Reviews

Posted: July 1st, 2025 / 06:16 PM

PG-13
Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Niamh Findlay, Audrina Miranda
David Koepp, based on characters created by Michael Crichton
Gareth Edwards
Universal Pictures
July 2, 2025

is set story-wise five years after its immediate .predecessor, 2022’s .

At the end of , dinosaurs were being confined to a series of preserves. By the start of , most of the dinosaurs have died out, unable to adapt to the modern climate. Those that remain are almost entirely in colonies around the Equator.

Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a rep for InGen (the Big Pharma company behind all the dinosaur cloning in the first place) approaches high-end “security consultant” – i.e., expert mercenary – Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) with a very well-paying proposal.

It seems that certain dinosaurs have DNA that can be used to manufacture a drug that could greatly extend human life. That catch is that the samples must come from three specific species of living dinosaurs, all known to inhabit a tropical island that has been declared off-limits to everyone. This is because the island was the site of a lab being used to create crossbreeds and mutations, an experiment that ended in disaster for the humans involved.

So, Zora will have to use her skills to get Krebs and a DNA collection team onto the island, and then to get DNA from wild dinosaur donors. Given the amount of money she’s offered, Zora agrees. She enlists dinosaur expert Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), who until now has only ever seen live dinosaurs in zoos. After some negotiation, Zora also brings in some old associates, headed up by savvy boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali).

Meanwhile, oblivious to all of this, Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is on a sailboat excursion with older daughter Melissa (Luna Blaise), little daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and Melissa’s slacker boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono). No guesses as to where they wind up.

Given that the movies have always found a way to include children in what seems like some very non-children-inclusive scenarios, this last is no surprise. The screenplay by David Koepp, who wrote the scripts for the first two movies, hits most of the requisite notes. We get awe-inspiring dinosaurs, we get scary dinosaurs, we get new dinosaurs, we get lots of human jeopardy, heroism, some betrayal and a bit of cuteness.

Director Gareth Edwards, whose previous helming credits include the inventive , the acclaimed , and the 2014 , knows how to do effects that combine human actors with mechanical and CGI creatures. He handles action adeptly, makes the most of the locations in Malta and Thailand, and gets us to root for certain characters.

Notably, Bailey turns out to be the MVP of . He shines with such love and joy when Henry sees dinosaurs in the wild that he’s able to single-handedly (if briefly) resurrect some of the wonder created by the first .

Johansson, out from the shadow of the Marvel-verse, demonstrates that she has the physical prowess and confidence to be the undisputed hero here, and Ali is charismatic as the astute boat captain.

So, all of this works in ’s favor, despite the fact that we can predict almost every single beat. How much viewers respond to this will largely be determined by how much they view big-budget giant reptile movies as cinematic comfort food, versus how much they want something new.

Also, a note of meta-protest here. Part of the underlying plot of is that dinosaur crossbreeds and mutations were made because paying customers were losing interest in old-fashioned T-rexes and brontosauruses, five short years after they became part of public life

Fifty years after the release of , which itself was buoyed by already existing fascination with Great White sharks, there is still a worldwide obsession with the species. Big land mammals like elephants and lions remain major draws in the wild, in sanctuaries and in zoos.

There is a fundamental difference between living creatures and fantasy toys. In other words, this particular point seems less about what would likely happen in the world if living dinosaurs were real, and more a concern from collectible makers that everybody who wants one has a T-rex already, so they need to come up with something new, which means that so do the movies.

This kind of storytelling driven by marketing is hardly unique to (or even originated with) the films, but it’s unpleasant when it’s so front and center.

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