After months of anticipation, the trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth — the blockbuster I'm looking forward to most in 2025 — is finally here. We meet our characters, learn their mission and encounter one or two or a hundred dinosaurs.
But the dinosaurs can shuffle back into whatever hole they came from because they're not the star of the show in the trailer; no, despite only appearing for about three shots and as many seconds, there's a mysterious new beastie which has captivated my imagination.
This creature, which you can see in one of its two shots above (the others are even less clear) was first described in a Vanity Fair first look before the trailer came out. It wasn't named but director Gareth Edwards described how it was inspired by famous creatures like the Rancor from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, the Xenomorph in the Alien franchise and the original look of the T-Rex in the first Jurassic Park.
- See the mutant in the trailer at 1:35, 1:41 and 1:52
To me, it also looks a little like the Future Predator from another dino franchise: Primeval, a mid-noughties show from the UK's ITV which was about mysterious time protals opening up in the modern day. In that show, the Future Predator is a super-hunter descended from bats which pops up to wreak havoc now and then. Fittingly, it sounds like the Rebirth creature is also a mutant created from real creatures.
Our scant depictions of Jurassic World Rebirth's mystery mutant show it in limited lighting, so we don't get a good glimpse at it, but that sets it up to be a perfect villain: all good monster movies only show us limited looks at their baddies in order to set up fear, and I hope I see no better glimpse at the creature until Wednesday, July 2 when the movie comes out.
Director Edwards has a great track record with monster movies, which gives me faith that this creature will be handled well. He famously directed 2014's well-received Godzilla (as well as the Rogue One movie and The Creator in 2023) but his real monster credentials come from a movie called... well, Monsters. This was his directorial debut in 2010 and he also wrote and shot it.
Monsters is set in a future world in which Mexico has been largely taken over by aliens; we follow Scoot McNairy's Andrew who has to escort Samantha (Whitney Able) through occupied Mexico and back to the US. The tentacled creatures of the film are eerie because of their unknown intentions and the way that they're often shown sparingly, similarly to the mutant Rebirth creature in the picture above.
I don't mean to write this article as an affront to the various dinosaurs shown throughout the trailer. We see a highlights reel of picks from the entire Jurassic Park franchise including the original's Dilophosaurus, JP3's Spinosaurus, JW's Mosasaurus (well, a smaller one at least) and the stalwart classic T-Rex. All looks fun.
But the plot of the movie seems to be a standard "group of people in an adventure on a dangerous island, as they get picked off one by one" fare, like King Kong, Kong: Skull Island or Annihilation (not on an island, but it takes place by the coast so I'm counting it). So the appearance of this strange mutant creature is my scant hint that Edwards will be shaking up that established formula, and adding some real scares to the mix.
Jurassic World Rebirth comes out in cinemas on Wednesday, July 2, and you can be sure I'll be seeing it on release day. And if you like the sound of Monsters, it's free on Plex, AMC Theatres On Demand and The Roku Channel in the US (and paid on Peacock) and Prime Video, Mubi, Disney Plus and ITVX in the UK.
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