Jurassic Park is such a strange franchise.
The original 1993 film, Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” is a proper modern classic. Like Spielberg’s own “Jaws” before it, that first film blends nail-biting horror with triumphant action-adventure to create something unabashedly entertaining on every front. To see a Spielberg film like this on the big screen is to see the theatrical viewing experience firing on every conceivable cylinder, delivering an unforgettable thrill ride imbued with memorable characters and genuinely thought-provoking themes. So it’s no real surprise that there has been so much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth when it comes to crafting a worthwhile follow-up to “Jurassic Park.”
Even for the great Spielberg himself, it proved difficult, with 1997’s “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” left flailing. In the decades since then, there have been numerous other attempts, all with varying returns. In 2015, Colin Trevorrow’s “Jurassic World” proved to be a gargantuan hit with audiences and coasted to audience praise by virtue of being one of the first large-scale legacy sequels audiences actually saw (it’s alright “Tron: Legacy,” I still love you). But time has been unkind to Trevorrow’s film, revealing the sheer hollowness beneath its glossy surface-level sheen, and downright malicious towards its sequels, “Fallen Kingdom” and “Dominion,” which were bad upon release and are somehow worse now.
It is into this world full of lackluster “Jurassic” sequels made for financial gain rather than any real creative drive that “Jurassic World Rebirth” enters. Releasing only three years after “Dominion,” I had little reason to believe any lessons would be learned here. But I stand before you delightfully humbled, safari hat in hand, as I confess to you that not only is “Jurassic World Rebirth” easily the best film in the franchise since the original, but that it’s also a pretty darn good little dino-thriller in its own right.
VIDEO REVIEW
TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH”
5. David Koepp’s Strong Script
When you hear that David Koepp is returning to write another Jurassic film, it elicits mixed emotions. On the one hand, he and Michael Crichton worked together to pen the original film’s script, an articulate and well-oiled machine of genre screenwriting if ever there was one. On the other hand, he also already returned to the franchise and single-handedly wrote the malnourished and misshapen script for The Lost World. However, considering that Koepp is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment (this is his third film this year, with prior entries Presence and Black Bag both being exemplary works from the scribe), I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Not only does Koepp’s script here earn that benefit, but it soars well beyond it. The actual plot of Jurassic World Rebirth is irrelevant, mainly dangling a carrot in front of the beast that is the story’s real drive to get it moving. But where Koepp’s work really succeeds is in crafting the film’s numerous multi-tiered set pieces and in carving out time to establish the characters of this film as authentic pieces of the puzzle, with identifiable wants, needs, goals, motivations, and beliefs. It’s the first time since the original film that any of these Jurassic films have actually set aside time to let the characters grow and develop outside of the necessities of the plot, and it shows.
4. An Endearing Cast of Characters
Another reason why the character element of this film works so well is not just Koepp’s writing, but also the performers themselves. Getting some of the biggest names in Hollywood at the moment, from Scarlett Johansson to Jonathan Bailey to Academy Award-winner Mahershala Ali, felt to me like a marketing tactic more than anything else in the lead-up to the film’s release. However, once again, I couldn’t be happier to be proven wrong. Each of these primetime performers brings their A-game in some truly unexpected ways, and goes above and beyond the call of duty.
Much like the original film, some of the film’s most compelling moments simply feature characters having conversations. Each of them is given multi-faceted complexities by the script, and is turned into a cohesive and compelling character by the performances. They grow, they evolve, they change, they come into conflict with one another, but especially with these three central ones, their beats feel authentically earned and emotionally engaging.
3. Alexandre Desplat’s Phenomenal Score
If you can’t tell, one of the reasons I found myself succumbing to Jurassic World Rebirth’s charms much more so than prior entries was because I found it to feel far more emotionally authentic. These Jurassic films all ultimately follow a very similar template, and that can feel extremely stagnant and grating if you don’t care about the characters or the story at hand. This film leans into that in the best of ways, and one of its greatest tools in doing so is Alexandre Desplat’s musical score.
The composer has many remarkable accomplishments to his name from across decades of work, but some of my personal favorites are his scores for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Shape of Water. He is an emotive composer who capitalizes on big, cathartic character beats with incisive and insightful musical cues, and he brings all of that so palpably to his work on Jurassic World Rebirth. In addition to this, he’s also actively in conversation with the great John Williams’ work from the original film and beyond, channeling the high-opera pathos of E.T.’s final moments at one point to remarkable effect.
2. Gareth Edwards’ Massive Visuals
Gareth Edwards is an incredibly gifted filmmaker who understands the technical aspects of making large-scale, effects-filled extravaganzas like few other modern filmmakers. In addition to this, he has a real knack for selling visual scale in his blocking, staging, and compositions, making him an ideal fit for any film centering around large beasts of any kind. In the past, he’s directed films like Godzilla, Rogue One, and The Creator, all visually impressive works whose scripts occasionally let them down. With Rebirth, however, Edwards has found a near-perfect showcase for his talents, as Koepp’s script is not only incredibly strong, but full of setpieces that feel as if they were handcrafted to cater to Edwards’ strong suits.
On top of this, Edwards and cinematographer John Mathieson have crafted a visually sumptuous work. Shooting on Kodak film stock was an excellent choice, as the color and saturation of the exotic locales pop to such an extent that it evokes the old-school thrills of Cooper and Schoedsack’s travelogue adventures, ala The Most Dangerous Game or King Kong. Additionally, Edwards also brings a real understanding of crafting mounting suspense within a single frame to the proceedings, with several of the film’s most high-stakes moments playing out in sustained shots in which audiences can see action, reaction, practical, and digital all intermingling to create cohesive and palpably horrifying beats to aplomb.
1. An Ideal Blend of Awe and Terror
The two elements that really defined the original Jurassic Park lay in how the film embraced both the awe and horror that comes with seeing real, living dinosaurs. Ever since 1993, the franchise has struggled drastically with ever getting this balance right again, though. Jeff Goldblum’s character even mocked the go-to structure of the films all the way back in 1997, where things start out with ‘oohs and ahs’ before turning into screaming. Despite this early identification of such an issue, every subsequent film continued to follow this exact same rubric in one way or another. Until Jurassic World Rebirth, that is.
This film hits the ground running, delivering a stellar Jaws (and Jaws 2!) indebted setpiece well before there’s much sense of awe at all to the dinosaurs. The world established in the opening moments of the film is an admirably fleshed-out, very Michael Crichton-esque post-dinosaurs science-fiction world, where most of the characters are very much fed up with dinos. However, by focusing on character and spotlighting performance, the film circles back around to delivering some of the most genuinely affecting moments of awe in the entire franchise. When Jonathan Bailey’s character, a paleontologist himself, gets to experience being around dinosaurs in a non-hostile environment for the first time midway through the film, the scene is played with such earnest sincerity (and Desplat’s musical score builds up to a reprise of Williams’ most iconic Jurassic work so exquisitely) that you feel the awe of the moment.
In addition to this, Rebirth is also a lean, mean horror-thriller. Again, the ingenuity of making this feel so much more impactful often lies in Edwards’ frankly wonderful choice to focus on character reactions. It’s the old Spielberg ‘reaction shot’ method, applied brilliantly. Whether it be pushing in on the youngest member of the ensemble cast and allowing the audience to experience the towering terror of these gargantuan creatures subjectively through a child’s eyes during some of its best setpieces, or simply allowing the camera to sit looking at Jonathan Bailey’s face when he thinks he’s about to fall to his death, there’s an emotional heft present in these moments that accentuates them all the more.
RGM GRADE
(B)
Jurassic World Rebirth is so much better than the seventh Jurassic Park film has any right to be. Easily the most formally accomplished, emotionally engaging, and flat-out exciting film in the franchise since the original, David Koepp and Gareth Edwards deserve praise for resuscitating what was an all-but-entirely deceased franchise, creatively. If Universal is dead-set on making these films for the foreseeable future, I’d much prefer them to give talented filmmakers a run at just making these kinds of standalone dinosaur-fueled thrillers than attempt the kinds of bloated, waterlogged films that we’ve been getting. Jurassic World Rebirth is, for the first time in thirty years, a step in the right direction.
