When you think of the original Jurassic Park, it’s the heart-stopping set pieces that come to mind. The T. rex escaping the paddock mid-thunderstorm
When you think of the original Jurassic Park, it’s the heart-stopping set pieces that come to mind. The T. rex escaping the paddock mid-thunderstorm. The raptors in the kitchen. The dilophosaurus’ acidic spray. But before the running and the screaming, there’s plenty of, “oooh, ahhh” – the film is shot through with Steven Spielberg’s signature sense of awe. While the recent Jurassic World trilogy upped the action ante – giving us the fall of a functioning Jurassic theme park, an erupting volcano, and a raptors-vs-motorbike chase in Malta – the next era of Jurassic is here to make you feel those tingles again. Make way for Jurassic World Rebirth.
The film, from Rogue One and The Creator director Gareth Edwards, is “a love letter” to the ’93 original, says star Jonathan Bailey. “It really does feel that it’s welcoming people to really celebrate the original film,” he tells Empire in our world-exclusive Rebirth issue. “It has that wonder and awe, while not being scared to re-inject the thrill and the fear.” Bailey plays paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis, sent on a perilous quest to a dinosaur-infested island to collect DNA samples from some of the most perilous creatures time forgot – alongside Mahershala Ali’s Duncan Kincaid, and Scarlett Johannson’s covert ops expert Zora Bennett. “It hearkens back to the first one,” Johansson agrees. “It has a lot of good jump-scares, and the stakes are high.”
Recapturing that wonder partly meant flying out to Thailand to shoot in the middle of the jungle, just as Spielberg filmed in Hawaii decades ago. (“There were really dangerous water snakes swimming past us,” says Bailey. “So the fear and adrenaline was as real as it could be.”) The result marks a subtle shift in direction from the previous World trilogy. “We wanted to recapture the idea that we are in the dinosaurs’ environment,” says returning screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park and The Lost World. “The last few movies were exploring the idea of, ‘Hey, what would it be like if they were in our environment?’ They did that very well, and now we wanted to explore how it felt to go back to theirs.” Prepare to gasp at dinosaurs all over again. Just, not loudly enough to attract their attention, eh?
Read Empire’s full Jurassic World Rebirth cover story – going on set with director Gareth Edwards and stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali and Rupert Friend – in the Summer 2025 issue, on sale Thursday 8 May. Pre-order a copy online here. Jurassic World Rebirth hits UK cinemas on 2 July.
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