Jurassic World: Rebirth | 2025

Jurassic World: Rebirth thankfully returns to the setting of remote tropical islands after the extravagant theme parks of the last few movies. Although set in the ‘Caribbean’ once more, the filming location moves to the South Seas and Thailand, where director Gareth Edwards had previously filmed The Creator.

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Recognisable locations are in the tropics – plus a quick peek at New York – but the major sets for the film (the InGen facility, the abandoned gas station, the rock temple) were constructed at the relatively new Sky Studios Elstree, Borehamwood in Hertfordshire so there’s just a little of the UK among the locations too.

David Koepp, who was screenwriter for the first two Jurassic Park films, reins in the dino-bloat – which really had nowhere else to go – by craftily revealing that the creatures are unable to adapt to the modern climate and are now thriving only on a few islands near the equator. It's a welcome return to the roots of the franchise.

Urban dinosaurs are finally seen off in Brooklyn as NYC Animal Control & Rescue team deal with the last ailing Brontosaurus on Water Street at Old Fulton Street in the DUMBO district (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).

Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), representative of a pharmaceutical company, happens to be driving special-forces operative Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) past the sight, retailing plenty of background exposition. Yes, he’s putting together a team to visit a remote island full of dinosaurs. This time the mission is to collect blood samples from the three largest types of remaining dinosaurs – aquatic, avian and land-dwelling – from the (fictitious) ‘Ile Saint-Hubert, 226 miles east of French Guiana’.

Next to be recruited is earnest palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) sadly dismantling a sauropod exhibition in a ’New York’ museum due to waning public interest.

The ‘museum’ is an unusually modest appearance for the flamboyant, profusely decorated Painted Hall of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, southeast London.

Designed by  Baroque artist Sir James Thornhill and painted between 1707 and 1726,  the walls and ceilings are covered in images of 200 figures including kings, queens and mythological creatures. Nevertheless, in this film the paintings are downplayed in favour of utilising the Hall’s grand scale. You can see the Painted Hall in its full glory in many films including The Madness Of King George, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Quills, the 1998 film of The Avengers (the big screen version of the cult 1960s UK TV series), Michael Winner’s 1983 remake of The Wicked Lady and Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella.

You can also experience it, for an entrance fee, in real life (as of July it’s £17.50, although this can be extended to a one-year pass for no extra charge), but entrance to the extensive campus of the old naval college itself (with exhibitions and cafe) is free.

Here location spotters will recognise sites from films as diverse as The Duchess, Young Victoria, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Guy Ritchie's 2009 Sherlock Holmes, musical Les Misérables, Disney's origin story Cruella (as 'Regents Park'), Fast And Furious: Hobbs & Shaw, The Mummy Returns, The Music Lovers, The Bounty and – very briefly – in The Dark Knight Rises.

Opposite the painted hall stands the Chapel, which is where inexperienced vicar Rowan Atkinson made the “holy goat” slip-up in Four Weddings And A Funeral – and where Eggsy got married at the end of Kingsman: The Golden Circle.

Greenwich is just a short rail journey from London Bridge Station, or you can travel in more leisurely style with a Thames cruise.

The team assembles at the port in ‘Paramaribo, Suriname’, which in actuality is Thailand, and the remote fishing village of Ban Ba Kan, near to the Ao Luek District, north of Krabi on Phang Nga Bay. The ‘Van Dyke’ beachfront bar of Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), whose boat, the ‘Essex’, they’re renting, was an old structure redressed for the film – containing sly references to other Steven Spielberg movies, including an 'Amity Island' license plate.

From here they set off for ‘Ile Saint-Hubert’. The ocean scenes for both the ‘Essex’ and the boat of the Delgado family's disrupted ocean cruise, were filmed in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Malta, where more effects-heavy scenes could be filmed in the island’s famous water tanks which are built to blend in with the ocean horizon.

It’s just one of those days for the Delgados. Not only is their boat capsized by a Mosasaurus, but as soon as they’re picked up by the ‘Essex’, they find themselves shipwrecked on 'Saint-Hubert'. This is Sunset Beach, on the west coast of the island of Koh Kradan in Trang Province, about 60 miles south of Krabi. It’s a few miles offshore from Hat Chao Mai National Park. The beach is more peaceful than it looks in the film, with more jagged rocks added digitally to enhance the peril.

Having managed to get a sample of the Mosasaur blood and undeterred by losing their boat, the team presses on to get the remaining two samples.

The field of tall grass where, entranced they watch the pair of Titanosaurs, had to be grown specially (during a drought no less) in a seven-acre field in the Thab Prik district north of Krabi.

Continuing the trek, the mangrove swamp through which they make their way chest-deep are the freshwater canals of Long Root Clear Water Canal at Nong Thale, ten miles west of Krabi.

It seems there are no rapids in Thailand so when the Delgado family’s inflatable raft is being chased into dangerous waters by the T Rex, it was back to the UK to film the scene at Lee Valley White Water Centre, Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire. The concrete was dressed with fake rocks and finished off with CG surroundings.

Getting a final sample from the avian dinosaur involves rappelling down a sheer cliff face to an ancient carved temple where the Quetzalcoatlus has made a nest.

The temple and 50-feet-tall section of the cliff were a set built on the backlot of Sky Elstree Studios, but when Loomis loses his footing and falls, this is at the multi-tiered Huai To Waterfall in Khao Phanom Bencha National Park, Krabi.

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