So remember how in the last Jurassic World movie, dinosaurs were living all over the world with humans? Well, that didn't work out. The Earth got too hot and harsh for most dinosaurs, so they all had to move to warm tropical islands near the equator. These islands are now completely off-limits to people, which means dinosaurs are basically back to being hidden away like they were before.
The story starts with a flashback to 2010. There was this secret island facility where scientists were making really messed up, mutated dinosaurs. The whole place gets destroyed because - and I'm not kidding - a Snickers candy wrapper gets stuck in a door sensor. This allows a horrible six-limbed T-Rex monster called the "Distortus rex" to escape and destroy everything. Everyone runs away and leaves behind this secret lab full of genetic monsters.
Now it's 2027. A pharmaceutical company executive named Martin hires two people for a mission: Zora (played by Scarlett Johansson), who's basically a tough soldier, and Dr. Loomis (played by Jonathan Bailey), who's a dinosaur expert. Martin tells them they need to collect DNA samples from three of the biggest dinosaurs still alive - one that lives in water, one that lives on land, and one that flies. Why? Because these huge dinosaurs apparently lived really long lives without getting heart disease, and their DNA could help create medicine to save human lives.
Zora puts together a team including her old friend Duncan (played by Mahershala Ali) and some boat crew members. They're supposed to go to one of these forbidden islands, get the DNA samples, and come back. Simple, right? Wrong.
While they're there, they run into Delgado family that's in trouble. There's a dad named Reuben and his two daughters, Teresa and Isabella, plus Teresa's boyfriend Xavier. Their boat got attacked by the same giant sea dinosaur (Mosasaurus) that the team is trying to get samples from, and now they're stranded and trying to survive.
The collision of these two groups creates the main tension of the film. The professional team has a job to do and they're on a tight schedule. The family just wants to survive and get home safely. Things get really tense when Teresa falls into the water during a radio accident, and Martin (the businessman) refuses to help save her because it would mess up their mission. Everyone else jumps in to save her anyway, which shows you what kind of person Martin really is.
Once they get to the island, both groups have to deal with regular dinosaurs acting like wild animals, plus the weird mutated creatures left over from that abandoned lab. The family meets a baby Aquilops that Isabella decides to keep as a pet and names it 'Dolores', feeding it candy like it's a dog. Meanwhile, the professional team manages to collect their DNA samples but loses some crew members to Spinosaurus attacks and other dangerous encounters.
The climax comes together at the abandoned laboratory, where Martin shows his true colors. He pulls a gun on everyone and steals all the DNA samples they collected. But his plan falls apart when that mutated T-Rex monster destroys their escape helicopter and eats Martin alive. Now everyone has to escape through underground tunnels while being chased by flying monster creatures that are part pterodactyl, part raptor called Mutadons, created by the abandoned lab experiments.
Most of the main characters escape on a boat, but Duncan appears to sacrifice himself to distract the monster T-Rex so the others can get away. Except somehow he survives anyway, which kind of ruins the whole sacrifice thing. At the end, Zora and Dr. Loomis decide to give away their heart disease cure for free instead of selling it to make money, and Isabella smuggles her pet dinosaur off the island even though the small dinosaurs can't survive anywhere else.
Let me be honest - watching this felt like seeing really talented actors stuck in a bad script. Scarlett Johansson basically plays the same tough, emotionless character she always plays. She looks at a massive dinosaur the same way she looks at her equipment. There's no wonder, no fear, no real human emotion.
Mahershala Ali as Duncan is naturally charismatic and you can see he's trying to make his character interesting. The script gives him a sad backstory about losing a child, which should make him care about protecting the family, but they mention it once and then forget about it. When he "sacrifices" himself at the end and then magically survives, it felt like the movie was cheating.
Jonathan Bailey as the dinosaur scientist is supposed to be like the paleontologist from the original Jurassic Park - someone who loves and respects these creatures. He tries his best, but the dialogue makes him say things like "These magnificent creatures deserve our respect" instead of letting us figure that out ourselves.
The family feels like they're from a completely different movie. Why would a father take his young daughters sailing through dangerous waters full of dinosaurs? The movie never explains this. The younger daughter goes from hating dinosaurs to wanting one as a pet, which feels fake and forced.
The villain Martin is so obviously evil that it's almost funny. His whole motivation is just being greedy, but creating a cure for heart disease would make him rich and help people. The movie makes him unreasonably bad just so the heroes look good.
Here's what really frustrated me: this movie completely misses what made the original Jurassic Park special. The first movie wasn't just about dinosaurs being scary monsters. It was about humans being too arrogant, thinking they could control nature, and treating living creatures like products to be bought and sold.
This new movie tries to have those same themes, but it's so simple and obvious about it. The "good" characters decide to give away their medicine for free, but they're already rich from the mission, so it doesn't cost them anything. The "bad" character is just generically evil with no real motivation.
The movie keeps telling us that people got bored with dinosaurs, but that doesn't make sense. People still go to zoos to see elephants and lions, and those are animals we can watch on TV anytime. Dinosaurs would never become boring to normal people.
The movie looks beautiful - I'll give it that. The dinosaurs feel huge and dangerous, and the underwater scenes with the Mosasaurus genuinely scared me. But everything is special effects instead of using real models and puppets like the original movie did. The digital dinosaurs look impressive but don't feel real in the same way.
Also, the product placement is ridiculous. A Snickers wrapper literally causes the opening disaster. Throughout the movie, you see obvious ads for Altoids, M&Ms, Red Vines, and beer. The worst part is the little girl feeding candy to her pet dinosaur, which exists purely so toy companies can sell dinosaur figures with candy accessories.
The basic idea actually had potential. Dinosaurs dying out because of climate change could have been interesting - it could have explored how humans are responsible for destroying the environment, and whether we should try to save species we brought back to life. The medicine angle could have raised real questions about whether life-saving treatments should be free or expensive.
But instead of exploring these ideas, the movie just uses them as background for a basic action adventure. The characters make obvious moral choices between clearly good and evil options. There's no complexity, no real thought required.
This isn't the worst Jurassic movie ever made, but it might be the most disappointing because it could have been good. You have talented actors, a director who knows how to make big spectacular scenes, and a premise with real potential. Instead, you get a movie that feels like it was designed to make money rather than tell a story.
The original Jurassic Park was special because it combined amazing special effects with big ideas about science, nature, and human responsibility. Each movie since then has gotten further away from those ideas while just recycling the same visual elements and music.
This movie tells us people are bored with dinosaurs, but I think the real problem is that the filmmakers have run out of interesting things to say about them. Instead of finding new angles or exploring deeper themes, they just rehash old plot points with new locations and mutated creatures.
Jurassic World Rebirth is a competently made movie that looks good and will probably entertain people who just want to see dinosaurs and action sequences. But for anyone hoping this franchise might remember what made it special in the first place, this is another step in the wrong direction.
The movie exists primarily to make money from people's nostalgia for the original film. Most sadly, it treats the dinosaurs as just special effects rather than characters worthy of our wonder and respect.
The irony is that in trying to bring the Jurassic franchise back to life, the filmmakers have created something that feels more dead than the extinct creatures it shows. It moves and roars impressively, but it lacks the heart and soul that made the original movie a masterpiece that people still love 30 years later.
If you want to see impressive dinosaur action and don't care about deeper meaning, you might enjoy this movie. But if you're hoping the franchise might rediscover what made it special, you'll probably leave the theater feeling as disappointed as I did.