Jurassic World Rebirth review – Scarlett Johansson runs show as near-extinct franchise roars back to life
Screenwriter David Koepp and director Gareth Edwards have been drafted in to take us back to basics with a new story, all but retconning the drama with a '17 years previously' flashback at the start that entirely (and thankfully) ignores the tiresome convoluted dullness of what has recently happened. Then we're in the present day, when the existence of dinosaurs in the wild is accepted but they've all pretty much died out – except in and around the lush fictional Île Saint Hubert in the Caribbean.
A creepy corporation (is there any other kind?) has discovered that dinosaur blood has the makings of a profitable medicine, so odious big pharma smoothie Martin Krebs, played by Rupert Friend, assembles a crack special forces team to take a blood sample from each of three types of dinosaur – land, sea and air. Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johansson, is the ex-military type running the show; bespectacled palaeontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) provides the scientific expertise; and Mahershala Ali brings megawatt charm to the role of Duncan Kincaid, the easy-going boat captain. They and the rest of the crew chance across a family at sea. The dad, Reuben Delgado, is played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and this group have a kind of separate, parallel adventure, providing the conventional family-bond narrative beats.
We get all the traditional moments, including some classic Jurassic slow turns: a cast member will be doing something, hear a dinosaur behind (which we can see) and then, aghast, will execute a slow swivel, after which we cut to a hilarious closeup on their suitably gobsmacked expression. We also get a classic Jurassic security guy (played by Ed Skrein), like a Star Trek redshirt, whose job is arrogantly shooting at dinosaurs and who meets an obvious comeuppance.
There is some terrific romcom chemistry between Johansson and Bailey. Johansson's Zora seems to have a tendresse for this shy intellectual – a bit like the crush her character Natasha Romanoff had on Mark Ruffalo's cerebral Dr Bruce Banner in Avengers: Age of Ultron. It's a very different performance from the one Bailey gave in Wicked, but just as in that film, he comes close to pinching this one with his adorable high-mindedness. His Dr Loomis wants to die in a shallow sea and get covered by silt, apparently, because it's better for creating fossils. And he has an interesting line about how intelligence as a factor in survival is overrated; the dumb dinosaurs were around for 165m years and smart humans so far only 300,000.
This new Jurassic adventure isn't doing anything so very different from the earlier successful models, perhaps, and I could have done without its outrageous brand synergy product placement for certain brands of chocolate bar. But it feels relaxed and sure-footed in its Spielberg pastiche, its big dino-jeopardy moments and its deployment of thrills and laughs. Maybe the series can't and shouldn't go on for ever: we need new and original ideas. This one would be great to go out on.
Jurassic World Rebirth is out on 2 July in the US and UK, and on 3 July in Australia
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