The ‘Rebirth’ in this Jurassic World sequel’s title is apt because this seventh entry is a renaissance of sorts for a franchise that looked ready to curl up and turn to fossil.
In 2022’s woeful Jurassic World Dominion the planet was shrugging at its proliferation of dinosaurs – and it was easy for cinema-going audiences to do the same. How depressing to watch the awe Steven Spielberg summoned back in 1993 vanish in a globe-spanning story where most of the globe was done with dinos. How, the inner eight-year-old in us wanted to scream, could anyone be bored of dinosaurs? In a dinosaur movie?
Some of that dino-fatigue plays into the laborious opening stretches here. Big beasts shamble though the Big Apple and New Yorkers just beep their horns and grumble about the tails in their tailbacks. Happily, director Gareth Edwards (The Creator, Godzilla) OG screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park) soon pivot back to where the humans-messing-with-nature premise works best: on a tropical island overrun with hungry prehistoric beasties.
That long-winded prelude does fill in the odd handy blank: to survive, the dinosaurs have mostly retreated to the jungles and seas near the equator, no-go areas for humans. There, a small group of adventurers must venture on the dime of Rupert Friend’s slimy exec. His pharma company is on the hunt for a potential cure for heart disease that’s carried in the blood of three dino species. Scarlett Johansson and Ali Mahershala’s guns for hire will provide security; Jonathan Bailey’s palaeontologist will point out the correct creatures to aim the dart gun at.
It delivers everything you’d expect and not much that you wouldn’t
Throwing a terrified family and some munchable supporting characters into the mix, Jurassic World Rebirth gets on with delivering everything you’d expect and not much that you wouldn’t. Credit to Edwards, who gives us a kind of mega-budget version of his arresting debut sci-fi Monsters, substituting lush Thailand locations for the movie’s Central American island and delivering one or two of the best sequences since Jurassic Park. One T-rex attack along a set of rapids is a masterclass in action design.
He’s blessed with a winning cast too. Johansson, Ali and Bailey are a charismatic trio to build the movie around, and Friend gives excellent slimeball.
And the dinosaurs? Rebirth knows it needs to make its scaly stars frightening and surprising again and manages it in Spielbergian style. It even brings a few new species, like airborne carnivore the Quetzalcoatlus, off the subs bench. Yes, there’s still newbies left.
In cinemas Wed Jul 2.