• Director: Gareth Edwards
• Screenplay: David Koepp
• Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein
• Cinematography: John Mathieson
• Score: Alexandre Desplat
• Genre: Science fiction thriller
• Runtime: 133 minutes

A mere three years after the critical mauling of ‘Jurassic World Dominion‘, we have another entry in the ‘Jurassic’ series: ‘Rebirth‘. As the name suggests, it’s a soft reboot with new characters yet maintaining the spirit of the OG ‘Jurassic Park‘ (1993). For a little while, the original was once the highest grossing film of all time so of course the studio would milk the hell out of the IP but can we let a franchise heal its wounds for a moment before launching more movies?

That said, ‘Rebirth‘ keeps it simple in terms of plot and the number of characters. Following on from the events of ‘Dominion‘, planet Earth is now inhospitable to dinosaurs. The poor creatures can only thrive near the equator where the climate is closest to their old habitat from eons ago. A greedy pharmaceutical rep (Rupert Friend) recruits skilled covert operative Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to obtain blood samples from three living dinosaurs so he can develop a cure for heart disease. Rounding off the group are paleontologist (dinosaur nerd) Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and team leader Kincaid (Mahershala Ali). What they don’t immediately know is that the island they shipwreck at was once a testing ground for dinosaur experiments, including one ‘D-rex’ – a ‘Distortus rex’, looking like a Xenomorph on steroids.

Our crew behind the camera are dino-mite too: Gareth Edwards is no stranger to working with big beasts (he directed 2014’s ‘Godzilla‘, which kicked off Universal’s ‘Monsterverse‘) whilst the first film’s screenwriter David Koepp returns to humanise things. Together, they make it feel as fresh as it could be, delivering spectacle and roaringly good fun. A sequel is not required, unless Universal Pictures want the franchise to go the way of the dinosaurs.

My rating: 7 / 10