Dinosaurs have been gone from the earth for 65 million years but it seems dinosaurs won’t be leaving our movie screens for any significant length of time. The Jurassic Park franchise has given us six movies already and a seventh is already underway. While what we know about Jurassic World: Rebirth is fairly limited at the moment, beyond some teases from director Gareth Edwards, the screenwriter is teasing some things that should have fans of the first movie very excited.
The original Jurassic Park was a groundbreaking movie for its use of CGI effects to create realistic-looking dinosaurs. Every movie since has largely been trying to recapture the magic of the first film, and screenwriter of Rebirth, David Koepp says he was specifically given instructions by producer Steven Spielberg to try and recapture the tone of the original franchise in the new film. He told The Discourse Podcast…
I hope people like the movie because series tend to change after three, and it felt like, ‘Okay, so let’s change our tone.’ Steven [Spielberg] and I were interested in a tone maybe more akin to the very first movie. I saw it early on as a mission movie. I like things that are driven by bottles, by containment.
The new film, while it will follow chronologically from the events of the previous trilogy, will be an entirely new story with new characters. It doesn’t appear previous actors from the Jurassic World or Jurassic Park movies will appear. A story needs a fresh start.
We know that the plot of Jurassic World: Rebirth will see Scarlett Johansson lead a team to an island in order to obtain material from dinosaurs that may be usable in human medicine. One can see how the tone of the new movie may closely match the original since the story of both sees humans stuck on an island with dangerous dinosaurs.
Certainly, many ways in which the new Jurassic World is like the original Jurassic Park are likely to be a good thing. While all the movies in the newest trilogy were box office behemoths, it’s difficult to argue that any of the sequels have been as good as Steven Spielberg’s original.
All of the Jurassic Park movies have been, at the very least, fun, even if they haven’t all become classic cinema. It’s difficult to imagine how a new film could truly match the groundbreaking original. The first Jurassic Park’s CGI holds up today, in ways that more modern CGI often does not, which unfortunately means that no follow-up can really outdo it in that regard. The best it can accomplish is to be just as good.
If there’s one way the new movie may be able to match, or even exceed the original it’s in the fact that the Jurassic World: Rebirth cast is stacked. From Scarlett Johansson to Mahershala Ali to Jonathan Bailey, whose stock is going up as we speak thanks to Wicked, the new movie won’t be lacking talent. If it can also make us feel like we’re watching the original Jurassic Park for the first time, we could have something special on the way.