Jurassic World Rebirth (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Sep 08, 2025
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

Gareth Edwards

Release Date(s)

2025 (September 9, 2025)

Studio(s)

Amblin Entertainment (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)

• Film/Program Grade: B
• Video Grade: A
• Audio Grade: A
• Extras Grade: B+

Review

Jurassic World Rebirth is a deliberate attempt to return to the roots of the Jurassic Park franchise, which is interesting considering the fact that none of the films have ever really strayed too far from it in the first place—at least in terms of narrative structure, if not necessarily conceptually. It’s a curious situation where the sequels have drifted far afield from what made the first film work, all while still being stuck in the narrative rut that Michael Crichton established back in 1990. To be more precise, the franchise has taken some odd and unwelcome digressions while still keeping one foot firmly planted on Isla Nublar. Oh, the exact islands have changed, but a tropical island by any other name still smells like Isla Nublar.

The ending of Crichton’s novel had teased that life was going to find a way and that the dinosaurs would get off the island, but even his own sequel The Lost World jumped straight back to a second island. Steven Spielberg’s film version did offer a tacked-on finale with a T-rex rampaging through the streets of San Diego, but that door was closed as quickly as it had opened. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom began on an island but ended up in a secluded Northern California estate, yet practically speaking, it still felt like another jungle setting. Only Jurassic World Dominion fully embraced the idea of dinosaurs repopulating the Earth, but unfortunately, it also embraced a morass of subplots that kept distracting from why audiences came to see the film in the first place: the dinosaurs.

That’s an issue that has plagued the Jurassic World films as a whole: they’ve become as much about cloning as they have about dinosaurs. For Crichton, cloning was always a means to an end, not an end unto itself. It was just a way to bring prehistoric monsters back to life in semi-plausible fashion. (Of course, even the dinosaurs themselves were just the means to an end for Crichton since his real interest was in the theme of man’s inability to control complex systems, but that’s a whole different discussion.) For all of the pseudoscientific trappings, tacked-on absent father motifs, and stories about flea circuses in Spielberg’s 1993 adaptation, Jurassic Park was pure giant monster movie at heart. No more, no less, and that’s why it worked as well as it did. It was a direct spiritual heir to the original King Kong, perhaps a bit padded out in comparison, but still never losing sight of why fans love giant monster movies in the first place.

With the exception of Joe Johnston’s wildly underappreciated Jurassic Park III, the rest of the sequels have all tended to lose sight of what should be the heart and soul of a giant monster movie: memorable set pieces featuring the aforementioned giant monsters. Once the king of all monsters first appears in the perfectly paced King Kong, the rest of the film is one unforgettable set piece after another with minimal breathing room in between (a lesson that Johnston took to heart while even Spielberg tended to forget it). The expanded global locations and overreliance on irrelevant subplots in Dominion had moved too far away from that principle, so the dilemma for the franchise was how to right the ship without losing continuity with the previous films.

The solution was threefold. The first step was to rehire original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp. If you’re going to return to first principles, that’s not a bad way to start. The second step was to hire Gareth Edwards, a filmmaker with an uncanny ability to make giant monsters look monstrous. From his debut feature Monsters to the first Legendary Godzilla film, Edwards has used his keen eye for visuals to provide a sense of awe that’s missing from most modern giant monster movies. The final step was to return everything to a single island setting. Yes, that means yet another Isla Nublar variant, but in this case, it helped strip away the inessential elements to focus on characters who are fighting for survival against primitive but far more powerful species, using little more than their wits to save themselves.

The McGuffin that Koepp invented this time around was that dinosaur blood contains factors that could be used to develop a cure for heart disease. The catch is that in order to make it work, pharmaceutical giant ParkerGenix needs samples from three of the largest species in existence, one seagoing, one terrestrial, and one airborne. (Precisely why is something that Koepp never bothers explaining.) So, ParkerGenix executive Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) hires mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Johnathan Bailey) in order to secure some samples from live specimens. Together with Bennett’s own team (Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Bechir Sylvain, and Philippine Velge), the group travels to the forbidden territory of Ile Saint-Hubert. Along the way, they end up rescuing a hapless family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda) whose sailboat was overturned by a rampaging Mosasaurus. When they finally reach the island, everything naturally goes horribly wrong and they all end up in a fight for survival (didn’t see that one coming, did you?)

It’s not an attempt to re-invent the wheel, but at least it straightens some of the spokes that have been bent in the previous Jurassic World films. In fact, the whole film kind of feels like a giant middle finger to Colin Trevorrow. Rebirth dispenses with the global biological revolution in Dominion with a couple of quick title cards, and there’s also a visual joke that mocks the overreliance on Velociraptors in all of the World films. While the cloning angle is still present, it mostly stays in the background, so this really does feel like a hard reset for the franchise. Koepp couldn’t resist adding in a few too many ponderous dialogue sequences in order to attract marquee actors like Johansson and Ali, so Rebirth isn’t as efficient and streamlined as Jurassic Park III was. Fortunately, Edwards ensured that it’s always worth the wait for the next dinosaur set piece to arrive.

The reality is that for all of the earnest emoting that occurs in Rebirth, the characters and the narrative details in Koepp’s script are little more than a framework on which to hang these set pieces, and Edwards delivered in that regard. He wanted the dinosaurs to feel genuinely menacing again, and for the most part he succeeded. The Jaws-inspired Mosasaurus sequences are a highlight, but all of the dinosaur scenes have something to offer. Edwards has an uncanny knack for finding the perfect camera angles to make his monsters look massive and imposing, and that’s something that has been missing from the franchise ever since it largely abandoned the Stan Winston animatronics in favor of fully digital visual effects. The dinosaurs in Rebirth are still digital, but they all have a sense of weight and mass that’s been missing for far too long.

Jurassic World Rebirth is also peppered with an abundance of amusing references and callbacks to the previous films in the series, and even an indirect reference to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain in the way that a single stray piece of litter leads to disaster. Most of all, it’s an open love letter to Steven Spielberg. There are myriad references to Jaws in the Mosasaurus sequence alone, from knot tying to a homage to the “my charter/my vessel” scene. Even Indiana Jones gets some love, from an ancient temple to the fact that one character is actually an honest-to-God Dr. Henry. None of it feels like ham-fisted fan service, but rather just cute throwaways that you either catch or you don’t.

That’s true of Jurassic World Rebirth in general: you either catch its vibe or you don’t. If you’re looking for a cogent critique of the human condition, then you better look elsewhere. (If you’re obsessed with depth of characterization in a giant monster movie, you’ve already lost the plot.) But if you’ve ever felt that warm thrill in the pit of your stomach as King Kong wreaks havoc from one end of Skull Island to the other (and beyond), then Jurassic World Rebirth will deliver enough of the giant monster goods in order to keep you satisfied. Just don’t have any illusions about the kind of film that it is, and you’ll be fine.

Cinematographer John Mathieson shot Jurassic World Rebirth on 35mm film primarily using Panavision Millennium XL2 cameras with anamorphic Panavision E-series and C-series prime lenses. (An Arriflex 235 camera was used for some shots, and Mathieson also utilized Angénieux Optimo and spherical Elite zoom lenses as necessary.) Post-production was completed as a full 4K Digital Intermediate, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. With the exception of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, all of the other installments in the series have also been shot on film, so it’s a tradition at this point. Yet it was a major change of pace for Gareth Edwards, who had previously worked with digital cameras only. Still, he does love the look of film (as evidenced by the custom LUTs that he used on The Creator to give it a Seventies-era filmic appearance), so he ended up embracing the old-school technology this time.

Fortunately, Universal’s 4K master for Jurassic World Rebirth embraces the look of film as well. The grain is very fine, but that’s because Mathieson used Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 stock for all of the exterior day scenes, which is as fine-grained as it comes. Even the Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 that he used for interiors and night scenes never lets the grain get too prominent. As a result, the image is razor sharp and crystal-clear at all times, with perfectly resolved fine details. Edwards has always been an expert at blending digital visual effects with real-world environmental details, and under his guiding hand, the VFX in Rebirth integrates with the live action in convincing fashion, without many obvious tip-offs to the seams between the two. The High Dynamic Range grades (both Dolby Vision and HDR10 are included) are relatively restrained, so they don’t do anything to detract from the filmic look. Yet the contrast is still strong, and the blacks are generally quite deep, although a few of the night shots do display shallower contrast and elevated blacks (those may have been shots where he pushed the negative). Overall, it’s a damned near reference-quality presentation.

Primary audio is offered in a spectacular English Dolby Atmos mix that doesn’t suffer from the crushed dynamics or neutered bass that has plagued so many other home video mixes during the streaming era. The bass is thunderous whenever the dinosaurs stomp into the scene, and the dynamic range goes from whisper quiet to deafening whenever appropriate. It’s fully immersive as well, utilizing all channels including the ceiling speakers in order to place listeners in the middle of the beautiful but dangerous environments—helicopters, angry birds, and even angrier dinosaurs all fly overhead with abandon. The otherwise fine score from Alexandre Desplat is sometimes a bit buried in the mix, but that’s as much a feature as a bug in this case. It’s usually a background element that’s intentionally overwhelmed by the foreground dinosaur carnage, so just like the film itself, the audio for Rebirth knows where its bread is buttered. Additional audio options include Spanish and French 7.1 Dolby Digital. Subtitle options include English SDH, Spanish, and French.

The Universal Studios 4K Ultra HD release of Jurassic Park Rebirth is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. There’s also a slipcover and a Digital code on a paper insert tucked inside. (There’s a Limited Edition Steelbook option available, as well.) For some reason, the Blu-ray has both a “Blu-ray Disc” logo on it and a “4K Ultra HD” as well, which I assumed was a misprint (or sloppy QC), but interestingly enough, I can’t get it to play in my standard Blu-ray drive regardless of which player that I use (PowerDVD, Leawo, etc.) But it plays fine on my UHD player, although it’s definitely a 1080p disc. On the other hand, Dennis Seuling is reporting that the standalone Blu-ray version that he has suffers from bad distortion with both the dialogue and the music. Yet the audio was fine on my Blu-ray copy; it just wouldn’t play on a standard Blu-ray player. We’ll update this if we uncover more, but for now, caveat emptor for any Blu-ray users who may be buying this version to future-proof themselves.

In any event, the following extras are included on both discs, all of them in HD:

• Audio Commentary with Gareth Edwards, James Clyne, and Jack Ravenscroft
• Audio Commentary with Gareth Edwards, Jabez Olssen, and David Vickery
• Alternate Opening (1:39)
• Deleted Scenes:
  • Raptors (1:21)
  • Mutadon Attack (2:53)
• Jurassic World Rebirth: Hatching a New Era:
  • The World Evolves (6:57)
  • Off the Deep End (9:56)
  • Trekking Through Thailand (9:03)
  • Rex in the Rapids (8:14)
  • Don’t Look Down (10:15)
  • Mini-Mart Mayhem (11:53)
• Gag Reel (1:52)
• Meet Dolores (3:57)
• Munched: Becoming Dino Food (5:34)
• A Day at Skywalker Sound (10:24)
• Hunting for Easter Eggs (6:25)

There are two separate commentaries for this release. The first features Edwards, production designer James Clyne, and first assistant director Jack Ravenscroft, while the second teams Edwards with editor Jabez Olssen and visual effects supervisor David Vickery instead. (Ravenscroft hadn’t even seen the finished film yet, so he reacts as much as he comments.) While there’s some unavoidable overlap between the two, they more or less break down like you would expect. The first one focuses on the practical deals about the shoot, including many of the obstacles that they faced like growing the tall grass in Thailand for the Titanosaurus scene. The second one focuses more on the visual effects and editorial process, especially how many scenes in the film were reshaped during post-production (for example, the single shot that dispenses with the raptors didn’t originally include them at all). For all of the obvious visual effects work in the film, even the closeups of the monkeys during the opening scene were fully digital.

The Alternate Opening shows a rough cut with animatics for a very different reveal of what the monkeys were observing in the jungle, while the Deleted Scenes are technically scene extensions rather than full deleted scenes. Raptors offers yet another setup for an attack by the raptors that turns into something else entirely, which would have been redundant with how the previous scene with them plays out. The Mutadon Attack adds extra beats with the monsters to the existing scene. The interesting part is that these were both eliminated early enough in the editorial process that they only have rough animation overlaying the live action, and the original on set dinosaur performers can still be glimpsed in a few shots.

Jurassic World Rebirth: Hatching a New Era is a six-part making-of documentary featuring interviews with Gareth Edwards, David Koepp, producers Frank Marshall & Patrick Crowley, SFX supervisor Neil Corbould, CG supervisor Miguel Perez Senent, visual effects supervisor David Vickery, sound designer Tim Nielsen, and many more. It also includes interviews with the entire principal cast from Scarlett Johansson to Audrina Miranda. After a fairly shallow introduction where everyone marvels about being part of a Jurassic Park film, Hatching a New Era digs deeper into the meat of the production, with chapters devoted to shooting in Thailand and each of the major set pieces in the film: the Mosasaurus chase, the T-rex riverboat ride, the confrontation with Quetzalcoatlus, and the finale with the Mutadons and the D-rex. The behind-the-scenes footage provides good examples of how the practical elements and set pieces were integrated into the final digital composites—and Edwards is never afraid of highlighting the use of digital effects, so even Jonas Ussing would give this documentary his stamp of approval.

There are also two featurettes that are hosted by Audrina Miranda. Meet Delores displays the animatronic Delores puppets that were used on set as reference for the actors and the animators, although once again, Edwards is open about the fact that they were replaced in post by visual effects. A Day at Skywalker Sound features Miranda taking a tour of Skywalker Sound and meeting Tim Nielsen, re-recording mixer Peter Horner, and foley artists Heikke Kossi & Shelley Roden. Nielson records Miranda making bird squawks and then shows her the process of turning that into a usable sound effect element—and it was actually used in the final film too.

The rest of the extras include a typically unfunny Gag Reel and two miscellaneous featurettes. Munched: Becoming Dino Food includes interviews with—well, we’ll leave that for you to discover on your own, because it’s interviews with all of the actors whose characters are killed off in the film. Hunting for Easter Eggs explores some of the subtler references and hidden Easter eggs in the film, with James Clyne, costumer designer Sammy Differ, and set decorator Nikki Bradley pointing out the minutiae.

Whatever else that you may think about Jurassic World Rebirth, Universal’s UHD release offers near reference-quality audio and video accompanied by a surprisingly satisfying set of extras. But if you’ve dismissed Rebirth as just another uninspired sequel without even giving it a chance first, this is a mighty fine way to experience the most enjoyable film in the franchise since Jurassic Park III. (There, I said it, and I’m not taking it back, either.)

-Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).