Movie Review – Jurassic World: Rebirth

I’m going to preface this by saying I’m a huge fan of these dino movies. I’ll show up to the each and every one without question. This one didn’t disappoint unlike one or two of its predecessors (looking at you, Dominion).

Two decades of life in the modern world have caused the big dinosaurs to die off. The ones remaining live along the equator, and most governments don’t allow travel to that area. People have gotten bored with them and moved on with their lives.

When Martin (Rupert Friend) approaches Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and offers her a large sum of money to bring a team to an equatorial island to extract dinosaur blood, she agrees and brings her own team (Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrien, and Luna Blaise). And she does it by hilariously manipulating moneybags Martin into giving them more money. They also bring in dinosaur expert and scientist Henry (Jonathan Bailey) to extract the blood and be their dino expert whilst wearing sexy little spectacles.

Meanwhile, a father (Manuel Garcia-Ruflo) and his two daughters and the elder daughter’s boyfriend are sailing through the same area and get stranded when their boat is taken out by the very dinosaur that Martin’s team is hunting.

A rescue is made for the family by Martin and Zora’s ship only to have them all marooned on the island moments later. Still, the mission goes on as they fight to survive an island full of mutant dinosaurs created by scientists at a long abandoned laboratory.

This film, at least for me, hits all the right notes. It’s funny when it needs to be. The action is great. The characters are perfectly cast. The score is even memorable, and adds just the slightest amount of nostalgia without hitting the viewer over the head with it. And the dinosaurs are on full display which was something that was missing in the last couple of movies. This film rediscovered that magic and managed to do it in a film partly about how dinosaurs became boring to humans. Kudos to director Gareth Edwards for that.

Scarlett Johansson is truly in her element here. She holds her own in a cast full of men who never really seem to have her level of badassery. Her character also deals with a past full of loss and grief. These two dynamics really show her strength as an actress. I could watch her do this until the end of time and love every minute of it. The rest of the cast fully commits too, but it’s ScarJo and Jonathan Bailey who really shine.

I like to go into movies knowing as little as possible which is probably why I had no idea that Ed Skien was even in this. Same for Manuel Garcia-Ruflo. They were in so little of the marketing that I was pleasantly surprised when they showed up.

This one comes in second behind the first film largely because it draws from the original novel in a way that some of the other films didn’t. It manages to show humans at their best and their worst and that human actions have consequences even with the best of intentions.

4 out of 5 bloody good stars.