“Life finds a way… to disappoint us once more.”
After thirty-two years since Steven Spielberg first brought dinosaurs back from extinction, Jurassic World: Rebirth stomps into theaters as the seventh entry in a franchise that seems determined to prove that humanity never learns from its mistakes. Directed by Gareth Edwards and released on July 2, 2025, this latest installment asks the question: what happens when we’ve grown bored of regular dinosaurs and decide to play God with genetics? Spoiler alert: nothing good.
Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a small commission—at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I personally find useful or relevant. Thank you for your support.
Background: A Franchise Reborn (Sort Of)
Jurassic World: Rebirth arrives three years after Dominion, with Edwards (known for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) taking the directorial reins. The film stars Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett and Jonathan Bailey as Henry Loomis, leading a cast into yet another ill-conceived encounter with prehistoric predators. The movie carries the hefty burden of being both a continuation and a soft reboot of the series, attempting to recapture the awe of the original while acknowledging that, as one critic noted, we’ve entered an era where “awe is out” and boredom has set in regarding resurrected dinosaurs.
The film received mixed reviews upon release, with many critics pointing to recycled themes and predictable plot beats that have become the franchise’s calling card. Yet despite these familiar criticisms, some reviewers have called it an improvement over recent entries, suggesting that perhaps the bar has simply been set quite low.
The Distortus Rex: When T-Rex Meets Beluga Whale
The film’s most controversial creation is undoubtedly the Distortus rex – a genetic abomination that seems to embody everything wrong with humanity’s relationship with nature. This mutant Tyrannosaurus, created on Ile Saint-Hubert before 2010, represents “Version 23.111” of genetic experimentation, implying over twenty failed attempts preceded this monstrosity.
The creature’s design – essentially a T-Rex crossed with a beluga whale, sporting both massive arms and the species’ characteristic tiny appendages alongside hind legs – feels like the result of a fever dream committee meeting. It’s as if the filmmakers asked themselves, “What’s scarier than a T-Rex?” and answered, “A T-Rex that can swim really well and has identity issues about its limb proportions.”
The Distortus rex serves as one of two main antagonists (alongside the human villain Martin Krebs), and watching it lumber across the screen raises questions about both the practical mechanics of its existence and the ethical implications of its creation. How does it move efficiently? Why would anyone think this was a good idea? These questions haunt the viewing experience more than the creature itself.
The Human Element: Bad Decisions and Familiar Faces
What makes Rebirth particularly frustrating is how it humanizes the very real consequences of scientific hubris while simultaneously asking audiences to suspend disbelief about the sheer stupidity of its characters’ choices. The film follows the established franchise tradition of placing intelligent people in situations where they make profoundly unintelligent decisions.
Scarlett Johansson’s Zora Bennett and Jonathan Bailey’s Henry Loomis are competent performers trapped in a script that requires them to walk knowingly into danger for the sake of advancing the plot. Their characters aren’t inherently unlikable, but they’re burdened with the franchise’s curse of having to make choices that serve the monster movie mechanics rather than logical human behavior.
The supporting cast fills familiar archetypes: the corporate villain who sees profit over safety, the scientist who believes they can control nature, and the various expendable team members whose primary purpose is to provide the creatures with snack options. It’s a formula we’ve seen six times before, and Rebirth doesn’t do enough to subvert or meaningfully evolve these tired tropes.
Technical Spectacle vs. Narrative Substance
Edwards brings his visual storytelling expertise to the project, and the film succeeds in delivering impressive creature work and action sequences. The dinosaurs, both traditional and mutant varieties, are rendered with cutting-edge CGI that makes them feel tangibly present. The film “doesn’t let go until the end credits,” as Edwards promised, maintaining a relentless pace that keeps viewers engaged even when the plot telegraphs its moves.
However, technical proficiency cannot mask the fundamental narrative problems. The film retreads familiar ground about genetic manipulation, corporate greed, and humanity’s relationship with nature without adding meaningful new insights. We’ve seen the Indominus Rex and the Indoraptor; the Distortus rex feels less like evolution and more like desperation.
The Franchise’s Identity Crisis
Jurassic World: Rebirth suffers from the same problem that has plagued the series since Jurassic World: it’s a franchise about the wonder of dinosaurs that has systematically destroyed that wonder through repetition and escalation. The original Jurassic Park worked because it treated dinosaurs with respect and awe. These newer films treat them as problems to be solved or enhanced through human intervention.
The film’s exploration of what happens when humans grow bored with regular dinosaurs and begin “manipulating dinosaurs, weaponizing them, bending them further away from what they were and toward what humans wanted them to be” is thematically rich material. Unfortunately, Rebirth seems more interested in the spectacle of these manipulations than in seriously examining their implications.
The Verdict: More of the Same, Slightly Better
Jurassic World: Rebirth is competently made blockbuster entertainment that will satisfy viewers looking for dinosaur-powered action sequences and not much else. Edwards’ direction ensures the film moves with purpose, and the creature work is undeniably impressive. For fans of the franchise who’ve accepted that these films will never recapture the magic of Spielberg’s original, Rebirth offers enough thrills to justify its existence.
But for those hoping the series might finally learn from its characters’ repeated mistakes, Rebirth is a frustrating reminder that some franchises are doomed to repeat the same cycles. The Distortus rex may be the film’s monster, but the real horror is watching intelligent filmmakers make the same bad decisions that plague their on-screen characters.
In the end, Jurassic World: Rebirth succeeds as a summer blockbuster and fails as meaningful science fiction. It’s a film that asks us to care about the consequences of playing God while simultaneously reveling in the spectacle of divine malpractice. Perhaps that’s fitting for a franchise that has always been about the gap between good intentions and disastrous outcomes.
Rating: 6/10 – Solidly entertaining but forgettably familiar, like a really well-made theme park attraction based on a much better movie.
What did you think of Jurassic World: Rebirth? Does the franchise need to go extinct, or is there still life in these old bones? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Leave a Reply