Jurassic World Rebirth is the latest installment in the Jurassic Park series. It is the start of a new trilogy, with Scarlett Johansson as the lead.

The movie has a really strong and emotional introduction, with a dinosaur genetics facility having a containment issue. To prevent a mutated dinosaur from escaping, a worker shuts the door, trapping a colleague who she is presumably close to. This is impacting and sets a good tone for the movie, but the character never shows up again, and multiple characters have a tragic story about a family member. It would have been much better for the worker to be a main character, because the friend’s (or sibling’s or fiancé’s, etc.) death actually being shown in the introduction would allow for scenes where they say what happened to be more emotional, or they could have just put an existing character’s close one dying in the intro instead of adding a new character.

Their objective in the story is to get the blood of the biggest dinosaurs from land, air, and sea for medical purposes (only one actually a dinosaur), which you would think leads to three tense and entertaining action scenes. The company after these samples recruits a group of people to obtain them: an archaeologist, a mercenary, the representative for the medical company, a ship’s captain, and a crew of expendable side characters. First, they set out to sea to get the blood from the Mosasaur, the largest ocean reptile, and along the way they pick up a family on a boating trip with a common character dynamic. The dad is upset with his daughter’s boyfriend invading the family, and there is also an eight-year-old girl to appeal to a younger audience. Also, the mom isn’t in the movie because modern TV loves single parents. They then undergo the best creature-versus-boat fight scene since Jaws. It’s extremely tense, and there are many enjoyable moments, such as when the Mosasaur hits the boat, the deaths of multiple side characters, and the eventual escape from the Mosasaur. I won’t spoil too much else about the scene, but it was well crafted and entertaining.

The family gets separated from the crew during the Mosasaur attack, as the main group goes to get the second blood sample from a land animal. But the issue is that it’s a non-aggressive herbivore. That part isn’t an issue; they could have had the sauropod slowly stomp around like a kaiju while they dodge it, or them trying to avoid the predators that hunt the herbivore, but instead they just appreciate the beauty of the dinosaur. This is necessary, but it shouldn’t have been done with one of the main dinosaurs they need the blood samples from, which takes away from the mystique of three great artifacts because one is so simple and easy to get. Instead, it should have been a scene with the family. They could have given the little girl something related to dinosaurs, like a phobia or obsession. No, instead the family escapes a T-rex in a chase scene, which is fine, but this part of the movie could have been a lot better suited to different characters.

The scene where they get the final blood sample is from the largest pterosaur, a Quetzalcoatlus. They strategically go for the egg instead of the dinosaur itself. The Quetzalcoatlus is designed well and has obvious similarities to a dragon. Sadly, the pseudo-dragon only poses a danger to an irrelevant side character. There is also a scene where the scientist and the mercenary have a discussion about where the medical information will go. I believe that this would be better between the scientist and the representative for the private medical company because it carries more ethical weight for the guy who is representative of the company, while Zora (the main character) doesn’t really have any ties to the company at all. The family is done well, and their dynamic works, although it reaches a predictable outcome. I have no complaints about the ending; I think that it’s the best that they could have done with all previous elements of the story. Overall, the film is decent, with good sound and visual effects.