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The original Jurassic Park is more than 30 years old now, which means that there are multiple generations of people who have grown up in a world where dinosaurs show up on the big screen every few years. The first film gave us the wonder and joy of seeing these almost mythical creatures that have been dead for millions of years, while Jurassic World Rebirth focuses on exactly how terrifying trying to live alongside them would be and reveals how jaded audiences have become over the years.

Nature vs. Man is a theme that is at the heart of the Jurassic World franchise. The first movie goes to great lengths to paint dinosaurs not as monsters but as forces of nature that mankind is not meant to understand or control. It never paints the dinosaurs as bad or good – they are simply animals, doing what animals do best; surviving. They are no more evil or malicious than a storm. They can be beautiful and wonderful to behold, such as when the characters view the brachiosaurs for the first time. They gaze not in terror but in joy.

Fast forward to 2025 and Jurassic World Rebirth has a very different presentation of dinosaurs. The opening sequence, which is a prologue set 17 years before the rest of the film, shows a laboratory full of mutant dinosaurs. Hybrids and monstrosities that should not exist but for the meddling hand of science. The D-Rex, as we see it in the first few minutes of the movie, is presented very much as a monster. It is shrouded in fog and shadow, obscured until its eventual reappearance toward the end of the film, where we see it in its full grotesque glory. It is not impassive or uncaring - there is maliciousness in it as a monstrosity that should not exist.

There is no wonder here. No marveling at their beauty. Only fear.

There is a scene later in the movie where we once again have sauropods being gazed at in wonder, but it is right in the middle of the film after multiple people have been eaten by dinosaurs and everyone is very much afraid of them. We, the audience, don’t really get to share the joy the characters feel because we know more people will have to die before the end of the film. It doesn't hit the same way the scene they are referencing does because the tone of everything around it is completely changed.

I understand why the studio decided to go in this different direction; people in Jurassic World have grown sadly bored of dinosaurs. They’ve become so commonplace that a traffic jam in New York City is caused by an ailing brontosaurus and everyone has stopped going to see dinosaur exhibits in museums because they can go see them out in the wild. In that world, they’ve stopped feeling wonder at the sight of dinosaurs, so it wouldn’t make sense for the characters to go in with wide-eyed disbelief at what they are seeing.

Personally, I miss the wonder. I miss the balance of joy and horror that the original Jurassic Park gave us. I miss the days when dinosaurs were like a storm – beautiful to behold but also potentially deadly. Jurassic World Rebirth is a more cynical movie for a more cynical world. There is still an attempt to highlight how powerless mankind is in the face of nature, though it is mainly confined to a single soliloquy delivered by Johnathan Bailey’s character partway through the film. There is even an element of how capitalism is ultimately an uncaring and destructive force, but it is similarly ham-fisted. 

Instead, Jurassic World Rebirth goes all in on how frightening dinosaurs can be, transforming them into literal monsters for the big screen. Just like the animals in the film, the series has adapted and evolved to survive in a changing box office landscape. I just wish it didn’t feel so cynical along the way.

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