Dino Crisis: Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)

Director: Gareth Edwards

Notable Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Ed Skrein

 

Truthfully, I could go on for ages about how fascinatingly bizarre and laden with misfires the Jurassic World series has been. The entire Jurassic Park franchise, now with seven entries, has been a roller coaster, with ups and downs that have been both thrilling and perplexing. It’s one of the reasons why I love franchises. Yet, I’m pretty sure all the best and worst choices around Jurassic World can be dissected by looking at how Universal approached Jurassic World: Rebirth, the latest entry into the dinosaur mayhem franchise. 

 

The previous film, Jurassic World: Dominion, was bloated, filled with too many ideas, too many characters, too much nostalgia, and a wild approach that felt like it was simply trying to be both a legacy sequel and take the series into a new era. It didn’t work. Like, at all. Thus, Jurassic World: Rebirth aims to reignite the franchise by continuing the series as a sequel while moving away from the issues that have plagued Dominion and Fallen Kingdom. It also doesn’t work. Like, at all. 

 

No Bones About It: Jurassic World Dominion (2022) Review

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Notable Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Isabella Sermon, Campbell Scott, BD Wong, Omar Sy

 

One should always carry a suspended sense of disbelief when going into a Jurassic Park film (or in the case of the latest ones, Jurassic World.) Even the original, which remains a bonafide grade-A slab of cinematic brilliance in the realm of blockbusters, requires its audience to not question its many coincidences or shortcuts to set up its premise. Still, the latest entry into the series, the sixth one overall, is a film that requires its audience to fully lose consciousness to even attempt at following along with its bloated story. 

 

Jurassic World Dominion is a spectacle through and through, although certainly not in the way that the ending of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom promised. Crowds are apt to respond to director Colin Trevorrow’s occasional visual wonder, cheap heroic one-liners, and ham-fisted nods to the original run of Jurassic Park movies, but all of those are at the expense of any kind of narrative weight. If anything, Jurassic World Dominion proves to be the most perplexing film of the franchise in how poorly everything is constructed despite the fact that it should have been the easiest film to deliver on all levels. 

 

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Director: J.A. Bayona

Notable Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, B.D. Wong, Isabella Sermon, Geraldine Chaplin, Jeff Goldblum

While the critic in me certainly has issues with all of the Jurassic Park films, including the original, my love for their bombastic popcorn abilities to entertain and deliver simple environmental messages and warnings about mankind’s arrogance in the realm of technology knows no bounds. When the series came roaring back to life with Trevorrow’s Jurassic World in 2015, I couldn’t have been happier with the results. It was a seriously flawed film, but one that seemingly had no intention of trying to break the formula for the sake of logic or – really – anything all that new and instead focused on big broad character swipes, big and mean dinosaurs, and big outlandish set pieces. I’m perfectly fine with that. Still, by the time that the first trailers started rolling out for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the massive volcano angle and similar scenes to the first Jurassic World did not inspire a lot of faith. This looked like more of the same and, while I was also fine with that, I didn’t have nearly the amount of expectations for the film as the previous one and it’s ‘the park is now open!’ slant.