2025's summer movie season is going prehistoric, as the first trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth has arrived. This seventh installment, and the first of a "new era" following the Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard trilogy, hails from director Gareth Edwards and boasts a fresh cast including Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali. Despite this impressive lineup, including the return of original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp, the trailer suggests a potential misstep. The promised world of dinosaurs, teased in Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, seems largely absent.
Let's examine what the trailer reveals and omits, and why Jurassic World might be squandering its greatest opportunity.
**A Cretaceous Regression?**The Jurassic World trilogy, while receiving mixed critical reviews, has consistently delivered blockbuster box office results. Global audiences crave dinosaurs, and despite Universal's initial plan to retire the original World cast, further installments were inevitable. A new cast and crew were quickly assembled, with Gareth Edwards (known for Godzilla and Rogue One) proving a particularly intriguing choice. Edwards excels at portraying scale in VFX-heavy films, a skill highly valuable for a four-quadrant blockbuster.
The dinosaurs themselves look stunning in motion, and Edwards's visual flair—his attention to detail in proportions and lighting—sets this film apart from many recent visually underwhelming blockbusters. His achievement is even more remarkable considering the compressed production schedule (hired in February 2024, production began by June). While the trailer doesn't fully showcase the new cast, the action sequences appear promising, and ample dinosaur screen time is evident—a welcome sight given past inconsistencies. Remember the locusts from Jurassic World Dominion? Probably not, and that's understandable.
Despite cautious optimism, the trailer's biggest issue is its apparent disregard for the "world of dinosaurs" concept established since Fallen Kingdom.
AnswerSee ResultsIsland Hopping Again?
The setup feels familiar: another island teeming with dinosaurs. Neither Isla Nublar nor Isla Sorna, but a mysterious third location—a research facility from the original Jurassic Park. Ignoring canon inconsistencies, the film retreats to the franchise's typical tropical island setting, isolating the dinosaurs from civilization. Why revert to this formula when the previous trilogy concluded with dinosaurs spread globally? Universal's synopsis explains that five years post-Dominion, the planet's ecology proves largely inhospitable to dinosaurs, confining them to isolated equatorial environments.
This feels like an unnecessary step backward. Why invest in establishing a global Jurassic World only to abandon it? Similar to Dominion's retconning of Fallen Kingdom's ending, Rebirth discards the series' best recent idea: dinosaurs roaming freely across the globe. This creative choice is baffling, especially given the film's aim to relaunch the franchise with new characters and concepts. The established lore also suffers. Dominion depicted dinosaurs thriving in diverse environments, from snowy regions to urban landscapes. If the world was so inhospitable, why did they fare so well in the previous film? The Malta chase in Dominion, featuring carnivores rampaging through a city, was arguably the film's best sequence.
The Jurassic franchise is a Hollywood safe bet; audiences consistently want to see dinosaurs. Why not embrace risk and explore truly novel concepts?
While Jurassic World Rebirth might hold surprises beyond the trailer, its original title (rumored to be Jurassic City) suggests a setting the trailer deliberately obscures. Regardless, the franchise needs to move beyond the tired tropical island trope. While not advocating for a full Planet of the Apes dinosaur adaptation, a middle ground—dinosaurs in diverse new environments—is certainly achievable. We await Jurassic World Rebirth's release, hoping the franchise finally prioritizes innovation over repetition.
Jurassic World Rebirth - Trailer 1 Stills
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