Jurassic World Rebirth – this is fine

Three years have passed since “the epic conclusion of the Jurassic era”, Jurassic World Dominion, the first in the series that I didn’t bother going to see in the cinema – mostly because Fallen Kingdom was bad and Dominion garnered dreadful reviews. I did catch it later on a borrowed DVD, and have to concur with the majority opinion that it’s the worst of the lot. In any case, we were all expecting the franchise to go on hiatus after such an “epic conclusion”, but instead yet another entry was announced in 2024 and then rushed out with astonishing speed. So, here we are again with Jurassic World Rebirth, which boasts an all-new cast, Gareth Edwards (of Monsters, Rogue One and 2014’s Godzilla) directing, and original JP screenwriter David Koepp behind the screenplay. It’s got to be worth a shot, right…?

Koepp persists with the idea that the public are bored of dinosaurs (as established in very have-your-cake-and-eat-it fashion in Jurassic World), and further establishes that they haven’t adapted very well to the modern world. They’re now handily confined to remote regions around the equator (you know, like tropical islands) that humans are forbidden to travel to (you know, like Isla Sorna from JPs 2 and 3). As such – just as in multiple previous movies – people must be heavily incentivised to travel to such places, with the obvious method being the use of large cash rewards.

Enter Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johansson, a badass mercenary with a tragic backstory and a heart of gold. She teams up with Mahershala Ali’s Duncan Kincaid, a badass mercenary with a tragic backstory and a heart of gold, a few disposables, and palaeontologist Henry Loomis, played by Jonathan Bailey. They are convinced to visit Dino Doom Island #3 by a smarmy Big Pharma corporate guy, played by Rupert Friend, who also feels the need to join in. He’s after dino DNA (well, blood samples) that could be used to synthesise a heart disease-curing drug for hand-wavey reasons, and has promised our heroes a big fat payday if they succeed.

En route to Ile Saint-Hubert (for that is the name of Island #3), they pick up the Delgado family who are, shall we say, caught up in a yachting accident involving a lizard and have sent out a mayday signal. The Delgados are then, rather reluctantly, taken along on the mercenary team’s mission. Do things go wrong quite quickly? Do they ever!

Now, you’ll remember that Isla Nublar (off the coast of Costa Rica) was the site of the original Jurassic Park, and then later, Jurassic World. (And then it exploded.) Isla Sorna was the research laboratory, Site B. So what’s the deal with this new island? Well, it was actually another research site where InGen (a wholly owned subsidiary of Masrani Global) were conducting even more unethical experiments, attempting to create gnarly hybrid dinosaurs. We see the laboratory on this island in the prologue, while it was still operational. Unfortunately, the whole thing is brought down by thoughtless littering, and we are given a glimpse of…something that lurks behind a big door marked ‘D-Rex’. This creature devours a lab worker in short order.

You might expect this setup to pay off in a big way later, and it only partially does. Everyone’s now seen what the ‘D-Rex’ (aka Distortus Rex) looks like thanks to merchandising, and its Rancor-like appearance and big ol’ beluga melon head have been widely lampooned. However, it does look much more effective on screen, particularly as Gareth Edwards has the good sense to keep it quite concealed, as well as an excellent, seemingly quite intuitive ability to sell the scale of a big creature. The main problem with the D-Rex, along with the other mutants (more on which later), is that it isn’t given that much to do beyond what a big, carnivorous dinosaur would normally do in these movies. Its ponderous, awkward movements are very well animated, and it looks reasonably frightening on screen, but it doesn’t get an awful lot of build up, screen time or personality.

One creature that really is given its due here is the good ol’ Tyrannosaurus, in a sequence that’s quite obviously the best in the whole film (and was spoiled heavily by the trailers). Continuity be damned – this beast has been made significantly chunkier and has received a number of other tweaks including repositioned forelimbs, and it looks so much better for it. More in line with modern depictions, in fact, although it’s still far from scientifically accurate, of course. (It’s not a documentary, etc. etc.) As well as looking quite handsome, the Tyrannosaurus is imbued with personality the likes of which we haven’t really seen since the first film. It’s a character again. In fact, as a character, it makes more of an impact than many of the humans.

When we first see the creature, it’s soundly sleeping. On being woken up, it doesn’t immediately lunge for the little humans like a psychopathic murder-machine. It even takes a moment to have a drink, before its curiosity is seemingly piqued by the humans attempting to make a getaway in an inflatable raft. It acts like an amused cat toying with its prey, following an instinctive love of the hunt rather than blind hunger. It’s also threatening; it’s not here to conveniently bail the heroes out of being eaten by some other carnivore. Good. GOOD.

Yes, I really liked the raft sequence. I initially thought it was a shame that it represented all of the tyrannosaur’s screen time, but on reflection, the fact that it left me wanting more can only be a good thing. Always leave ’em wanting more, and all that. The other encounters with predators are left to Mosasaurus, Spinosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, and the cursed ‘Mutadons’. All have been substantially redesigned, the Mosasaurus looking more like modern depictions (although still very oversized of course), the Spinosaurus being semi-aquatic, and Quetzalcoatlus being rather differently proportioned. The Spinosaurus does at least have a deep tail, shorter legs and webbed toes, even if it also has an ugly malformed head and a weird fat neck; the Quetzalcoatlus is better thought of as a generic azhdarchid, as its proportions differ considerably from the real thing. And it doesn’t fold its wings properly. On the other hand, it’s quite pretty to look at, and I loved its extremely twitchy, birdlike mannerisms and propensity for swallowing prey whole. Its sequence is very B-movie in the best way.

The wretched ‘Mutadons’ are the film’s other hybrid mutants. Unlike the D-Rex, they aren’t monstrously deformed. Instead, they look like wyverns. Clearly, someone really wanted to put a wyvern in this movie. They look very silly, and their function within the film could easily have been filled by the familiar raptors. In fact, the fact that there are a lot of raptors in the toy line, and exactly no wyverns, does rather suggest to me that they were a last-minute addition that supplanted the raptors. I hate the things.

Besides the predators, a herd of fictionalised titanosaurs also appear to provide the ‘ooh, ahh’ moment, and damn it if they didn’t get me with that again. You can thank Dr Loomis, who is easily the best character of all the humans. Yes, he’s an unabashed nerd, but he’s also enthusiastic and capable, and so, so very happy to see dinosaurs ‘in the wild’, as it were. I really thought Bailey’s character made an excellent stand-in for all the dinosaur geeks in the audience…most of the time.

For you see, much as he’s a winning, charming character, he also does spout some very jarring lines. Not only does he use ‘avian’ as a synonym for ‘aerial’, he flatly declares Mosasaurus and Quetzalcoatlus to be dinosaurs, and the almost absurdly huge titanosaurs to weigh “11 tonnes”. He also mentions equatorial climates being closer to those of “60 million years ago”, when as the tagline for the first film will tell you, non-avian dinosaurs were already extinct at that time. Would it have hurt to run the palaeontologist’s lines by the film’s palaentological consultant? It’s perhaps indicative of a rushed production, as are a number of lines of rather clunking, clichéd dialogue (“We found them! No, they found US!“) and some unfinished-looking CGI. That’s quite apart from the sillier aspects of the plot, as already mentioned, although that’s par for the course.

Some of the special effects are truly excellent, the Tyrannosaurus is a treat, and the stranded family are remarkably sympathetic (certainly more than the Kirbys ever were). The sequences at sea with the Mosasaurus are genuinely thrilling, and the whole thing is superbly shot and looks great. I do also appreciate that there’s no forced romance, with Johansson and Bailey’s characters striking up an entirely platonic friendship with no romantic chemistry whatsoever (in spite of what you may have read elsewhere). And a not insignificant amount of the old horror is back. Nevertheless, the film feels undercooked in places. The mercenary characters are very forgettable, and while it seems as if Friend might not be playing a stock corporate baddie at first, he quickly becomes a clone of Burke from Aliens. This film’s chief gimmick, the mutants, are also rather pointless, and it’s telling that the film’s best scenes aren’t based around them.

For my money, it isn’t the complete disaster that some reviewers have painted it as. There’s some solid entertainment here, and while it’s all rather dumb, it’s not as aggressively stupid and cartoonish as Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. It’s rather a lot like Jurassic Park 3. Not the best entry in the series, not the worst. You won’t be quoting any lines from it, but there are worse ways to pass the time – like watching Dominion or drinking random fluids found around the home (the latter is probably less painful).

That said – we don’t need any more of these. Please, please stop making them. No doubt I plead in vain, though, for remember the most pertinent, prescient quote from Jurassic Park:

“We’re going to make a fortune with this place.”

As for a star rating, let’s say 3 Hones of out of 5.