Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) was supposed to be a promising entry in the Jurassic saga, but instead, it has written the franchise into a corner and left many fans disappointed.
The latest sequel, directed by Gareth Edwards (2014’s Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) and written by David Koepp, resets the long-running franchise’s storytelling in the worst possible way — by undoing the global dinosaur concept established in the previous two films, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World Dominion (2022).
Credit: Universal Pictures
Related: ‘Jurassic World Rebirth 2’: Plot, Cast, Release Date, and Human-Dino Hybrids
Rebirth Was a Box Office Hit, but It’s Creatively Bankrupt
Scarlett Johansson leads the cast as covert operations expert Zora Bennett, alongside Mahershala Ali’s team expert Duncan Kincaid, Jonathan Bailey’s paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis, and Rupert Friend’s big pharma rep Martin Krebs. But despite its star power, the seventh entry in the Jurassic franchise fails on nearly every fundamental storytelling level.
The plot is wafer-thin, the characters are barely developed, and though visually impressive, the dinosaurs feel episodic, each hosting one-and-done action sequences never to reappear in the film again (previous Jurassic films interweave their creatures throughout the film).
While box office numbers tell one story (Rebirth grossed over $860 million worldwide), all the money in the world can’t mask the film’s creative failings. Even as Universal Pictures counts the cash and is more than likely setting another sequel in motion, the franchise itself feels exhausted, overstuffed, and creatively bankrupt.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Related: ‘Jurassic World’ May Be Done With Dinosaurs, ‘Rebirth 2’ Could Introduce Ice Age Beasts
Jurassic World Rebirth‘s Biggest Crime
One of the most egregious things about Rebirth, however, is how it abandons the fan-favorite concept of dinosaurs thriving all around the world.
At the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, several dinosaurs are released into the Sierra Nevada region in North America. In Jurassic World Dominion, which takes place four years later, species of all shapes and sizes are showing to be flourishing all over the planet, thanks to an illegal dinosaur trade.
But the latest film, which is set five years after Dominion, has killed off most of the dinosaurs, alleging that the planet is no longer “hospitable” to them, with survivors now living along the equator where the climate is said to resemble the one in which they lived millions of years ago.
The reason for this? Screenwriter David Koepp wanted to take the franchise back to an isolated setting, something that had already been exhausted by four-and-a-half movies.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Related: ‘Jurassic World’ May Be Done With Dinosaurs, ‘Rebirth 2’ Could Introduce Ice Age Beasts
A Fan-Favorite Jurassic Entry Has Been Erased
Dominion‘s global dinosaur problem extended into all sorts of tie-in media. The Netflix animated series Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, the two most recent Jurassic World Evolution video games, and novels like the Maisie Lockwood Adventures. Even before Dominion came out, Fallen Kingdom‘s third-act setup spawned the live-action short Battle at Big Rock (2019) and the hugely popular mobile game “Jurassic World Alive” (2018).
But one of the most memorable additions came in the form of DinoTracker.com, the official website that offered fans “real-time” updates on dinosaur populations and their geo-locations. The website, which was considered entirely canonical, was launched in early 2022 to promote the release of Dominion, and was run “in-universe” by the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife.
Credit: Universal Pictures
However, following the release of Jurassic World Rebirth this summer, Universal has officially retired the website. Now, attempts to access DinoTracker.com redirect users to the main website, JurassicWorld.com.
According to Jurassic Wiki, on February 5 of this year, to coincide with the release of the first trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth, “the website was updated to continuously display a list of error logs for all the dinosaurs previously sighted around the world, each identified with an ENTRY_ID.” It adds: “Every dinosaur had their status set to ‘UNKNOWN’ with their last known location and corresponding coordinates, as well as metadata.”
“Furthermore, the Tyrannosaurus rex and Mosasaurus entries were modified with their location changed to ‘UNKNOWN’ and the coordinates pointing to Ile Saint-Hubert featured in Jurassic World Rebirth.”
This all seems in line with the film, especially given the dwindling dinosaur populations and the newly introduced third island — this one located in Suriname, South America, and not off the coast of Costa Rica over on the Pacific side of the continent where Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna (AKA Site B) are located — there’s one major problem: Ile Saint-Hubert was actually nowhere to be seen on DinoTracker.com.
Credit: Universal Pictures
In other words, InGen’s third island never existed in canon prior to the release of Rebirth this year. Of course, the same can be said about Isla Sorna, but while that island was only introduced in The Lost World, its existence wasn’t later contradicted by established canon.
It’s also hard to know where to place Ile Saint-Hubert in the timeline. In one scene in the film, Zora Bennett (Johansson) suggests it was a facility for the original Jurassic Park, but in another, Martin Krebs (Friend) implies it was used to create hybrids for Jurassic World.
Credit: Universal Pictures
Is Jurassic World Rebirth Canon?
This leaves us wondering whether Jurassic World Rebirth is even canon. On the surface, it is, but there’s some evidence that might suggest otherwise. In addition to the Ile Saint-Hubert mystery, it contradicts and ignores canon.
It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia defines “canon” in fiction as “the body of works taking place in a particular fictional world that are widely considered to be official or authoritative; [especially] those created by the original author or developer of the world”. Rebirth is, of course, official, but many do not consider it to be canon, which means it is widely rejected.
Either way, the film has swiftly undone decades of world-building. By confining the dinosaurs to another isolated location and erasing their global presence, it leaves no clear path forward. So what next? More mutant dinosaurs? Human hybrids? Dinosaurs in space..?
Jurassic World Rebirth stars Scarlett Johansson (Avengers: Endgame), Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Lincoln Lawyer), Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Mahershala Ali (The Green Book), Luna Blaise (Manifest), David Iacono (Dead Boy Detectives), Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs Lopez), Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool).
How do you feel about Jurassic World Rebirth? Do you view it as canon or alternate media? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
