Jurassic World Rebirth Review

“Survival is a long shot” – Dr. Henry Loomis

Here we are, it’s blockbuster season, kicking off on July 4th with Jurassic World Rebirth. I’ve known since January that July was going to be pretty much the apex of the summer blockbusters this year with Jurassic World, Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps all crammed into the same month, (Yes, I know there are others I need to see, but these are the tentpole movies).

Of these three, Jurassic World Rebirth was curiously the one that I was looking forward to the least. After the previous trilogy, I figured that was it. The story was told. We had seen the grand reunion of old and current recurring characters; dinosaurs were now everywhere. Where could we possibly go from here? (Plus, how many damn secret islands do InGen have?) Add to that my feeling that although I had really enjoyed the last two films, they hadn’t ever recaptured the sheer sense of wonder I remembered feeling when I saw a preview screening of Jurassic Park in 1993. The thrill of seeing the T-Rex breaking out, sure. But not the awe and wonder of seeing that first Brachiosaurus rearing up on its hind legs to reach the top branches of the tree it was eating from. I had assumed that maybe the whole dinosaur thing was going stale, visually. There wasn’t much new that we hadn’t seen. But having said that – there’s just no way I wasn’t going to book first screening on opening day tickets. Some things just have to be done, right?

Plus – although I had avoided anything spoilery like the plague, I had seen the posters and the trailers feature heavily on Pterodactyls. Or something that at least look to my untrained eye a lot like Pterodactyls. Yeah, we’re in confession territory. I might need to stand up and say “I’m Robin and I love Pterodactyls” to a fellow group of contrite dinosaur addicts. They are, in fact my second favourite dinosaurs. (Oh, dear Lord – I’m confessing to having a list.) Ever since I saw King Kong battle one on top of the mountain on Skull Island (the 1933 original, of course). The top of all time, and always, is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Hail to the king, baby!) What? Yes, the Triceratops is the third, Stegosaurus fourth, Raptor fifth (now leave me alone).

For me, the Pterodactyl sequence is what saved Jurassic Park 3, though to be fair to director Joe Johnston, the film was severely messed around with by the studio prior to release.

But, we’re here to discuss Jurassic Park Rebirth (and pterodactyls, whenever I can) so with a nagging scepticism about the validity of the story and braced for a long two and a quarter hours of increasing irritability due to a disappointing movie, I took my seat. I guess that proved I suffer a fear of missing out (FOMO to the millennials among us, not that I expect there are many who’d read a site written by a boomer, but who knows?)

Jurassic World Rebirth caught me by surprise from the flashback opening sequence, set 17 years ago on an island (yep, yet ANOTHER island) where scientists were working on splicing and dicing dino DNA to create bigger, better dinosaurs with more teeth to lure audiences to their new attraction, which we saw go belly up in Jurassic World. This features not only a glimpse of their biggest and worst creation, the baddest of the bad, the D-Rex, but also shows the dangers of littering and the catastrophic damage and loss of life an errant Snickers wrapper can cause. (I wonder if the makers of Snickers knew this when they went for a product placement deal?)

Anyhow, I was sold. Despite my earlier misgivings. These misgivings would be further addressed immediately after this sequence as we move to the present day, which in this case is 2027, as they’ve set the last trilogy two years in the future, as I recall. Now, here’s the trick that really brought me in to the concept, body and soul. Remember when I said that the Jurassic Park/World movies had lost their sense of wonder? Well, this is what’s happened in the movie timeline. People have lost their interest in dinosaurs, now that they’re everywhere. People are jaded and bored of these majestic creatures and this is brought home in a scene where a Brachiosaur is loose in New York, causing a buildup of traffic with people getting impatient to get it out of their way. As we know, dinosaurs are everywhere – or they were. The climate of most of the planet is unsuitable for most of them, and they’ve died out. This Brachiosaur is at the end of its life, wandering around, raising the ire of the slightly inconvenienced public.

The only place where the dinosaurs are really thriving is around the equatorial region, and this is now deemed a strictly forbidden zone. That’s a setup that satisfied me. I can live with that. It works for me.

Of course, we need conflict and drama to make a good movie, and someone, somewhere needs to ignore the no-go zone. In this case, a major pharmaceutical company (boo, hiss) hire a team of mercenaries to accompany a scientist they’re sending to that region to gather three blood samples that they can use to create a drug to cure heart disease (for those who can afford it). The particular island they’re headed for is of course going to be the long-abandoned R&D island, and they rescue a family en-route whose boat was capsized during an encounter with the whale-like mosasaurus. Luckily, the Mosasaurus is one of the species they need a blood sample from. Others are the huge land roaming Titanosaurus and the airborne Quetzalcoatlus (those pterodactyl-like things I mentioned.)

Leading the mercenaries is Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johanssen. Despite my love for the Marvel movies (most of them anyway) I’ve always thought she gives off a dour vibe. It may be the role she’s played, but it was the same in Lucy (again, not exactly a light comedic role) but she never struck me as playing particularly likeable characters. Her role as Zora is the first time I’ve seen Johanssen seemingly having fun on a film, and it’s refreshing. My opinion – this is the best I’ve seen her on screen. Her chemistry with scientist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) is just the perfect counterbalance for the dire situation the characters find themselves in.

But I’m guessing that most of the audience aren’t sitting in cinemas all over the world to see the humans. And this is where there might be a bone or two of contention. The mutant dinosaurs like the D-Rex are bound to raise the ire of those who are way more paleontologically informed than I am. (Hey, I never claimed to be anything more than a monster fan, okay?) I’m sure there are a lot of discrepancies among these fantasy creatures than I’m aware of, but I liked their design. The D-Rex looks like someone spliced Godzilla with the Xenomorph from Alien. Oh, and D-Rex? Although it’s not actually fully named in the movie, it’s Distortus Rex. But as well as the genetic freaks, we have plenty of old favourites on screen as well.

I mean, what’s a Jurassic Park/World movie without a T-Rex? My favourite moments in these movies have involved them, from the escape in Jurassic Park to the trailer sequence in The Lost World (not to mention one being loose in suburban San Diego) to “open paddock 9” in Jurassic World. Rebirth brings us another priceless Rex moment, lifted from Michael Crichton’s original novel involving a napping T-Rex, and a raft – in a sequence that Steven Spielberg has wanted included since the first movie, but never made the cut for one reason or another. The imprint of Spielberg is seen throughout this film, and is always welcome. The directorial chair is taken by Monsters and Godzilla director Gareth Edwards, but we all know that Spielberg is always hands-on.

In conclusion, for the blockbuster I was looking forward to the least, this one packed an almighty punch and I recommend that you don’t walk, but RUN to your nearest screening and enjoy a huge action movie that never lets up for a second.

My rating is heartily deserved – it exceeded my expectations.

Rob Rating = 10

Next up will be Superman.