Jurassic World Rebirth, directed by Gareth Edwards, is in cinemas now.
After the rampaging stupidity of 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion, for which I can only hope Sam Neill was paid embarrassment money in his return as paleontologist Alan Grant, my hopes weren’t high for this fast-arriving seventh instalment.
Fortunately, it’s a fresh start on the cast front. No more of Chris Pratt’s dull dino-whisperer or Bryce Dallas Howard’s tiresomely kooky gal from Jurassic World amusement park middle management turned pro-ancient species activist.
And a new start on the directing front, too. Brit Gareth Edwards was a DIY special-effects whiz, whose low-budget debut Monsters was a good Jurassic audition piece. He then did wonders with two ancient franchises – Godzilla in 2014 and the Star Wars spinoff Rogue One two years later. Rebirth isn’t quite the refreshing surprise that Rogue One was, but it’s got a similar vibe of affection for the original series and Edwards clearly likes his big beasties, possibly more than the people running away from them.
Given that much of the action on Rebirth is waterborne, this also feels like a tribute to Spielberg’s Jaws, his first monster film from 50 years ago. There’s a fair dollop of Aliens DNA in this, too, given the looks of a few mutant dinosaurs and the presence of Rupert Friend as a fiendish big pharma guy funding a mercenary mission to extract blood samples from the biggest of them. The originals lived so long, the theory goes, maybe they have the genetic answer to human heart disease.
But no, you don’t come to a seventh Jurassic film for a bad science lesson. You come to crane your neck in awe at the big vegetarian ones and watch our plucky heroes outsmart the carnivores. Rebirth offers plenty of both.
The raiding party is led by Scarlett Johansson’s Lara Croft-like mercenary and Jonathan Bailey’s idealist paleontologist. He’s only there because of waning public interest in ubiquitous dinosaurs means he’s out of a museum job. Steering the ship is Mahershala Ali, an old comrade of Johansson’s character whose very big boat gets us, eventually, after some Jaws moments at sea, to Île Saint-Hubert, a lush equatorial island chocka with dinosaurs.
Also along for the ride are a yachting family whose trans-Atlantic voyage in a clearly inadequate boat has ended up on the island, where instead they get to go whitewater rafting while being chased by something T. Rex-adjacent.
It’s got less digital overload to its visuals than its recent predecessors, though its story, by David Koepp, who wrote the first two Jurassic films, can feel like a videogame – collect those samples and proceed to the next level and repeat. But there’s plenty here that’s stupidly exciting and has nice echoes of when Neill’s paleontologist stared in genuine wonder at what Spielberg had brought to life.
Rating out of five: ★★★
