Reviewed by The Update | Entertainment Section
Scarlett Johansson tries to bring the Jurassic franchise back to life. Spoiler: She fails.
★☆☆☆☆
1 out of 5 stars
Extinct potential, executed with prehistoric laziness.
If Jurassic World: Rebirth was supposed to usher in a bold new chapter for the franchise, it’s more like a mercy kill in slow motion.
The movie opens with a scene that should’ve been iconic: the reveal of a new apex predator, some mega-dino supposedly bigger and badder than anything we’ve seen before. The camera lingers on it, the music swells, and then…*cut to two hours of absolutely nothing.* That dino? Never comes back until the final 10 minutes, with *no* backstory, *no* buildup, and *no* real reason to exist other than toy sales (by no means the only offender) and last-minute CGI
fireworks. It’s the cinematic equivalent of showing a T-Rex roaring… and then cutting to a tax seminar.
Characters as Hollow as Fossils
Scarlett Johansson takes the lead as Zora, and it’s baffling how miscast she feels. She doesn’t inhabit a new character, she imports Black Widow with minimal adaptation, giving off “super-spy in a jungle” energy that jars with the Jurassic tone. There’s an early conversation between Zora and Dr. Henry (played by a very game if slightly tired-looking Jonathan Bailey) that’s meant to flesh out her motivations. It’s one of those “tell-don’t-show” expositional dumps that screenwriters should be ashamed of. And it doesn’t work. At all. Exposition at its most soulless.
Then there’s Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid, perhaps the only casting this movie actually got right. He’s saddled with wooden dialogue and a plot arc thinner than a raptor’s toothpick, but somehow still radiates pure movie-star charisma. Ali manages to make even the dumbest lines sound like they belong in a better film. It almost feels cruel, like hiring a Michelin-star chef to work at a gas station sandwich counter. We’re already looking forward to seeing him bring this same presence to the Blade reboot assuming Marvel ever finishes the thing. At the current pace, it’ll probably premiere around the same time the real dinosaurs come back.
The Update’s Projected Blade Release Timeline:
- 2025: Script rewritten again
- 2026: Director quits
- 2027: Filming finally begins, but is paused for “daylight adjustments”
- 2028: First trailer drops,contains no Blade footage
- 2030: Official release date announced, immediately delayed to 2032
- 2032: Blade finally premieres, starring Mahershala Ali’s hologram
The “family” subplot barely registers. We don’t know who they are, why we should care, or even why they’re there. They’re so lazily introduced and underwritten that you could blink and forget they even existed. The cast is good on paper, but here they’re orbiting around each other without any emotional gravity. Don’t get us started on the boyfriend. Don’t.
The Plot? Extinct Before It Started
Poor structure is one thing. No structure is another. Rebirth stumbles from scene to scene like a raptor with a twisted ankle. The story is non-existent, the tension mythical, and the pacing as erratic as a faulty jeep on Isla Nublar. The second half offers a flicker of entertainment, but there’s no real sense of progression, just half-hearted chases, recycled jungle shots, and action sequences that vanish from memory as soon as they end. Worst of all is its blatant attempt to recreate the iconic velociraptor kitchen scene from Jurassic Park. Spielberg’s original turned a simple setting into a masterclass in suspense, sound design, framing, and silence doing most of the work, making every metallic clang feel like a gunshot. Rebirth tries the same trick but strips it of patience, subtlety, and fear. Instead of breath-holding terror, we get clumsy blocking, telegraphed jump scares, and dinosaurs that seem more bored than predatory, a wax museum reenactment of a masterpiece.
A Corporate Fossil Dig
At its worst, Jurassic World: Rebirth feels like rushed corporate fan fiction that forgot to include fans. It reeks of studio interference and brand milking, offering nothing but faded nostalgia and the bare minimum of effort to justify a summer release.
Yes, it made money. And no, we don’t understand how.
Final Verdict
Jurassic World: Rebirth is a catastrophic misfire – a soulless, sloppily structured, creativity-free entry that somehow manages to sink even lower than its already abysmal predecessor.
If this is the future of the franchise, it’s time to let the dinosaurs rest in peace.
