Jurassic World Rebirth introduces a new cast of characters to the long-running dinosaur franchise, including a new central trio.
There's Zora Bennett, a world-weary covert operative played by Scarlett Johansson, Zora's team leader Duncan Kincaid, played by Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey's idealistic paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis. Zora is promptly established as a woman with a traumatic past and a no-nonsense attitude to the present, and Bailey thinks she's the action-packed movie's grounding force.
"I wanted her to feel like a woman who is 40 years old and is the sum of all of her parts, whatever those things are, so that she felt like a fully baked person and not just an idea of a character," Johansson tells GamesRadar+, who worked with screenwriter David Koepp to develop Zora.
"You want somebody to feel lived in and that they have their stuff that they come with, like we all do," she continues. "I don't want to call it 'baggage', but you come with your stuff, and you're confident in some ways, and you have your own perceived flaws, and you have dreams for yourself, and they're different than they were 20 years ago. And, you know, that [she] feels like somebody who has lived a life."
"I think you get that from the first scene," Bailey adds. "You ground the whole film, right? Because she's had an extraordinary life experience as well – high stakes, perilous – and you totally get it."
Rebirth sees Zora, Henry, and Duncan recruited for a top secret mission that involves making an illegal journey to the Caribbean island of Ile Saint-Hubert, one of the few places on Earth where dinosaurs are still alive and thriving.
Set five years after Jurassic World Dominion, our planet has been pretty unforgiving to prehistoric creatures and disease and climate change have nearly wiped them all out, and dinosaurs are only able to survive in isolated, tropical environments. Zora and Henry both have their reasons for taking on the mission, but they're motivated by very different factors.
"There's a lot in these films that is explosive and moves the plot along, so you don't have that much real estate for character stuff," Johansson continues. "And so when you meet each character in the film, you need the moment to be impactful. And [Henry's] moment is also very impactful, you get a lot of information in a short period of time, and then you can kind of get behind the characters, because you understand what they need."
Jurassic World Rebirth arrives in theaters on July 2. While we wait, get up to speed with the rest of this year's biggest movie release dates with our guide to the other best upcoming movies in 2025.
