Movie Scene: Headed for extinction!

Announced shortly after the release of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion,’ ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ is the seventh instalment in the dinosaur franchise, produced by Steven Spielberg and bringing back writer of the original film and its sequel David Koepp. It’s fair to say that much like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody was expecting it.

So, its five years on from the events of ‘Dominion’ and dinosaurs are beginning to die out once more due to climate, lack of food and other factors. Special Ops merc Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johannson) is hired by slimy big pharma man Krebs (Rupert Friend) to go to the only place on Earth where dinosaurs still exist to get samples of three blood types (one from a sea dweller, a land dweller and an flying dinosaur) so that his company can make a new medicine which would benefit mankind.

Agreeing, Zora recruits bestie Duncan (Mahershala Ali), Bobby (Ed Skrein) and has palaeontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and they head off to an Ecuadorian island in search of the dinosaurs and, as you’d expect, get into some bother.

Remember when we were all excited for a ‘Jurassic Park’ film? It’s safe to say that wasn’t today or yesterday and I think that after seven films, its time to call for extinction of the franchise. Director Gareth Edwards knows his way around a creature feature and sci-fi (, Monsters, The Creator, Rogue One) so we should be on safe ground, right?

Harking back to the terror felt in ‘Jurassic Park,’ the pre-credits preamble has the same hallmarks and indicates the promise of a terror-filled 134-minute thrill ride. Sadly though, that doesn’t materialise.

There’s also an added wrinkle involving a father Rueben (Manuel Garcia-Ruffo), his two daughters and a boyfriend who get dragged along for the ride after an attack on their sailboat, thus providing the ‘family drama’ aspect. After a cast-culling sea attack, everyone reaches the island and splits up, creating two different plot strands.

To be fair to Edwards, he directs competently and does a decent job on the set pieces which are entertaining while not reaching edge-of-your-seat exciting – nor do we ever get the idea that the main cast are in peril of actually getting eaten.

Koepp’s script remembers everything which was magical about the first film and ‘plays the hits’ with many a subtle nod to Spielberg’s classic in terms of scenes and even costume choices.

He does inject a nice line in humour but a budding romance between Zora and Henry feels underplayed and forced. Johannson and Ali’s star wattage charisma, coupled with Bailey’s noble dino-doc, do a lot of the heavy-lifting and, as a piece of entertainment ‘Rebirth’ is fine when you’re watching it but is too much by-the-numbers in execution.

Having made over $140m in its opening weekend, undoubtedly the franchise will flourish but, to borrow from Ian Malcolm, the studio execs were so preoccupied on whether they could, they didn’t stop and think whether they should.