Jurassic World Rebirth director thinks the fact that people "aren't that interested in dinosaurs anymore" in the new sequel is "honest" and a "good reflection of where we are with cinema"

Set five years after the last movie, new sequel Jurassic World Rebirth has a very different landscape to 2022's Jurassic World Dominion.

Gone are the days when dinosaurs freely roamed the Earth alongside humans – now, thanks to climate change, disease, and increasing disinterest from the public, the parks are closed, the surviving dinosaurs are struggling to thrive, and prehistoric creatures are an endangered species.

"There's been many dinosaur films in terms of Jurassics, and the audience, you've got to do something new and fresh to give them a reason to come see the movie," director Gareth Edwards tells GamesRadar+.

"And so by acknowledging that at the beginning and saying, 'Look, audiences aren't that interested in dinosaurs anymore,' I thought it was like, 'Okay, well, this is an honest beginning. Let's see where we go from here.'"

In Rebirth, dinosaurs are only able to thrive in remote environments and tropical climates close to the equator, including on Ile Saint-Hubert in the Caribbean, which was the home of an original Jurassic Park testing site but is now uninhabited – by humans, at least.

It's now illegal to visit the island in case it disturbs the dinos, but that doesn't stop a big pharma rep enlisting the movie's main trio – covert operative Zora (Scarlett Johansson), her old friend and teammate Duncan (Mahershala Ali), and paleontologist Henry (Jonathan Bailey) – to carry out a top secret, and incredibly dangerous, mission there.

Jurassic World Rebirth arrives in theaters on July 2. In the meantime, check out our guide to the rest of this year's biggest upcoming movies.