Jurassic World Rebirth: everything we learned from the dinosaur movie reboot trailer

The trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth dropped today, answering the one question that’s been bugging fans: what’s the mysterious secret dinosaur surprise going to be?

In the initial Jurassic Park trilogy there were, obviously, the cloned dinosaurs. The three Jurassic World movies upped the ante with hybrid dinosaurs that were even bigger and meaner. Jurassic World Dominion (2022) went even wilder, imagining a world where dinosaurs roamed free amongst the humans (also, genetically modified locusts were involved).

Jurassic World Rebirth, the sequel to both trilogies, is set five years on from Dominion, with dinosaurs restricted to remote tropical regions. Turns out there probably wasn’t enough sunshine to support those giant lizards hanging out beyond equatorial zones, or something.

Director Gareth Edwards had been teasing fans with what he could reveal about the dinosaurs that will feature in Rebirth. “There are new things in the film that I’m really excited about,” he said in an interview with Empire magazine, while promising that the raptors and a T-Rex would obviously return. “There are certain dinosaurs it would be a crime against cinema not to include.”

There were also clues picked up by dedicated Reddit sleuths, such as mysterious listings for a toy linked to the franchise known only as the “villain dinosaur”.

The trailer that dropped today wasn’t one to save the twist for its summer release date. Surprise! It’s mutant dinosaurs! Ones that were “too dangerous for the original park” to boot, as geeky Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) tells us in a breathless voiceover.

Our villainous mutant even gets some time on screen, first as logistics expert Duncain Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) desperately waggles a flair at it, and then as it looms out from some scary red mist and eats a hapless person in a hazmat suit.

From the danger red-tinted moments, the mutant does look pretty frightening, with an uncanny hunched form and a snout that recalls those awful Skullcrawler monsters from Kong: Skull Island.

Mutant dinosaurs were also confirmed in a Vanity Fair piece quoting with Frank Marshall, who is co-producing along with Steven Spielberg. “These are the dinosaurs that didn’t work. There’s some mutations in there,” he said. “They’re all based on real dinosaur research, but they look a little different.” Not the kind of dinosaur research that suggests they all had nice pretty feathers, though, clearly.

Marshall, who has proved his monster movie chops with Monsters (2010) and Godzilla (2014), added that the baddie dinosaur’s design includes some of the Rancor reptomammal from Return of Jedi (1983) mixed with the iconic Alien (1979) Xenomoph.

Also looking a little different is Jonathan Bailey. He smouldered as brooding Jonathan in season two of Bridgerton. He sashayed as Prince Fiyero in Wicked. Now he’s rocking a geeky-chic look as Dr Loomis in a cute utility vest and wire-framed glasses combo. I predict many fancams.

From the trailer, we know Dr Loomis is recruited into a crack team of experts hired to infiltrate a dinosaur-infested island to harvest some genetic material from the eggs of the biggest reptiles, which are thought to have some miraculous health tech applications. The Carribbean island, it transpires, was the research facility for the OG Jurassic Park – and presumably some of those first clones were a little undercooked.

Along with Kincaid and Dr Loomis, there’s big pharma rep Martin Krebs and Scarlett Johansson as mission specialist Zora Bennett, although from the trailer it appears her mission specialism is mainly making wisecracking quips. This is a Marvel movie franchise tic from scriptwriters that really should have gone the way of the dinosaurs.