JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH REVIEW

“Edwards has effectively made a movie that captures the feel of Spielberg, making Rebirth the perfect new installment of a franchise I love”

Considering that I’m one of the few people I know who has liked every single Jurassic Park or World movie so far – yes, that includes Jurassic Park III and the Jurassic World movie that turned into a haunted house movie with dinosaurs – I may be more open to the latest reboot of the franchise than most. I guess I just dig the concept of dinosaurs walking around the modern-day Earth and the complications that come with that concept.

As the title suggests, Jurassic World: Rebirth, directed by Gareth Edwards –fresh off his original science fiction film, The Creator – is indeed another reboot, tbut one that takes place in the same world as all six previous movies. 32 years after the original Jurassic Park, this story begins with Scarlett Johansson’s hired gun Zora Bennett being approached by Rupert Friend’s Martin Krebs, an executive at a pharmaceutical plant who seeks to make billions by culling the DNA from three of the largest behemoth dinosaurs that can only be found around the Equator, hoping to use it to create medicine to help with heart disease. Also on board is paleontologist and museum curator Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), who is excited and frightened about seeing dinosaurs in the wild for the first time, just as interest in dinosaurs has been waning. After arriving near the Equator and pairing up with ship captain Duncan (Mahershala Ali) and his crew, their mission gets sidetracked after receiving a distress call from Manuel Garcia-Rulfo’s Reuben, who is on a cross-ocean boat trip with his two daughters and his elder daughter’s flaky boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono).

Rebirth continues the tradition of a corporation trying to get its hands on dinosaur DNA, but the world is still dealing with the mistakes of trying to genetically engineer “more exciting” dinosaurs by combining their DNA. As Rebirth goes along, we see more and more of those mutations, but first, we’re introduced or reintroduced to a bunch of other dinos, including the Mosasaurus, the colossal sea creature we first met in 2015’s Jurassic World. Eventually, the team gets beached on a nearby island sporting a science facility where some of those dino mutations have been manufactured. What could possibly go wrong?

Much of the film’s first 30 to 40 minutes is merely set-up to get Zora, Henry, and the others to the Equator where they begin seeking the dinosaurs, but there’s also a lot of character stuff in there, which some might remember was so important to the Spielberg movies becoming so beloved. Much of that comes from bringing back veteran blockbuster screenwriter David Koepp, who made the original Jurassic Park so compelling, and clearly remembers how to achieve that.

Much of Duncan’s crew are clearly meant as dino fodder, and there’s no real surprise there, but Reuben and his family grow on you, so it feels like there are real stakes. Some may get annoyed by Reuben’s younger daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda) being paired with an adorable baby dino she names Dolores, but it’s something to remind us that these movies don’t have to be so violent or gory and that enough kids enjoy dinosaurs plus their mothers might enjoy this aspect more than the scarier dinosaurs. Essentially, Rebirth offers something for any fan of the franchise and also of Spielberg’s movies, with the ocean sequence clearly meant as an homage to Jaws, while a later sequence having elements of the “Indiana Jones” movies.

The crafts are particularly on point in Rebirth, including the creature designs and visual FX used to bring the dinos and their environments to life, something that’s as fluid as the way Edwards incorporated those things in The Creator. Even the cinematography seems to owe something to Spielberg’s movies, as John Mathieson (Gladiator) goes the extra mile to recreate the look of the ‘90s Jurassic Park movies by filming on 35mm with similar lenses to the ones used back then. At first, I wasn’t really jibing with Alexander Desplat’s score, because it seemed to be very on the nose with what John Williams did, but the score grew on me, adding much of the excitement to the film’s second half.

If Jurassic World Rebirth ends up being a standalone movie that puts the franchise on the backburner for a few years, that’s perfectly fine by me, because Edwards has effectively made a movie that captures the feel of what Spielberg first did in the ‘90s, making Rebirth the perfect new installment of a franchise I love.

Rating: 8/10

Jurassic World Rebirth opens nationwide on Wednesday, July 2.