If you've lately been feeling that the "Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped to an even more ancient creature – the shark – hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there's still life in this old dino series.
"Jurassic World Rebirth” captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that have been lacking in so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. "Jurassic World Rebirth” lets in the daylight.
Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original "Jurassic Park” and director Gareth Edwards, who knows a thing or two about giant reptiles as director of 2014’s "Godzilla.” Together with director of photography John Mathieson, they've returned the franchise to its winning roots.
"Jurassic World Rebirth” has nods to the past even as it cuts a new future with new characters. It's a sort of heist movie with monsters that's set on the original decaying island research facility for the original, abandoned Jurassic Park.
Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali - both very unshowy and suggesting a sort of sibling chemistry - play security and extraction specialists - OK, mercenaries - hired to get what everyone wants from dinosaurs in these movies: DNA. In return, there's $10 million.
The movie is set five years after "Jurassic World Dominion” and some three decades after dinosaurs were reanimated. They've lost their public fascination - a subtle nod perhaps to the films in the franchise - and have struggled with the climate, gathering at the equator.
The Big Pharma company ParkerGenix has come up with a blockbuster idea: Take DNA from three colossal Cretaceous-period creatures - the flying Quetzalcoatlus, the aquatic Mosasaurus and the land-based Titanosaurus - to cure cardiac disease. Wait, how does that work? Don't ask us, something about hemoglobin.
The trick is this: The dinos have to be alive when the DNA is extracted. Why? Because then there'd be no movie, silly. It would be a 10-minute sequence of a guy in a white coat and a syringe. This way, we celebrate three kinds of dinosaurs in three separate chapters.
It may seem a little far-fetched, but may we remind you about the last movie, which involved a biogenetic granddaughter, a global pharma conspiracy, the cast members from both trilogies, a Giganotosaurus, giant locusts on fire and had the ludicrous decision to have Chris Pratt make a promise to bring home a baby dino - to its mother.
The three-part quest at the heart of "Jurassic World Rebirth” is interrupted by a family - a dad, his two daughters and a sketchy boyfriend - in a 45-foot sailboat that is capsized and need rescuing. They bring a dose of not-always-working humor and humanity to the extraction team, which also includes a too-easily-telegraphing baddie played by Rupert Friend - "I'm too smart to die” - and a museum-based paleontologist played by Jonathan Bailey.
The filmmakers include clever nods to other blockbusters - "Indiana Jones,” "Star Wars,” "Jaws” and "ET” - and thrillingly create a dinos-hunting-in-a-convenience-store sequence like a tribute to the original film's dinos-hunting-in-a-kitchen sequence. The shots overall are beautifully composed, from silhouettes on a boat in twilight to almost feeling the burn of the ropes as actors rappel down a 500-foot cliff face.
The creatures here are made glorious - from a dozing T-Rex along a river bed to the ones twisting in the sea, pure muscle and heft. A highlight is a pair of long-tailed Titanosaurus entwining their necks as John Williams' familiar score plays, two lovers with thick, knotted skin utterly oblivious to the pesky humans who want some DNA.
For some reason, candy is a touchstone throughout the movie, from the opening sequence in which a stray Snickers wrapper causes incalculable harm, to licorice fed to a baby dino and one character's fondness for crunching Altoids.
Edwards' pacing is perfect, allowing dread to build with just the rustling of trees and letting characters deepen between breathless, excellently filmed action sequences. The gorgeous landscape - Thailand's waterfalls, grassy plains, shoreline caves and mangrove swamps - should be used for a tourist campaign, well, as long as they remove the rapacious dinos.
As if all this wasn't enough, there's a bonus bit at the end. The research facility that was abandoned years ago was cross-breeding dino species and making "genetically altered freaks” that still roam around. Some look like a turkey-bat-raptor hybrid - gross and scary - and one is a 20,000-pound T-Rex with a misshapen head and a horrible roar. It's like getting a free monster movie.
In many ways, the folks behind "Jurassic World Rebirth” are trying to do the same thing as their mercenaries: Going back to the source code to recapture the magic of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster original. They've thrillingly succeeded.
"Jurassic World Rebirth,” a Universal Pictures release that opens in theaters Wednesday, is rated PG-13 for "intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language and a drug reference.” Running time: 133 minutes. Three and half stars out of four.
