I Watch Films: Jurassic World: Rebirth

 

Jurassic World: Rebirth

After dinosaurs spread across the modern world (see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion) it turns out that most species aren’t well adapted to the modern world and now exist in equatorial areas with exclusion zones to keep people out. Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) is a pharmaceutical executive whose ground-breaking heart medication needs samples from three big dinosaurs*, a sea, a land and an air one. He hires Zora Bennett (Scarlet Johansson) to lead a covert team to go to Île Saint-Hubert and get the samples. These include Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), a paleontologist soon to be out of work now no one likes dinosaurs** and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) who works out of Suriname and arranges for the boat and everything there, and the rest of the team.

Meanwhile Reuben Delgado, his daughters Teresa and Isabella, and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier Dobbs are sailing their yacht across the Atlantic, and have strayed into the exclusion zone. They’re capsized by a Mososaurus and send out a distress call. Krebs wants to stay on task but the team overrule him and rescue the family. They then get a sample from the Mososaurus. The ship is then attacked by Spinosauruses. Fleeing for the island, Teresa tries to radio a distress call; Krebs stops her and then stands by as she falls off the ship. The ship is wrecked and the party scattered on the island. They still want the samples, and also need to get to the abandoned genetic research station on the island to make an escape – inevitably there is a weird mutant dinosaur there.

Jurassic Park/World has withdrawn from making larger points about invasive species, greed and corner cutting, and the impossibility of keeping scientific research (and monsters) under control. Here the dinosaurs* are confined to a remote island, and we encounter them because the people have entered their domain. The corporate interests are evil, but they can hardly be distinguished from any other sinister tech company***. They want to profit from their research, which is fine, or at least what tech companies are supposed to do, but are willing to break the exclusion zone and leave people to die for it. And maybe the people who made the [SPOILERS] six armed Distortus Rex only for a discarded food wrapper to open the security for it to escape should have thought twice, but that’s a gesture. No, this Jurassic World is a dinosaur flavoured generic adventure film. Which is fine.

Watch This: Dinosaur flavoured adventure film
Don’t Watch This: Dinosaur flavoured adventure film

* Yes yes, Mososaurus and Quetzalcoatlus aren’t dinosaurs; they’re not from the Jurassic period either, what do you want from me

** AND YET: this movie

*** In films, obviously. Obviously.