Steven Spielberg launched two mighty behemoths upon cinemas, first with Jaws (1975), which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, then with Jurassic Park (1993). Both movies are crowd-pleasing creature features that present mighty beasts, happy to gobble up whatever humans are unlucky enough to fall in their path. Both have spawned sequels that might have made money, but can’t compare to the glory of the original. Because even though both movies were based on novels (by Peter Benchley and Michael Crichton, respectively), they felt original on the big screen. Jaws and Jurassic Park offered visions of adventure and thrills unlike anything audiences had seen before. The thrill was so rattling, so reverberating that we chase it decades later with imitators in the form of countless shark horror movies, and sequels that imagine a world 32 years after Jurassic Park went wild.
Maybe it’s impossible for any of the films that come in the wake of these unquestionable classics to best or even match these originals. Maybe our collective love of them is too deep, or perhaps they really just are untouchable in their greatness. Lucky for Universal, which owns both properties, it doesn’t really matter. The last three Jurassic Park movies (relaunched as Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World: Dominion) all made over a billion dollars apiece worldwide, despite being increasingly loathed by critics. So, time for rebirth.
Jurassic World Rebirth is the best of the new batch of movies. But admittedly, that’s a low bar to clear.
Jurassic World Rebirth abandons Colin Trevorrow’s most tedious plotlines.
Credit: Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
Trevorrow, who directed Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Dominion and had a hand in scripting all of those last three, is thankfully not writing or directing Rebirth. Instead, David Koepp, who adapted Jurassic Park back in 1993 — and has been on a great run with genre movies like Presence and Black Bag — scripted the latest dino-packed sequel. At the helm is Gareth Edwards, the critically heralded director of Monsters and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Together, they aim to find fresh life in this franchise. Step one: Ditching Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, whose odd couple of uptight businesswoman and rugged raptor wrangler never caught on quite like Sam Neill’s cranky paleontologist and Laura Dern’s dynamic paleobotanist. (Not to mention Jeff Goldblum’s confoundingly hot mathematician as proto-fuckboy.) Not even bringing these three OG cast members back for Dominion could help the creatively fumbled franchise overcome the convoluted plotlines about bio-engineering that looped into a cloned little girl. But thankfully, you can forget all of that for Jurassic World Rebirth.
All new characters mean no need for intense recaps. Instead, the setup is simple. The human population has grown tired of dinosaurs, who have slowly died off around the globe, unable to cope with our current climate and air conditions. (Relatable!) However, near the equator, they continue to thrive in zones that have been deemed forbidden for man to traverse. Well, unless you’re a mercenary named Zora (Scarlett Johansson) who’s been hired by sketchy pharmaceutical exec Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to obtain live dinosaur blood for a medical advancement worth trillions. In that case, you hire a nerdy-while-hot paleontologist named Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and a crew of devil-may-care supporting characters — including a charming but haunted captain, called Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) — to trek to this no-man’s-land, armed with a specially designed rifle to grab those dino blood samples.
Meanwhile, the Delgado family, who’s yachting from Cape Town to Barbados, crosses paths with a massive sea-living dinosaur, and ends up getting rescued by Zora and her friends.
Jurassic World: Rebirth falls into the pitfall of too many humans, too much plot.
Credit: Jasin Boland / Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
That’s plenty of plot to tackle. Between Zora’s crew and the Delgado family, there are 11 humans going to this remote tropical region. That’s plenty to show off the violence of dinosaurs through several early death scenes. However, it’s too many to allow the audience to become invested in, well, most of them. Some characters barely get a name before they’re dino food. Others are instantly unlikable, and so are as easily and quickly marked for death as that lawyer who died with no dignity on a toilet in the first film. And all that makes for some frustratingly predictable beats.
To Edwards’ credit, the reveal of the dinosaurs in their natural habitat is deliciously exciting. Well-camouflaged despite their massive size, they aren’t immediately noticed by the humans who are well aware they’re on dinosaur turf. Giving the audience the chance to catch sight of these beasts before the characters do is a terrific way to spark tension. However, the genuine shock when the characters freeze seeing a dinosaur — in a place where they know they will be! — gets a bit silly, especially as this is a world we’re told where mankind has become blasé about the return of dinosaurs.
Further vexing is a plotline that sets up plenty of intriguing details, like humans messing with dino DNA to creator showier breeds. Yet the results of these breeds are pretty underwhelming. Instead of looking like a monster even more terrifying than a T. rex, the big dino baddie here looks like a clumsy cross between a T. rex, a xenomorph, and those chickens on TikTok that sport rubber human arms for laughs. Add to this human threads about grief, regret, redemption, and a father absolutely loathing his teen daughter’s lazy boyfriend, and you have a movie overstuffed with just…stuff. Still, there are enough great moments to make Jurassic World Rebirth a solid popcorn movie.
Dolores the baby dinosaur is innocent.
Credit: Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
While this film is star-studded, boasting talent from the MCU, Hunger Games, and Bridgerton, the scene-stealer here is a juvenile Aquilops who is named Dolores by licorice-loving Isabella (Audrina Miranda), the youngest in the Delgado family. While the rest of her family is trying to survive the Jurassic predators that pop up from tall grasses and deep rivers, Isabella has befriended a cute, cuddly dinosaur who can sense danger. Cynically, one could rightly view Dolores as a clear bid for enticing merchandise. But Koepp and Edwards manage to make her more than an animal accessory a Disney princess doll would come with.
Dolores, with her curiosity, her cuteness, and her interest in humans, reflects a potential future that is less cruel than the one Krebs and Zora experience in New York City at the film’s start. There, a dying brontosaurus is not viewed with sympathy or sadness but as an annoying traffic disruption. Isabella’s excitement about Dolores is shared by the movie audience, who all these years later still dream of getting up close to a real dinosaur. And more importantly, her enthusiasm reflects that of Loomis, who is in absolute awe as he comes across a field of gentle giants eating grass, wandering, and even beginning a hypnotic mating ritual. Where Zora is an opportunist, seeking financial security through a risky and unscrupulous gig, Henry is an idealist who imagines he can collect the blood without hurting the dinosaurs he loves. Plus, he envisions the attendant scientific discoveries as something that could benefit the whole world, not just Krebs’ profit margins.
In these character moments, you can most feel Koepp’s touch. But they are bogged down by bits that feel like studio notes: the family and their squabbles, mutant dinos and the lumbering exposition that explains them, a jolting death toll, but without killing off a character that might upset the audience too much. At least the cruelty of Trevorrow, who infamously punished a so-called “bridezilla” in Jurassic World with a wildly violent death, is gone.
Overall, the sequel is fun. It gives audiences the least of what they’re asking for, which is action, excitement involving dinosaurs and movie stars at the heart of it. For Johansson’s part, it is nice to see her playing a character who has way more fun than Black Widow. Ali is likewise a treasure, bringing charm and pathos without overburdening the film with it. But Bailey is the most fun. With his “slutty little glasses” that have already driven the internet mad, he is walking in the path of Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant in an enticingly nontoxic way. He is certainly more optimistic than the iconic paleontologist. And within that refreshingly seductive, whether he’s dropjawed over a long-necked dinosaur, repelling down a treacherous cliffside, or awkwardly flirting with a mercenary who could snap his neck as easily as she can tie her hair back.
The in-peril Delgados give families going to the movies a clear conduit for their own excitement. Think Honey, I Shrunk the Kids! — but with raptors and pterodactyls. And while their story is rickety, it does offer laughs, thrills, occasional tenderness, and of course, our beloved Dolores, who is perfect.
In the end, Jurassic World Rebirth is a rocky ride. Some bits are absolutely exhilarating, while others feel like a chore. But unlike the humans in this franchise, the humans of our world just cannot tire of these incredible beasts, happy to shell out ticket money to get as close as we might to their enormous majesty. And this film, including its hilariously calamitous opening with its requisite kill, will deliver, feeding both all our yearning for excitement and our need for escapism.
It’s not better than the original, but it’s the closest we’ve come.
