At this point, I can’t come up with a logical explanation for why we keep getting Jurassic World movies. The original Jurassic World in 2015 nailed it: stunning practical effects, breathtaking cinematography, solid acting, and a laser-focused sense of wonder. It all clicked. Now ask yourself: Has there been a single Jurassic Park film that’s truly good since 1993? Most honest fans would say no.

Yet here we are in 2025, and Universal Pictures is churning out another one. Why? Simple: every Jurassic World entry rakes in over a billion dollars at the box office. When you’re a studio swimming in red ink, turning down that kind of payday isn’t an option. It’s cash-printing on a prehistoric scale, even if the formula has grown as stale as a fossilized bone.

Over the last decade, Chris Pratt injected some life into the franchise as the modern-day raptor whisperer, carrying his trilogy with charisma and quips. But with that chapter wrapped a couple of years ago, the series is veering in a fresh direction—or at least trying to. Gone is the hulking brute Pratt; in steps Scarlett Johansson, fresh off her Marvel crash-and-burn, as the new lead. Zora Bennett, a covert operations expert, takes the reins in Jurassic World: Rebirth, marking the first time a woman anchors a Jurassic film.

This casting pivot raises a slew of questions. Is this what audiences demanded? Will Johansson’s star power lure more viewers than Pratt’s? Or are we just slapping a big name on the marquee because dinosaur flicks guarantee bucks, no matter who’s front and center? Johansson’s a competent actress with a track record of commanding screens, but does she need to lead a dino-stomping escapade? Rebirth bets the farm on it, hoping to rebirth the franchise—pun very much intended.

Directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One) and penned by original Jurassic Park scribe David Koepp, the film flashes back briefly to the 2015 incident’s origins: a lab mishap sparked by something as mundane as a misplaced candy wrapper, unleashing genetically tweaked terrors for theme-park thrills gone awry. Fast-forward five years after Jurassic World Dominion, and dinosaurs are barely scraping by in a human-dominated world. Modern climates are too harsh for most, confining survivors to isolated equatorial islands mimicking their ancient habitats.

Enter a sleazy pharmaceutical executive eyeing dinosaur blood for a miracle heart disease cure—and massive profits. He hires Zora Bennett (Johansson) and her mercenary team to infiltrate one such island, extract DNA samples from the planet’s three largest prehistoric beasts, and make bank on the medical breakthrough. It sounds almost noble: saving lives with ancient serum. But as with every Jurassic sequel, hubris bites back hard. The team’s op intersects with a capsized civilian family—a random Hispanic clan tossed in for “diversity” points—stranding everyone on a nightmare isle teeming with horrors.

Things spiral predictably: chases through jungles, dino ambushes, and a grotesque new abomination unveiled as the Distortus Rex, a six-limbed mutated T. rex that looks like a genetic experiment gone fetal and foul. It’s the latest “dinosaur of the week,” engineered for spectacle but landing like a cheap horror knockoff. The film’s bloated runtime juggles two ill-defined groups—the mercs and the family—leaving both feeling underdeveloped. Johansson’s Zora gets a cookie-cutter backstory: a hardened operative haunted by loss, generic enough to justify her grit but forgettable enough to wonder why she’s here.

At its core, there’s little new to say about the Jurassic World franchise. These movies exist solely because they mint money, and the audiences flocking to them don’t seem to care about quality anymore. The plots recycle the same idiocy: every few years, some greedy scientists or corporate suits think they can capture, weaponize, or commodify a dinosaur, only to get chomped in spectacular fashion. We’ve seen this seven times now, with the only tweaks being grayer actors recycled for nostalgia bait.

Rebirth leans into Hollywood’s favorite trope: Big Pharma as the mustache-twirling villain, as long as it’s not Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson dodging real-world scrutiny. The action set pieces deliver fleeting thrills—visceral dino rampages and tense extractions—but they’re buried under a slog of exposition and forced emotional beats. Johansson holds her own, exuding cool competence amid the chaos, but her character never feels essential. Why Zora? Why now? The film doesn’t earn it, settling for star power over substance.

If you’re heading to theaters for the spectacle, fine—Rebirth scratches that primal itch when the teeth come out. But for coherent storytelling or fresh scares? Skip it. You’d get more bang from a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy than this overpriced cheeseburger of a blockbuster. The Jurassic series peaked decades ago, and Rebirth proves it’s just coasting on fumes, prioritizing paydays over paleontological plausibility.

Universal’s got its billion; audiences deserve better than reheated raptor chow.

1.5/5

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