Jurassic World Rebirth
Director: Gareth Edwards
Writers: David Koepp
Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, and Rupert Friend
Running Time: 133 minutes
Please note there may be spoilers below
Drenched in ho-hum reviews and a tepid marketing campaign, it’s worth knowing Jurassic World Rebirth is a distinctly old-fashioned slice of 90s action-adventure pie, the kind of re-watchable cinema that could exist comfortably on a video store shelf next to Anaconda (1997) and Congo (1996), wholly willing to be ‘uncool’ in its dated aspirations and unwilling to engage in anything linked to meta-textual irony. It’s paced and written in such terms as to exist out of place in a meme-saturated, pop-referential landscape, but eschewing such modernity for a more puritanical adventure concept is a choice brave enough to remind us warmly of the origins of this series and its nostalgic pleasures.
After the soulless and thunderously dumb Jurassic World trilogy, there’s understandable fatigue sinking into those of us most enamored by shallow dinosaur carnage. Watching the charisma vacuum of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard suck the life out of a franchise full of wayward choices and genitally modified monsters felt like the inevitable end of a series that has, thus far, managed to remain a box office darling, even under the stress of rapidly declining quality control. Steven Spielberg, still a doting godfather to the series, convinced David Koepp, the writer of the original Jurassic Park to return. Koepp has always been a vital part of the original formula, himself fluent in the foundations of what makes shallow popcorn entertainment more soulful than it should be. Part of his gift is his experience with Michael Crichton’s info-dumping strengths and his many weaknesses; the other part is Koepp’s ability to make his thinly built archetypes genuinely likeable – and if you can make the leads of an action-adventure movie likeable, you’ve already lapped the last decade of Jurassic World history.
“Edwards seems so aware of his choices that they remain sincere and joyous, even if they only serve us the comfort of spirited formula”
Here Koepp is keen to remind us why the original is so special – his interests lie in taking humans back into the mysterious tropics as opposed to bringing dinosaurs into our cities. Like the original Jurassic Park, he once again splits the story into two halves – one involving a team of ragtag mercenaries hired by a morally questionable pharmaceutical executive (the pharmaceutical industry morally questionable – NO you say!). Their mission: to capture the DNA of some very specific (and large) dinosaurs to advance medical science. The other half involves a holiday-gone-wrong sailing trip of an unlucky and prickly family. Since the original Jurassic Park is a masterclass of exposition – Koepp’s skill set helps keep the delicate balance between Crichton's hyper-serious science-speak and lighthearted camaraderie. Scarlett Johansson is a standout as the special ops muscle, Zora, a woman both content in her choices and serious in her actions. She relaxes so effortlessly into the lead, blending a light emotional touch and strong brawn to a movie that gives her plenty of jumping and yelling opportunities to impress.
Nicely fleshed out with the abundantly cool Mahershala Ali and the fizzy Jonathan Bailey, director Gareth Edwards may have been disadvantaged by less than ample prep time before production, but he solved this by casting a group of actors who radiate charisma even under the strain of rushed coverage. For the scant characterisation available, they’re still an instinctively charming trio to anchor the chaos, each performer dynamic enough to play the hits whilst keeping the procedural requirements irony free. In a cheeky moment of foreshadowing, palaeontologist Loomis (Bailey) introduces us to the featured dinosaurs in a museum – the camera pans-up to each towering fossilised skeleton one by one, beneficial for us to anticipate their eventual living and breathing introductions. An early on-water set piece is a delightful love-letter to Jaws, so much of the boat vs dinosaur action reminiscent of Spielbergian propulsion: a singing score, pinging harpoons, and our dashing heroine hanging from a gangway as an enormous fish swims under the waterline. The armoured boat, along with its passengers, are laced with enough action-movie characterisations to swash-buckle us into the feeling of a theme park ride – inherent with excitement but never with cynicism. We’re unapologetically presented a thriller with innocence, jargon, and Errol Flynn-esque peppiness.
Since this is a thinly veiled retread of the first movie’s structure, our heroes shipwreck to another island once owned by that nefarious corporation InGen, its rusted labs once used for breeding genetically modified dinosaurs. Back again in the tropics, cinematographer John Mathieson pays a well earned homage to Dean Cundey’s highly saturated photography. Back are the intense greens, the vibrant sunshine, and the piercing red smoke flares lighting up the nighttime frame. As a visual feast, the dinosaurs have never looked better, an appropriate high point being a T-Rex river attack, a slow-burn spectacle straight from Crichton's first book, where running and gunning is exchanged for the still and patient mouth of a T-Rex awaiting for its water-bound prey to make it down the rapids.
For Gareth Edwards, this may be more an artistic step backwards and a commercial step forwards. He reduces his instinct for grand scale that underpinned his impressive Godzilla (2014) and embraces a more inclusive taste, yet a few creative flourishes remain – an amusing scene where dinosaur carnage is reduced to out-of-focus cacophony whilst a character urinates in the foreground; another involves the seemingly safe approach of a helicopter through smoke. It’s enough to remind us he’s a visualist of the highest order.
If the journey to the climax is a colourful, matinee delight of the Irwin Allen variety, the ending is too sludgy and unfocused in its darkly lit rush to scramble to an ending, even managing to find an inexplicable and unearned reason for a doomed character’s survival. It’s a denouement that fails to elevate the danger to rapturous levels, instead maintaining only a simmer until a loose circumstance saves the day. Jurassic Park movies have always enjoyed their deus ex machinas too much, failing often to give their heroes command at the moment when they most need it. Then again, that’s the point – humans always thinking they have control of the zoos they create. By the final boat trip, Alexandre Desplat tastefully reprises John William’s score, and we watch a vehicle soar over calm waters towards sunset in a moment that underlines how fluent Edwards is in the language of Spielberg. This isn’t a J.J. Abrams photocopy where the result is cheap intimation. Edwards seems so aware of his choices that they remain sincere, even if they only serve us the comfort of spirited formula.