For this, the seventh film in the Jurassic Park/World franchise, there has been a re-boot with totally new characters and actors, though it is still being billed as a sequel to Jurassic World Dominion, set five years after the events of that film.
With the Earth’s environment mostly inhospitable to dinosaurs, the surviving creatures now live only in remote, tropical locales. Covert operative Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), palaeontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and team leader Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) are recruited by Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) for a mission to locate the three largest remaining prehistoric species from land, sea, and air. Krebs works for a pharmaceuticals corporation who wants the biomaterials of the creatures as they hold the key to a revolutionary drug capable of saving countless human lives, generating his company massive profits in the process.
With Gareth Edwards directing from a David Koepp screenplay, my hopes were quite high despite a little franchise fatigue. Koepp wrote the original Jurassic Park (1993) and, at times, Rebirth feels like a remake of that film. Liberal use of John Williams’ original score as the people look in awe at the huge herbivore dinosaurs, brought back strong memories of being in the cinema 32 years ago.
Despite that, I would rank this pretty high in the series as the set pieces are outstanding, especially when they try to obtain the materials from the sea bound dinosaur, and when a group is hunted by a T. rex. It is beautifully shot on film by Edwards and John Mathieson, and the CGI is top of the range. Johansson and Bailey emerge with credit and Friend makes a decent villain.
The script has some weak moments, the secondary plot of a family in peril seems to be there just to get some kids into the film and it is pretty obvious who is going to get killed. But, as one action scene follows another, those flaws are easy to ignore.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10