Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) is almost here, but you might wish to scrub up on your Jurassic knowledge before hitting theaters.
The Jurassic series first stomped onto the big screen in 1993 with Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking sci-fi blockbuster Jurassic Park. Fast-forward over three decades, and the series has long expanded into a multi-media entertainment franchise that has grossed over $6 billion worldwide in theaters alone.
It has also found success on the smaller screen (as both video games and animated television shows), on toy shelves, in Universal Studios’ many theme park destinations, and beyond.
Now we’re on the verge of the release of the seventh film, Jurassic World Rebirth.
Directed by Gareth Edwards, who brought us the Godzilla remake in 2014 and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and starring the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Scarlett Johansson, Rebirth kick-starts “a new Jurassic era” by pitting never-before-seen characters against the franchise’s first-ever mutant dinosaurs at an abandoned InGen jungle facility.
Here’s the final trailer for the film:
If you don’t have time to binge the first six Jurassic films at home before hitting the theaters later this week (it drops on July 2), here’s a full recap of events so far.
Jurassic Park
In Jurassic Park (1993), InGen CEO John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough) invites a team of specialists to sign off on his remote Costa Rican theme park island resort one year before it’s scheduled to open to the entire world.
There, paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) discover that InGen has genetically engineered living, breathing dinosaurs using prehistoric DNA fossilized in amber.
The tour — which includes InGen lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) and Hammond’s grandchildren, Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim Murphy (Joe Mazzello) — gets underway, but when the park’s disgruntled computer programmer Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) shuts down power to the island’s electrified fences so that he can evade surveillance and escape with stolen dinosaur embryos, the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Velociraptors break out.
After a showdown with the T-Rex and the raptors in the Visitor Center, Alan, Ellie, Lex, and Tim escape the island by helicopter with Hammond and Ian.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) takes place four years after the events of the first film and finds Ian Malcolm forced to visit InGen’s second remote Costa Rican facility, Isla Sorna (Site B), to rescue his paleobiologist girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore).
Sarah has been sent to the island by John Hammond to document the dinosaurs so that the former CEO can prove the animals are flourishing and keep InGen’s newly appointed master Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), his nephew, from interfering with the island.
However, after he finds Sarah, Ian, accompanied by field expert Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) and wildlife photographer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), soon discovers that his estranged daughter, Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester), has secretly followed them to the island.
A second team also arrives on Sorna: Ludlow and several game hunters, who set out to capture dinosaurs for “Jurassic Park San Diego. But after a deadly encounter with two Tyrannosaurs, Malcolm and Ludlow’s teams join forces to try and make it off the island.
Game hunter Roland Tembo (the late Pete Postlethwaite) captures the male Tyrannosaur, which Ludlow later ships to San Diego. However, after its crash-landing at the docks, the Rex escapes and wreaks havoc on the streets. After luring the dinosaur back onto the ship with its offspring, Ian and Sarah tranquilize it, and it’s returned to Isla Sorna the next morning.
Jurassic Park III
Jurassic Park III (2001) is set four years after the events of The Lost World. After the incident in San Diego, the world is now fully aware of InGen’s dinosaur-inhabited islands.
But when young Eric Kirby (Trevor Morgan) is taken parasailing by his stepfather Ben Hildebrand (Mark Harelik) off the coast of Site B, the pair become marooned on the island, whose airspace has since been declared a “no-fly zone” by the Costa Rican government.
Eight weeks later, Eric’s parents, Paul (William H. Macy) and Amanda Kirby (Téa Leoni), posing as a wealthy couple, trick Alan Grant — who’s struggling to keep his dinosaur digs going due to a lack of funding and interest — into giving them an aerial tour of the island.
When they land to search for Eric, chaos ensues as the island’s new super predator, the Spinosaurus, relentlessly pursues the rescue team through the jungle. Alan’s student, Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola), inadvertently ups the stakes when he steals Velociraptor eggs he can later sell on the black market to help fund their struggling digs.
After a showdown with the Spinosaurus and the pursuing raptors near the coast, Ellie Sattler, whose husband Mark Degler (Taylor Nichols) works for the State Department, sends the Navy and the Marines to rescue Alan, Eric, Paul, Amanda, and Billy.
As they fly away by helicopter, a flock of Pteranodons are shown to have fled the island in search of a new nesting ground.
Related: ‘Jurassic Park’ (1993) Has a Saber-Toothed Tiger and We All Missed It!
Jurassic World
14 years later, Jurassic World (2015) finally gives us a fully functional dinosaur theme park on Isla Nublar, previously home to Jurassic Park.
Despite the park having everything from the original T-Rex to a Mosasaurus, Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong), authorized by Masrani Global Corp CEO Simon Masrani (the late Irrfan Khan), has created a genetic hybrid known as the Indominus Rex to bolster guest attendance.
But when the super-intelligent creature breaks free from captivity, history repeats itself and it’s up to park operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and animal behaviorist Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) — and his pack of trained raptors — to take down the hybrid while searching for Claire’s nephews, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins).
After the park’s guests are evacuated, Owen, Claire, Zach, and Gray encounter the Indominus on Main Street, after learning that it’s been made with military weaponization plans in mind. Claire lures the original Jurassic Park T-Rex out of its enclosure to battle the hybrid. The Rex is aided by Blue the raptor and eventually, the two dinosaurs overpower the Indominus, which is killed by the Mosasaur when it emerges from the lagoon.
The survivors escape the island and, just like Jurassic Park, Jurassic World is no more.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) is set three years after the 2015 film, and finds global opinion divided about a pending volcanic eruption on Isla Nublar, which will certainly wipe out the island’s entire dinosaur population.
Claire, who now works for the Dinosaur Protection Group (DPG), is asked by Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the co-founder of the original Jurassic Park, and his assistant, Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), to help rescue as many dinosaurs as possible before the devastating eruption.
Claire persuades Owen, now her ex-boyfriend, to join her so that he can save Blue. Along with the DPG’s paleo-veterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) and systems analyst and hacker Franklin Webb (Justice Smith), they learn that Mills’ operation is nothing more than a ruse to capture the dinosaurs and sell them on a black market at Lockwood Manor (unbeknownst to a bed-ridden Benjamin) to help fund their dino-hybrid program.
After Nublar is destroyed, the team, who have managed to save Blue, follow Mills’ mercenaries back to Lockwood Manor, where they meet a young girl named Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), Benjamin’s granddaughter. We later learn that Maisie, however, is actually a clone of Benjamin’s daughter, who died some years before.
The dinosaur auction, which sells and releases many species, is disrupted by a new hybrid named the Indoraptor, also created by Henry Wu, which escapes and stalks Claire, Owen, and Maisie throughout the mansion.
Eventually, Blue kills the Indoraptor, while the captive dinosaurs (including Blue) are freed from the Lockwood facility and into the Sierra Nevada wilderness. The film ends with a montage showing how dinosaurs are starting to thrive in numerous locations around the planet.
Jurassic World Dominion
Set four years after Fallen Kingdom, Jurassic World Dominion (2022) introduces us to a world where dinosaurs populations are emerging everywhere; in both North America and on overseas continents.
After Maisie released the dinosaurs into the wild at Lockwood Manor, she’s now in hiding with Claire and Owen in the Sierra Nevada region, near to where Blue and her new offspring Beta live. However, Maisie, a human clone, is also a person of interest where the bioengineering company Biosyn is concerned, with CEO Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) wanting her for her incredibly rare genetic value.
Maisie is kidnapped, along with Beta, by dinosaur traffickers, and taken to Biosyn Valley in Italy’s Dolomites, where several species of dinosaurs have been collected from around the world.
Owen and Claire embark on a mission to rescue Maisie and, on their way, find themselves at the heart of an illegal dinosaur trade in Malta, before they end up at Biosyn Valley. Meanwhile, Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm reunite in a bid to take down the bioengineering giant, as Dodgson has forced Henry Wu into breeding a horde of genetically engineered prehistoric locusts to help the company monopolize the global food market.
Maisie discovers that the deceased Charlotte Lockwood (Elva Trill), whom she was led to believe was her genetic source, was actually her mother, who birthed her without a father.
Both the Jurassic Park and the Jurassic World ensemble eventually cross paths and stop the locusts. Lewis Dodgson is killed by Dilophosaurs and Biosyn Valley is later designated a sanctuary for dinosaurs. Owen, Claire, and Maisie return Beta to Blue in the Sierra Nevada forest. A closing montage shows the prehistoric animals thriving all over the planet.
Jurassic World Rebirth
Jurassic World Rebirth takes place five years after Dominion. Despite the dinosaurs shown to be flourishing around the planet at the end of the previous film, the planet’s ecology no longer supports the prehistoric animals and those that remain now live in isolated equatorial regions with climates that resemble the ones in which they lived many millions of years ago.
The plot follows covert operations expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) as she’s tasked with leading a high-stakes mission to an abandoned InGen facility where they must retrieve genetic material from the world’s three most colossal dinosaurs to help cure heart disease.
But what they find are mutant dinosaurs, such as the Distortus Rex and the Mutadons, that have been left to their own devices.
Jurassic World Rebirth also stars Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton), Rupert Friend (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Mahershala Ali (The Green Book), Luna Blaise (Manifest), Audrina Miranda (Lopez vs Lopez), David Iacono (Dead Boy Detectives), Philippine Velge (Station Eleven), Bechir Sylvain (BMF), and Ed Skrein (Deadpool).
The film releases in theaters on July 2.
Are you excited for Jurassic World Rebirth? Let us know in the comments down below!
The post ‘Jurassic Park’: Full Recap of the Entire Film Series Before You Watch ‘Rebirth’ appeared first on Inside the Magic.
