A team of mercenaries and a shipwrecked family end up marooned on the island home of genetically spliced dinosaurs.
The best bit in Jurassic Park: Rebirth is when they play Movin’ On Up by Primal Scream. That’s not even a criticism, it’s just because it’s one of the standout songs of the ’90s. Rebirth is actually great fun, jauntily resetting the Jurassic World franchise by mining the Jurassic Parks and much else besides.
In fact take the best Jurassic Park film (that’s no3, haterz), add some Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle seasoning, a sprinkling of Jaws and a good slosh of Alien Resurrection, and what you get is director Gareth Edwards’ happy meal of a new movie.
And while the main monster (a dinosaur mutant-hybrid called Distortus Rex) might be even uglier than the previous ugliest movie mutant-hybrid (Junior in Alien Resurrection) all the franchise’s previous beats are not just there but joyously proffered up to the audience.
There is (of course) the evil science tech company rep, this time looking like the Man from Del Monte’s evil twin (Rupert Friend having a ball in his linen suit and panama hat, happily ignoring mayday calls and failing to rescue easily-rescuable children). There’s no Dr Ian Malcolm but his chaos theory is alive and well, as a flimsy, floating Snickers wrapper causes a critical security breach in a lab. A sexily earnest palaeontologist (Jonathan Bailey), finally gets to be an action hero, and minor characters are eaten with abandon (farewell BobbyAtwaterNinaLeClerc). They even throw in some messing with a dinosaur egg.
It also remorselessly sifts those earlier films for familiar scenes: the family spending a night high in the jungle, the dinosaurs stalking children round the fixtures in a room, flares as distraction, and the pant-wetting wonder of the dusty palaeontologist when he finally witnesses giant dinosaurs in their natural habitat.
It’s lovely though, the dinostalgia, and could only have been improved if that Snickers wrapper had actually been a Marathon.
Île Saint-Hubert, when we first see it in the prologue, houses a lab developing new species of spliced dinosaurs for theme parks, needed to tempt a bored and jaded public to keep visiting. It shuts down after the chocolate-eating scientist becomes a slightly healthier snack for the Distortus Rex, 17 years before the main events of the film.
Cut to now and the dinosaurs that previously roamed the world are now living on the equator, the only area on Earth suited to their existence, with humans kept at bay; not that people are interested anymore. After 30 years the world has become bored with the creatures, with palaeontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) bemoaning the dozen tickets sold for his museum when previously families would’ve queued round the block. It’s a witty conceit, to comment on the dinosaur-related ennui and short attention spans of the modern audience in a movie about the same creatures that gleefully copies from its predecessors and comes in at 135 minutes. It doesn’t feel that long though, and familiarity does not breed contempt.
That poor hen
Heading to Île Saint-Hubert are “extraction expert” Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), Martin Krebs (Friend), Loomis, Zora’s long time collaborator Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), mercenaries/boathands Nina (Philippine Velge) and LeClerc (Bechir Sylvain), plus security guy Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein, surely too well-known to suffer the ignominy of being eaten first like that).
Krebs’ pharmaceutical employers (boo hiss) are after blood samples essential for a wonder drug to combat heart disease. The samples must come from three massive dinosaur species: one from the sea, one from the air and one from land, which means getting up reasonably close to a Mosasaurus (tries to kill them), a Quetzalcoatlus (tries to kill them) and a Titanosaurus (ignores them because it’s (a) a herbivore and (b) in love (yes really).
Before they even get to Île Saint-Hubert they have to rescue a shipwrecked family: dad Reuben Delgado (Manuel García-Rulfo) daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda) plus Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier, found clinging to their upturned boat in the middle of the sea, and I certainly wasn’t expecting the thrilling dinosaur drubbing they suffer before they even reach shore. On the island the two groups are split up, with Reuben and co having a more typical family-in-peril adventure while Zora’s troupe have to collect their specimens.
A nerve-shredding sequence sees Ruben and family chased down a river in a rubber dinghy after accidentally rousing a snoozing T-Rex, and it’s more tense and more fun than the later appearance of the Distortus Rex. That D-Rex is a lumpen brute with Xenomorph elements though with none of that creature’s elegance, and is almost too monstrous, given that this time humans are encroaching on dinosaur habitat, the animals’ attacks self-defence.
There isn’t that much in the way of moralising in Rebirth, beyond the usual “dangers of capitalism versus the dangers of dinosaurs” questions. The dialogue can be clunky, ideas introduced so we know some background before moving swiftly on: that Zora’s friend died in a car bomb, that Duncan lost a child. Even when Loomis suggests they donate the samples to the world rather than Big Pharma, Zora simply goes from no to a post-escape yes, and that’s it. Admittedly she’s seen Krebs’ true nature by then but he’s hardly Mary Poppins at the start.
Did I care? Not really, as Rebirth is still a glorious summer romp. It also looks great, from the swimming Spinosaurus, their spiny fans like pretty sails in the water, to the gobsmackingly vast Mosasaurus diving and surfacing across the sparkling sea.
Johansson and Ali in particular are terrific, bringing class and grit to roles that in the wrong hands could have toppled this old fashioned blockbuster off a cliff. I also loved David Iacono as Xavier, one of those stalwart adventure movie characters who starts off a complete bellend then throughout the film goes up and down the bellend scale like a game of snakes and ladders, finally ending up a beloved hero-bellend hybrid.
Still, while Rebirth has got the franchise back on track, I’m not sure where it goes now, whether they can continue to hold the line between homage to and cannibalism of their own back catalogue. I did love tiny dinosaur Delores (coming to a Lego set near you, though they’ve made her look like a squirrel); and while Isabella taking her off the island doesn’t sound sensible I suppose she could now be gifted a spin-off animated series where she causes chaos in Bekenskot Miniature Village, like King Kong for toddlers.
Missed anything? Read my ending of… Jurassic Park: Rebirth article here.
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