Let’s Talk About the <i>Jurassic World Rebirth</i> Ending

Spoilers below.

In the universe of Jurassic World Rebirth, access to proper health care is so bad that we have to hunt dinosaurs for medicine. No, really. The premise of the latest entry in the beloved dinosaur franchise is a little ridiculous, but it’s also rooted in some truth.

When the film begins, we learn that the last living dinosaurs on Earth carry a rare material in their DNA—one that doubles as a life-saving drug capable of curing heart disease. The only thing is, the dinos are isolated in islands on the equator where humans are forbidden. So, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), the head of a pharmaceutical company called ParkerGenix, recruits mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to arrange a crew, including her longtime friend Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) for the impossible mission. They also bring along scientist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, arguably the highlight of the film!) to advise them on their secret quest. It must be done quickly and clandestinely, so they can beat other companies to the punch and capitalize on the discovery. Oh, and they can’t kill the dinosaurs, because their blood is only potent when extracted from a living beast, which makes their mission even more difficult. And of course, they’re going after the three biggest species by sea, land, and air: the Mosaurus, the Titanosaurus, and the Quetzalcoatlus respectively. It’s insanely dangerous, but Zora and her team believe it’s worth it—for the cash, naturally.

Not long after they begin their mission, Dr. Loomis starts to ask an important question: Should we really be giving this drug to a private corporation? He understands that Zora and her colleagues need the money, and that this quest will mark an unbeatable milestone for his scientific career, but is that really worth helping a company profit off sick people? Throughout the crew’s video game-like adventures, from rescuing the stranded Delgado family, whose sailing trip was interrupted by a ship-sized dinosaur, to climbing into a Quetzalcoatlus’s nest, Loomis starts to get Zora to second-guess their end goal too. Wouldn’t it be better to open-source the medicine and democratize the knowledge so that it isn’t reserved for a select few?

In the final confrontation, Loomis, Zora’s crew, and the Delgados reunite at their end point, an abandoned town center, where a rescue team is scheduled to pick them up via helicopter. But there is a mutated monstrosity on the loose, otherwise known as the Distortus Rex (or D-Rex), in the way of their exit plan. However, what the film wants to make clear is that the real threat that emerges from the bushes—as dinosaurs in this franchise often do—is Martin Krebs. He stood by when innocent teenager Teresa Delgado (Luna Blaise) fell off their boat and is now pointing a gun at the rest of the group to hand over the DNA samples. He seems eager to keep them to himself.

The group has hope for their ride, but the helicopter gets devoured by the D-Rex. There are also a couple of raptors hunting them down through buildings and underground tunnels. The best way out is a life raft waiting on the dock—but the Distortus has them cornered. Martin is eaten by the dinosaur, and Duncan lures it away into the brush so the rest of the team can make their escape. Somehow, Duncan survives too. As the survivors make their way back across the ocean, Loomis asks Zora who they’ll give the DNA samples to. “Everyone,” she replies.

It’s meant to be a quietly triumphant ending—victory over human greed, as many films have shown us before. But depending on your situation, it might come off as inspiring or insulting the moment you step out of the theater. Aside from the dinosaurs, hybrid monsters, and impossible survival statistics, the prospect of democratized medicine seems depressingly unrealistic in our current world. Just today, the House of Representatives passed a domestic policy bill that includes Medicaid cuts and benefits for drugmakers. In the non-Jurassic world, to quote Jeff Goldblum in the original films, “Life finds a way…” But, it seems, only for those who can afford it.

Of course, it’s possible that Zora’s altruistic choice is really just a wink at the potential for extending the franchise—this time with Johansson, Bailey, and Ali leading the charge. It also isn’t all smooth sailing from here; while open-sourcing life-saving DNA sounds great in theory, it’s also very possible that it ends up in the wrong hands and some bad actors exploit the dino data to create their own monsters. But if that battle comes in a future film, at least those characters won’t have to worry about heart disease.