Jurassic Park is an excellent movie. It’s got everything you want in a movie – dinosaurs, Jeff Goldblum, and the rest of it ain’t bad either. It’s a rare movie that transcends being simply ‘good’, or even ‘popular’. It’s certainly more important than just a ‘favourite’. It’s a legendary film. It convinces you its premise is true without trying. It’s a Mt Rushmore Of Movies contender, one of two by Spielberg alongside Jaws. And then they made five more.
Jurassic Park 2 (actually called Jurassic Park: The Lost World) is not a Mt Rushmore contender, but very few movies are so that’s too high a bar to hold it up against. Jurassic Park 2 is still firmly in the Pretty Good category of movie. Nothing to write home about (despite what I may be doing here), but on the whole, good. Solid. Decent. None of which are words you could use to describe the third entry, Jurassic Park 3. And yet, here I still am with the new trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth.
Jurassic Park Wouldn’t Stay Dead
After JP3, the series went away for a while, and came back 14 years later with Jurassic World. And look, I’m just going to say it. I don’t care how much this devalues my opinion in your mind in perpetuity: I like Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World. Their names are Owen and Claire, which I knew without looking up, and I think World can stand alongside Park 2 as Pretty Good. World’s two sequels, Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, are not Pretty Good. They are, in fact, Bad.
So this is a series with one all-timer, cinematically unrivalled movie, two Pretty Good ones, and three Bad ones. It’s not a great ratio. It’s easy to see why they keep making them – the series as a whole has made over $6 billion, an entire third of which comes from Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, generally agreed to be the worst. This is a golden goose, and while it’s not laying eggs so much as foul-smelling steaming effluence, that effluence is still made of gold.
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I’m not at all surprised we’re getting a new Jurassic World movie this summer. It has proven time and time again to be a reliable franchise. What does surprise me is how much I care. I would love to sneer at the silly clone storyline in the latter two World movies, at the character assassination of Claire, at the hackneyed reliance on Owen’s relationship with Blue that grew more and more thematically strained across the trilogy as it became plot convenience rather than narrative… but I’m not here to do that. I’m here because, for some reason, I really really really want to watch Jurassic Park 7.
Jurassic World: Rebirth Already Has My Money
First off, there is a lot to like about Jurassic World Rebirth from the trailer. The arrival of Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey gives us a new focus, away from Owen and Claire, but also the stars of the original trilogy who returned in Dominion for what would have been a goodbye if there wasn’t money to be made. Even as an Owen Grady defender, he became less likeable and less realistic as the World trilogy went on, and a fresh start with a classic dynamic – all-action hero and geeky scientist – makes a lot of sense.
We’re also back on an island. The major ramification of World’s ending was that dinos were no longer housed within theme park walls, leading to Fallen Kingdom’s plot of selling them to the military (not even the stupidest idea in that movie), wherein they escape and dinosaurs just live in the world now. Dominion couldn’t really explore this, and I’m glad Rebirth is going for a relatively hard reboot of ‘yeah, no, the dinos just live on this island now, they like it that way’.
The rough terrain of the jungle, dinosaurs in their natural habitat, and the occasional safety of man-made shelters – immediately gatecrashed by dinos – is what Jurassic Park is all about. We even have raptors (scary ones, not like Blue) again. I’m not entirely sold on the whole ‘we have a new scary dino based on a Rancor’ idea when that concept didn’t land for the Indominus Rex, but you know what? I still really really really want to see its ugly face before Scarlett Johansson foolishly tries to fight it then Jonathan Bailey comes up with a geekazoid potion that puts it to sleep.
Something about Jurassic Park has its claws – specifically its raised toe talons – in me. I keep going back for more, despite being hurt far more than I’ve been helped. Jurassic Park Survival is amongst my most anticipated games, even though when you mention it to most people you’re greeted by a “which one’s that… oh yeah, looks okay I guess“. Rebirth might be a fresh start for the series, but it’s same old same old for me. I’ll be there day one with my dinosaur cap on tight.
- Developer(s)
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Saber Interactive
- Publisher(s)
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Saber Interactive