49% on Rotten Tomatoes) and finally JURASSIC WORLD (2015, 72% on Rotten Tomatoes!). 

These reviews listed on Wikipedia made me laugh, so I have to include them here: “The Associated Press praised Pratt and Howard's performances but rated the film two stars out of four, calling it "an ugly, over-saturated movie" that lacks the "deft sense of wonderment, wit and suspense that guided the original". Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post also rated it two stars out of four, writing "every action movie today ends up as Transformers and, even when it's cloned creatures fighting, the same is true here (with an antic dash of "Sharknado" tossed in for good measure).”

The next two Jurassic World films are holding on for dear life on Rotten Tomatoes with a 47% and 29% respectively. Whichever one has Chris Pratt in front of a greenscreen trying to tame a raptor (the most special-est one, the blue one, the special one because it’s a different color from the others, so all of us idiots can tell it’s the special one) by performing a move immediately dubbed "Prattkeeping" by the internet– that's the point I knew we were all doomed.

Studio execs must have seen the reviews, and the ticket sales, and their yachts, slowly sinking, because they really did put their little melons together and pulled it back. Maybe they had someone yelling from another room, “Pull it back! Pull it back!” because it does feel like there might have been a mention of JURASSIC PARK. Like maybe someone said, “Do you guys remember the movie Jurassic Park? Didn’t people like that one?” while trying to suffocate the guy who keeps screaming “BIGGER DINOSAWURS! BIGGER DINOSAWURRSS THEY GO RAARRR!”

The result: JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH.

Being the Alamo Drafthouse fan that I am (we have a good one near us that’s still polite, serious and clean), when I saw a listing for a MYSTERY MOVIE on June 23, I snapped up seats. I figured it was either an old genre film or a new release– I’d really prefer an old movie, but I’m willing to buy an appetizer to find out.

The lights went down. The film went up. We were treated to a pre-show 30-second blurb of Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey telling us, with smiles that didn’t reach their eyes, that they were “very excited” to show us this movie that they “had a great time making”. The audience reaction was– zilch. I wonder if they were expecting applause.

Buckle up, it's time for Dy-no-DNA!

This review will contain spoilers.

The 7:00 film actually started at 7:17 by my watch. The title card tells us that it’s “17 years ago”, and somewhere in a Willy Wonka lab with white-clad Willy Wonka scientists looking all retro. A few guys go into what appears to be a repurposed shuttlecraft from Star Trek TNG (c’mon, you know the one) to have a quick decontamination and, apparently, a Snickers. Brought to you by Snickers. This billion-dollar secret black-site Dino-DNA lab is SO shoddily made that a deus ex Snickers wrapper, carelessly tossed aside, zoops into the ventilation holes in the decon chamber and shorts out the door--which shorts out the entire lab. Containment Failure! Oh god! Panic! It’s the T-rex! (D-Rex? I need subtitles.) We get a great Resident Evil-esque scene of people running back and forth in front of a stationary camera while blood splatters everywhere and lights flicker off. Red alert! A real horror scene as a cold open! 

Cut to a black screen with a title card. “32 years later… public interest in dinosaurs has waned.” The theatre audience actually giggled en masse at this. I couldn’t tell if the film was self-aware or not.

Dinosaurs stumbling through traffic in Downtown Somewhere- I guess this one is elderly and escaped from a zoo. Not sure why it’s the ELDERLY dinosaur that they failed to control. We meet Scarlett Johansson, trying to be Lara Croft, who says “I do acquisitions, not heists.” She is very firm on this.

A guy I keep referring to in my notes as Big Pharma wants her to find “something” from a dinosaur island so secret and so illegal that travel to it is “outlawed by every country on earth”. This island is the secret DNA mutation research lab brought down by M&M Mars Inc., presumably, and the Resident Evil beasts still lurk there, untrammeled by human interference, twisted and mutilated, but free and thriving. cute!

“Paleo-Dioxin lol” is what I wrote, and appears to be what Big Pharma wants to acquire with ScarJo’s help. “We need living samples. Can’t synthesize it. Need coronary muscle drug from big D’s to cure heart disease.” Dinosaurs live a long time and have big hearts that don’t fail, so they want to acquire and clone(?) Paleo-Dioxin to cure all the heart ills of the world. To get the best sample, they want it from the biggest hearts, so they want it from the biggest dinosaurs. “We need sea, land & air Ds to complete the DNA strands.” Yes, they need a triad of Pokemon for this. Probably so they can color-code the toys when they sell those, but for now I’m just laughing along with my seat-neighbors at the idea of this stupid dinosaur DNA fetch-quest by water, land and air for no reason.

Dr. Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) is our dinosaur nerd, telling us morosely “nobody cares about these animals anymore”.

More giggles from the audience, then we slam cut to a small plane flying over a tropical jungle and the JURASSIC PARK theme. Bum-bum baa baa baa! I know what that is! I know what that is! It’s time to assemble our ragtag team!

Mahershala Ali plays Duncan, our reluctant captain who’ll do it for the right price. They scrape up an aggressive guy with lots of guns who reassures us he has neurotoxins in blowdarts that will definitely kill dinosaurs. We get a typical action scene where everyone is walking around while talking to the table, the window, or their guns–“Dinosaurs only live near the equator. The air is ‘different’. It’s warmer, more oxygen-rich. So they can’t live so far north. We only need our 3 samples.” (just three, I promise! Why three? Because the goddam movie wouldn’t be long enough if we stopped at one.)

ScarJo and Ali have a discussion. It’s the kind of discussion that contemporary movies love, and I particularly hate– the kind of discussion that makes you, the viewer, feel like you just walked into a room where people are practicing Waiting for Godot and refuse to tell you shit about it. 

“You still thinking about… that day?”
“I lost him. To a car bomb. In Yemen.”
“That’s rough.”
“Yeah.”
“It was on a job.”
(sad piano music tells the audience how to feel)
“How bout you?”
“Eh. Nah. We saw our boy when we looked at each other.”
“He was a good partner.”
“She was too.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah. Oh well.”
Is this fucking scene still going on?

Just when we can’t take any more, we are introduced suddenly to our B-plot! Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, because they couldn’t get Pedro Pascal,  plays Reuben Delgado, a jolly “just doin my best” dad who’s taking his daughters--and the useless Gen Z boyfriend of one of them– on a teeny weeny sailboat across the Atlantic (?). To spare you the bruh, the oh brah, and the piss jokes, the entire subplot of this family is that the lovable dad and the unloveable, lazy, ugly boyfriend just can’t get along. The teenage daughter (Luna Blaise) apparently isn’t that keen on her lover either, and her role is largely to take up space in this movie. She seems to have no particular allegiance to either her father or her boyfriend. 

The other daughter is basically Lilo from Lilo & Stitch, so just picture that.

The sailboat gets somewhere near Secret Dinosaur Island, so a big nessie bumps the boat and it falls over. They think the useless boyfriend died, but he didn’t. CUT!

Scene: Someone asks ScarJo for the audience’s sake, “So, what are you? Like, a mercenary?”

“Yeah,” is her penetrating reply. What is the point of this scene? It’s like every single scene is 20% too long.

The A-Team and the B-Plot finally cross when ScarJo’s ragtag team catches a Mayday. The gun guy insists they are not going to pick up strangers to take with them to illegally board a forbidden island with their illegal pirate crew (I am with him on this), and surely help will come, so they should go land first and grab their dinosaur samples and be back in a couple hours. Duncan, however, determines they’re going. We’re the only ship within range, Captain.

The Delgado family is scooped up without ceremony and the group ponders aloud why a Nessie would attack a sailboat. The dinosaur expert, who’s now had 32 years to study dinosaur behavior, says, “Maybe it thought it was a rival?” There is no response to this comment and the movie lets it stand. 

With a rumble and some exciting looking at a digital screen where the graphics will be added in post, we determine that the first Pokemon is right under our noses– we can get the Water-type one right here! That’s just exactly the one we want. But there’s some tension as we explain that the Gimmick Gun ABSOLUTELY MUST be shot within 10 meters of the dinosaur to make sure it will take the blood sample! The water sprays as they drive at top speed across the waves, the Nessie staying at the surface because why would an underwater dinosaur bother to dive underwater when there’s a boat chasing it– shut up it’s an action scene!

She takes the shot! It’s good! The vial of blood self-ejects and shoots up into the sky, to fall down on a lovely little parachute right into Dr Loomis’s hand. Sample #1 retrieved. Hopefully they’ll ALL be this easy, ha ha!

On to Milla Island! I mean, The Hive! I mean, Dinosaur– what are we calling it?

After all this stress, the Delgado family decides enough is enough and the elder daughter runs to radio for help– from the A-Team’s boat radio. Big Pharma is not a fan of this and tells her off for putting her paws on his equipment. Some swimming alligator dinosaurs go after the boat, and the elder daughter slides off, screaming. Big Pharma stands by and watches her fall off– the first real emotional beat in the film, as we are now supposed to hate this guy, while the boat is still being chased at top speed through some reefs and rocks. Taking the initiative, Bruh jumps into the sea to save his girlfriend, and  Dad grabs Lilo to follow. With this, The A plot and B plot are effectively re-separated so we will have plenty of run-time in the film as we follow them both. By the 1-hour mark, most of the minor characters are dead– a dinosaur popped up and ate Mina (or Tina or Gina) and we got some sad string music about it :( 

After plunging into the water with his kids and falling down a ravine, Dad is a little bit crippled in one leg. He says "I can't move my leg!" Will this be consistently maintained throughout the movie? Hell no. In some scenes he is able to run through a tunnel and up and down hills, in some scenes he's wincing and favoring his leg. Then we find Lilo's Stitch, a small puppy-size triceratops-esque CGI thing that wiggles and squeaks in a manner no reptile can manage. Lilo immediately wants to keep it, and it follows her for the rest of the movie, mostly for the purpose of selling toys. It doesn't do shit for the plot. She feeds it candy.

The A-Team finally makes it to an area with chest-high grass, one of those lovely sweeping vistas that we've come to demand from a JP film, and one of Hawaii's main exports. Large dinosaurs pop up out of the chest-high grass that were entirely hidden before, which is physically impossible, but the movie expects us to believe that something with a leg as thick as a car can just lay down and make itself less than four feet thick.

Then a perfect example of the biggest issue with modern blockbusters: dialogue written for idiots.

(Dinosaur pops up out of the grass)
Character1 (in awe, with understatement): "You don't see that every day."
Character2: "...Or ever."

YES, YOU MORON. THAT'S WHAT THAT PHRASE MEANS. It's called ironic understatement. But if these scripts are written to be dubbed into a very disparate language, for example Chinese; or, if they are written for a generation that has a third-grade reading level in high school, apparently we now need to define extremely common idioms.

Anyway, they get the 2nd sample from a big stompy boi without any drama and move on.

Scene after scene plays out this way, ret-conning, cringing, and confusing itself all the way through the middle act of the movie. The Delgados locate an emergency inflatable raft in an emergency hut that's directly under the nose (literally) of a sleeping T-Rex, that snorts and rolls as it dreams, because the CG crew just animates everything like it's a dog. Even though we have originally established that:

• The T-Rex is a fearsome predator and there's no escaping it once it detects you
• It can smell you
• It doesn't have great vision, but if you move AT ALL, it will see you
• It can hear you
• Once it detects you you're dead
• It's faster than you
• It's very strong. It can crunch through a car.

Just fucking forget all of that because it doesn't matter any more. Fucking forget all of that. Teen Girl Squad pushes the raft down a dock with maximum scraping and grinding noises in broad daylight 10 feet away from the T-Rex, and it neither hears nor smells nor sees the entire thing happening.

She gets it into the river (knee deep, but Dad's leg is broken, remember!) and they all pile in, and the dinosaur wakes up and takes a few slow steps toward them while they frantically paddle their raft, against the current, which makes about zero progress. The dinosaur decides to take a couple lazy swipes, then turns around and gives up. No wait, later it capsizes, Lilo is stuck underneath, and the T-Rex gnaws at the rubber bottom of the inflatable yellow rubber raft WITHOUT puncturing it. It just wanted to feel the squeakies on its teefies.
Unfortunately, Lilo is not a good enough actor to make me feel anything but bored, and this movie would never violate one of the cardinal rules of Hollywood: You Can't Kill Kids In A Movie, and this one is PG-13.

The third sample is sucked from a pterodactyl egg on the ledge of a Tomb Raider tomb buried in the jungle. The pterodactyl isn't a huge fan of this, but everyone has their carabiners safely clipped to their abseiling ropes, so despite some greenscreen moments, everyone is fine.

The remainder of my notes read:
Big Pharma: "give me the samples." He locks it to his arm. Echoing ver. of "Stand By Me" (like Riley said– slowed down pop songs for drama lol). Ahhh, run, Split up?! Puppy is here too. Oh, this must be the breeding lab. Pharma shoots at the raptoresque thing. Bat raptor plays w/the glass. Somehow, "D-Rex" returned.

Did all these actors hate being in this? The Helicopter is leaving! But omg a flare.

Literally "aaaaaa" as the heli gets chewed up by the "D-Rex"? They all discuss that the drainage goes down to the sea. Ok! This way! To the beach! Say it again for the idiots in the back. Only Lilo can fit thru the bars!
A 6-limbed monstrosity. For no reason.
Pharma finally gets eaten bit by bit. ScarJo gets the sample case. Oh no, Lilo (Bella) got the attention of the abomination! Nooo not Duncan! Dramatic slow strings herald his death. Angelic 'aaaahhhh' music as it goes away. It roars. He is implied dead. (Star power, bitches!)
Dad cries. But then a new flare & happy triumphant brass music. Duncan, you made it! Tell me how to feel, movie. Dad & Xavier share a look. Slow piano version of JP theme. Scientist says "You decide what to do" re:samples. Are you sure?? ScarJo: "Give it to everyone. Make it open source."
Did they bring Stitch? Oh they did. The end.

Final Thoughts

JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH is a very 2025 movie. It hits every single pre-scripted, expected beat that a Hollywood blockbuster needs to have. Is this better than the previous three Jurassic World films? I would say so, and the internet already says so. People who have been beaten senseless by the franchise for the last decade, the die-hards, are saying it's the best film since the original JURASSIC PARK. With an average early score on Letterboxd of a 3.2/5, that does represent a "Well, it's better than the last one" kind of shrug.

Scarlett Johansson gives a wooden, dead-faced performance, and most of the emotion in the film is carried by Dad, the shoehorned-in "it's about family" sub-subplot. The fetch-quest wraps up with a morally positive PG-13 ending "Let's save the world, I guess" which is supposed to be a shocking redemptive character arc for the mercenary ScarJo character (of course given to us in a Tell, Don't Show bit of dialogue where she's talking to the edge of the frame).

I'm not sure why this movie needed to be made. "Let it go extinct" is the obvious joke here, but this stripped-down, put-it-through-the-pasta-maker script is such an improvement from Jurassic World, maybe it's fine for the franchise to slightly redeem itself.

Personal rating: 3/10 in terms of enjoyment. It was a slog. Nothing delighted me, nothing surprised me, but nothing was so painful I walked out. It's slightly better than a kick in the cloaca.

*in this house we do not refer to Twitter by its chosen name, as they have made it clear that they stand by the same policy, but without being tongue-in-cheek about it.

This article was written by a real human without any use of AI.