By land, air, and sea, Jurassic World: Rebirth overcomes franchise fatigue with a fresh and revitalizing new adventure. Optimally, the Jurassic World movies ought to have offered some sort of reinvention on what had been a long-dormant, near-extinct series. In the best of all outcomes, they would have offered a killer pitch: Their world, not ours. Helmed by Gareth Edwards, Rebirth does exactly that.
It begins with a call to action: ParkerGenix, a powerful biopharma corporation, dispatches mercenary-for-hire Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and Navy commander Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) on a mission to extract genetic material from the three largest dinosaurs that roam the Earth, hoping to develop a breakthrough cure that could save countless lives.
Folks have tired of dinosaurs… at the movies and in the fiction of Jurassic World: Rebirth. No use for dinosaur museums when the dinosaurs are also just out there, living their best lives in tropical climates like when they ruled the earth. This leaves a bold opportunity, as the research team is able to nab Paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), who feels left behind by time, still wanting to get to the bottom of prehistoric secrets of dinosaurs, while battling the demons of his past involvement with shady genetic research.
The film launches headlong into adventure by sea which makes it feel like a true voyage. A family are out at sea, just making a crossing between territories, when their craft is capsized by the apex predator of the sea, the Mosasaurus, and they are brought into contact with the research team.
This is where Rebirth begins its reclamation of what Jurassic movies can be — we can have our prehistoric cake and eat it too — these movies can, in fact, be family adventure movies and thrilling love letters to dinosaurs made for enthusiasts. Rebirth is never less than that, as it understands massive creatures make great set pieces but also remembers that we want to be in awe of them, we want to be inspired by the largest-ever living land creature, the towering long-necked Titanosaurus, as the Alexandre Desplat score warmly embraces the iconic John Williams audiovisual accompaniment of the original films. We get to just bask in the fact that dinosaurs are cool as hell, and take in the aerial predator Quetzalcoatlus, whose wingspan is as great as a fighter jet, and can swoop down and pick off even some pretty big dinosaurs at a second’s notice. It all achieves a larger-than-life effect: exactly what you want from a Jurassic movie.
It’s a simple relief to have a good story that really moves and feels motivated by clear-cut and easy to follow objectives. That’s where David Koepp, screenwriter of Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) reunites Rebirth with its legacy, penning an actionable script that keeps it moving while also staying with its moments, complimented by a decisive edit that never cuts away from the good stuff. The edit, comprised by long-time Peter Jackson editor Jabez Olssen hangs the story together much like he has done for the Jackson films — this new picture, in fact, comes across like a tighter and better-considered update to the spirit of the journey found in 2005’s King Kong.
Rebirth, in the tightness of its construction, renews our relationship to the Jurassic films but also understands monster movies and kaiju pictures, and what it means to frame something larger than life. Gareth Edwards has that card up his sleeve too, with the invented creature colloquially known as the D-Rex (Distortus Rex), which is like a T-Rex mixed with a god damn Xenomorph. Movies still have magic left in them after all. This biological catastrophe of a mutant blends several components of apex-predator-level dinosaurs all balled up into one six-armed, bulbous-headed, force of destruction. Ain’t nobody bored of dinosaurs anymore.
There’s a confidence in Gareth Edwards’ execution that has been lacking in the other World movies. It feels, not like a return to form, but like an exceptionally solid adventure that can finally exist in isolation of the overbearing legacy of the first film. Where the rest of the franchise has felt weighted down by expectation, perhaps not even designed to create individual slices that are justified by their own design, Rebirth finally escapes the first film’s influence, by acknowledging it directly, and deciding that there’s still more to do. By creating a journey into the world of dinosaurs, rather than a reflection upon our self-inflicted hubris in bringing dinosaurs into our world, it feels like Rebirth has charted some new territory, and makes for a fantastically fun film in doing so.