Nature Red (40) in Tooth and Claw

Alison Laurence reviews “Jurassic World Rebirth” in the context of de-extinction developments.

By Alison LaurenceAugust 16, 2025

• Science & Technology

• Film

Editor’s note: This review contains spoilers for the film Jurassic World Rebirth.

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DINOSAURS ARE THE MAIN attraction. But in this summer’s Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the Jurassic Park franchise, there is a curious amount of attention given over to candy: A paleontologist crunches on Altoids. A child shares her licorice with an inquisitive dinosaur. A Gen Z slacker downs a bag of M&M’s after his close call with the jaws of a creature once extinct. It’s a Snickers wrapper that sets the whole story in motion.

The camera’s interest in candy is, patently, product placement—all of these confections are owned by Mars, which has released Jurassic-branded products in partnership with Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment—but it’s emblematic too. Jurassic World Rebirth is a film about appetites. About what we hunger for, even if those things aren’t in our best interests. It’s about how we consume the sensational, sentimental, synthetic things (and stories) that are sold to us. It’s about what’s at stake when, ultimately, we lose our taste for those things.

The obvious embedded marketing of sweets throughout the film exists in ironic tension with its premise: Parker-Genix Pharmaceutical Engineering aims to develop a drug to treat cardiovascular disease, an epidemic that accounts for one in every five deaths in the United States and, globally, many millions each year. Parker-Genix wagers that the solution—and untold financial returns—will be found in the genetic material of the largest de-extinct animals, the ones with the biggest hearts: Mosasaurus, a massive marine reptile; Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur with a wingspan the length of a telephone pole; and Titanosaurus, an herbivorous behemoth, the only actual dinosaur in the trio, though the taxonomic classification itself is dubious. (I’ll add, for precision’s sake, that all these genera lived during the Cretaceous, rather than the Jurassic, Period.)

Parker-Genix representative Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) reaches into the corporation’s deep pockets to fund an illegal and dangerous expedition into the verboten equatorial areas where these animals thrive. He hires Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to lead the team and persuades his paleo-coronary health consultant, Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), to sign on to the mission. Whereas Krebs and Bennett see dollar signs, Loomis is eager to use his expertise to do real good in the world. And after his bona fides as a paleontologist are challenged, he’s keen to see some dinosaurs in the wild.

Who could resist such an opportunity?

While Rebirth is an effort to revive a revival, it respects its place within the franchise. The film bows to the past in some ways. The scene focused on the majestic titanosaur herd, for instance, evokes the poignant moment in Jurassic Park (1993) when sauropods first appear on-screen. At the same time, Rebirth accepts that it is impossible to return to what once was.

This perspective is particularly important because Rebirth is the first Jurassic film born into a world where de-extinction of prehistoric life is a contested but credible reality. While the film was in postproduction, a genetic engineering company called Colossal Biosciences announced that its scientists had brought the dire wolf, gone since the end of the Ice Age, back from extinction. Analysis of ancient DNA and cutting-edge gene-editing technology allowed Colossal’s scientists to make targeted changes to extant gray wolf genes so that the resulting clones would express certain dire wolf traits. Though genetically Canis lupus, the wolves were engineered to have thick white coats, to be bigger and have stronger jaws than their wolfish genome would otherwise present.

Critics have urged caution. Most urgently, conservationists warn that this work could have adverse impacts on extant animals, diverting resources from species currently imperiled and creating political will to defang the Endangered Species Act. Moreover, scientists, as well as philosophers, emphasize that these animals are not dire wolves, though many allow that the technology used to engineer them is impressive.

According to Jurassic Park and the films that followed, to engineer long-extinct life is the ultimate act of hubris. It inevitably leads to catastrophe, whether the project is well intentioned or mercenary (or a bit of both). Now that the technology exists to reconstitute extinct-ish animals timelier, the admonitions of Jurassic are even timelier.

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When Big Pharma rep Martin Krebs is introduced, he’s stuck in a New York City traffic jam caused by “Bronto Billy,” the last known sauropod still living in the United States. Krebs has little patience for the apatosaur, though he has plans to profit off the blood of its cladistic cousin Titanosaurus.

“Rest in peace already,” he mutters.

For all his talk of saving lives, Krebs (along with the corporation he represents) is immediately recognizable as the villain. It follows that he would have no care for dinosaurs, except for the profit margins promised by their genetic information. It’s more surprising when the film’s most innocent character utters an even harsher judgment.

Things have been going swimmingly, so far. Krebs’s expedition is en route to collect a blood sample from the water-dwelling mosasaur. Some miles south, aboard La Mariposa, the Delgado family is charting a course from the Caribbean to Cape Town, South Africa. Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) has planned the voyage to spend quality time with his daughters, the young Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and teenage Teresa (Luna Blaise), who will be off to college in the fall. The only source of friction is Teresa’s boyfriend, Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), a self-described “lazy as hell” layabout, intentionally unlikable but a hero nonetheless.

Off in the distance, a swarm of dorsal sails, the first sign of trouble. Something big brushes past the boat.

“Is it the you-know-what?” Bella asks her father.

“No, honey.” Reuben does his best to calm her. “There’s barely any left.”

“I hate those things. I wish they never came back,” she says.

Right on cue, the maligned “thing” capsizes their sailboat, marooning the family on La Mariposa’s keel.

Kids like Bella have never known a world without dinosaurs. Within the Jurassic universe, de-extinct animals have been entertaining theme park visitors—and wreaking havoc—for 32 years: no longer novel, in some cases a nuisance. This is why, the Jurassic World films explain again and again, the theme park’s scientists engineered bigger, fiercer, ever more startling hybrids—mutants—to keep visitors interested. It’s a cynical turn that imagines people as fundamentally capricious, as if no one has ever visited a zoo more than once (though a visit to this dinosaur zoo would have been rather more expensive). It’s not necessarily a realistic representation of what audiences within Jurassic World want or what those who are watching Jurassic World care to see on-screen. Instead, this narrative emphasis on the need to make mutants reflects the nightmares of technocapitalism, hurrying headlong toward the next extractive frontier for fear of diminishing returns.

The opening of Rebirth, set 17 years before the film’s present, introduces one of these mutants. The six-limbed Distortus rex, a grotesquely xenomorphed version of a tyrannosaur, is safely contained in a facility on Ile Saint-Hubert operated by InGen (the genetic engineering company that created the original park). But not for long. A harried scientist scarfs down a Snickers bar. (Did his boss make him work through lunch? Is the cultivation of “engineered entertainment” that urgent?) In his rush, he drops the candy wrapper, which snarls the high-tech system and disables security. A sweet malfunction sets the mutant free.

Out here in the real world, people are still enamored of regular old dinosaurs, beings wondrous enough and merchandisable because we can’t obtain them otherwise. The claims made in the film about audiences no longer caring for dinosaurs ring hollow to the moviegoers who are paying good money to see them on-screen. Though the Jurassic World films haven’t been particularly well received by critics or audiences, they have earned money enough (billions at the box office) to warrant sequel after sequel. The dinosaur-loving public sees its attitudes reflected best in the film’s earnest paleontologist, Dr. Loomis, who whoops ecstatically when he sees the mosasaur breach and is overcome with emotion when he stands in the titanosaur’s shadow.

It’s worth noting, though, that dinosaurs are not universally or innately beloved. Paleontologist and humanist Stephen Jay Gould, a fixture of public science writing in the late 20th century, discussed how he was the odd one out in the 1950s for his interest in dinosaurs. In the 1990s, cultural theorist W. J. T. Mitchell wrote The Last Dinosaur Book as a way to understand why so many others were drawn to extinct animals when he himself was not. Bella’s hatred of the Mosasaurus is an extreme opinion, but within the world of Jurassic World, it is plausible. It’s an attitude that ought to be given credence at this moment when de-extinction projects are in the news. There is hype around the so-called dire wolves right now; Rebirth warns that their popular appeal will wane.

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A second encounter with the Mosasaurus deposits the expedition team and the Delgado family on the shores of Ile Saint-Hubert, where they must contend with dinosaurs, as well as the escaped mutants. Zora Bennett disparagingly refers to the experimental hybrids as “genetically altered freaks.” Others, too, express disgust—at the mutants’ existence and, more so, at the moneyed interests that made them.

Yet these mutants aren’t that different from the “normal” dinosaurs featured in Rebirth or previous films. All are products of genetic engineering. Like Colossal’s dire wolves, which are not genetically dire wolves, every dinosaur in Jurassic is a genetically modified organism.

There’s a moment near the end of the film when the Delgado family is being menaced by the Mutadon, a hybridized Velociraptor and Pteranodon that suggests an angry turkey, if that turkey weighed 500 pounds. The Mutadon stalks through a convenience store—conveniently well stocked with sugary Mars products—and pauses in front of the refrigerated section. The mutant inspects its reflection in the fogged-up glass. A bird gazes back. Engineered, yes, animal too.

In an inversion of the franchise’s established interest in “clever girls,” Rebirth argues that “intelligence is massively overrated.” It’s not subtext; our paleontologist says it outright. Humans and our big brains evolved only moments ago, in geological time, and yet already we face annihilation. Our tenure on this planet could end in a blink.

Mutadon makes a meal of the clever raptor, too focused on its own hunt to recognize it was being hunted.

All of these creatures, clever or not, are just trying to survive in a world that is hostile to their existence.

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The real story of Jurassic World Rebirth is the heist within the heist.

Krebs’s expedition breaks into the equatorial vault, where dinosaurs live in a climate closest to the Mesozoic Era’s, to collect genetic material that will enrich a pharmaceutical corporation and save the lives of those who can afford its promised benefits. The idealistic paleontologist has other ideas. No patents, no profits.

“Science is for all of us, not some of us,” Loomis says to Bennett.

She doesn’t disagree on principle, but she’s hunting for a way out of the special ops game. The deep pockets of Parker-Genix promise her the kind of payday she needs.

In previous Jurassic installments, the paleontologists have been motivated by money. In the original film, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) convinces Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) to visit his park by promising to fund their dig for several further seasons. In Jurassic Park III, a paleontologist steals a raptor egg, believing he could finance his fieldwork for an entire decade through its illicit sale. (If scientists had reliable institutional and federal support, some of the disastrous circumstances that follow might have been avoided.)

Loomis, it seems, knows not to trust the money. Perhaps he’s one of the few Jurassic characters to have learned from his predecessors’ mistakes. He wants to give the data to the world, to contribute to the creation of open-source drugs that could save millions of lives annually. Bennett, wracked with grief and guilt over the covert work she’s done, starts to come around to the idea, nudged along by her bereaved comrade in arms Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali). By the time the expedition team and the Delgado family reunite, everyone has turned on Krebs. But he’s the one with the gun.

In the end, a dinosaur turns co-conspirator. The mutant Distortus rex—neither good nor bad but engineered animal—severs the pharmaceutical corporation from the trillions it was projected to earn. D. rex does this literally, of course. When the precious briefcase full of blood samples falls to the earth, Krebs’s arm remains handcuffed to it. The rest of Krebs is in the belly of the beast.

The happy outcome is a product of chaotic contingency, la mariposa—“the butterfly”—effect: InGen invests $72 million (on average) into the development of a hybrid; a scientist with a sweet tooth accidentally sets him free; car and carnivore collide at precisely the right time; the team gives the genetic data away; countless lives are saved …

Within a sensitive dynamic system, initial conditions are significant. Very small things (a stray Snickers wrapper, even) can have unforeseen and outsize effects. Chaos theory, though, does not absolve our characters from responsibility or free them from making hard decisions. In the end, as the survivors sail away from the island, Bennett asks Loomis where they should send the valuable blood samples.

“You decide,” Loomis says, challenging Bennett to complete her character arc.

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Krebs never comes to see dinosaurs for anything except their potential profit margin. Bella, on the other hand, does warm to some de-extinct animals. Sure, the boat-sinking Mosasaurus and the Tyrannosaurus rex that nearly eats her, inflatable raft and all, have provided nightmare fuel for life. But she finds a companion animal too, in the dangerous jungles of Ile Saint-Hubert. It’s an Aquilops, a ceratopsian the size of a small cat, that wins her heart. Traumatized by the attacks, Bella hasn’t spoken a word since arriving on the island—until she announces that she’s naming the little dinosaur Dolores.

She’s not the first to choose this name. In 1931, a mechanical Brontosaurus called Dolores made its theater debut at the Roxy Theater in New York City, alongside chorus girls dressed scantily in stereotypical cavewoman attire. Depression-era Dolores was billed as “the last of the dinosaurs,” the endling of her species and of an entire era. The name was appropriately doleful, Latin and Spanish for “sorrows.”

Prior to Rebirth’s release, director Gareth Edwards visited Colossal Biosciences to see the facility and speak with its billionaire founder Ben Lamm, who describes his start-up as “Jurassic Park with a conservation focus.” (The visit was covered by Entertainment Weekly.) While dinosaur DNA has been lost to time, Lamm estimates that within a century, advances in genetic engineering will yield “dinosaur equivalents.”

“If you could bring back any dinosaur, what would you bring back?” Lamm asked the director.

Edwards selected the T. rex, though he acknowledged definitively that it would go “very wrong.”

This promotional partnership suggests a lack of regard for Rebirth’s concerns about the public’s changeable appetite and an acceptance of the capitalist logic that the Jurassic franchise has been critiquing for decades. Michael Crichton, who wrote the original novel, along with screenwriter David Koepp and others who have contributed to Jurassic plotlines, have, it seems, predicted our technocapitalist future—science fiction as anticipatory history.

If the same question had been put to Rebirth’s idealistic paleontologist, how might he have responded?

Early in the film, Loomis tells the expedition’s weapons specialist that “it’s a sin to kill a dinosaur.” Later, when he learns of the grotesque mutants left to wander the island, he wonders aloud why they weren’t euthanized. (They cost too much to die, Krebs explains.) Loomis expresses care for the animals themselves, for their quality of engineered life. He’s not motivated by the interests of those humans who hunger to be entertained by—or profit from—de-extinct animals. Perhaps Dr. Henry Loomis, if he lived in our world, would love dinosaurs enough to leave them in the past.

There is no better name for a dinosaur than Dolores, which captures the grief inherent in the fossilized fact of an animal’s extinction, even as de-extinction technologies promise to engineer proxies. To forget that dinosaurs—and all other extinct beings—are gone is to lose critical perspective on this loss. To suggest that prehistoric species have been reborn is to start down the road toward “Rest in peace already.”