How Jurassic World Rebirth Handles The Wild, Free Dinosaurs From Dominion
by Ryan Scott · /FilmThis post contains spoilers for "Jurassic World Rebirth."
A mere three years after the release of "Jurassic World Dominion," which was billed as an ending of sorts for the long-running franchise, Universal Pictures has brought the dinosaurs back for another big screen adventure. Directed by Gareth Edwards ("Godzilla," "Rogue One"), the aptly-titled "Jurassic World Rebirth" is billed as a new beginning. It largely delivers on that promise, in no small part by walking back the biggest thing that the previous trilogy tried to do: Namely, making it so that dinosaurs and humans would be truly forced to co-exist alongside one another.
The new film takes place five years after the events of "Dominion," which left dinosaurs running loose with humans all over the world. However, the planet's ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs, with many dying off. The remaining dinos mostly live in isolated environments near the equator, which have climates resembling the one they once lived in.
Writer David Koepp has said that he saw "Jurassic World Rebirth" as a chance to start over. Koepp, who also wrote the script for the original "Jurassic Park," decided it would be easier to once again isolate the dinosaurs in places largely removed from humanity rather than try to contend with a world in which these species separated by tens of millions of years would have to find a way to co-exist.
The first act of "Rebirth" does deal with some of what the world looks like with dinosaurs in it, causing traffic jams and whatnot, but by and large, one of this movie's biggest contributions to the franchise's future is undoing what director Colin Trevorrow accomplished with "Dominion," in some ways. Much changed in the five-year gap between these films.
Welcome to the Neo-Jurassic Era
The previous "Jurassic World" trilogy, particularly "Fallen Kingdom" and "Dominion," did a lot of work to get dinosaurs off of Isla Nublar and out into the real world, so much so that "Fallen Kingdom" literally blew up Isla Nublar and brought the dinosaurs elsewhere, teeing up the events of "Dominion." But Edwards and Koepp opted to try and scale things back once again by isolating dinosaurs to islands where humans can conveniently avoid them.
Another big thing that this "Rebirth" does is actually explain, within the universe that these films exist in, how humans have defined this strange period of modern history when dinosaurs once again exist after going extinct roughly 65 million years ago, thanks to John Hammond and the geneticists at InGen. Early on in the film when Scarlett Johansson's Zora Bennett goes to recruit Jonathan Bailey's Dr. Henry Loomis, some animated documentary footage at his museum reveals that this era is known as the "Neo-Jurassic Era."
Basically, dating back to roughly the early '90s when Hammond first brought dinosaurs back to life, historians and scientists had to come up with a way to describe this period, which represented a seismic shift. For a time, it was chaotic, from a T-rex rampaging through the streets of San Diego at the end of "The Lost World" to the deadly events that forced Jurassic World to close. But that chaos is being reined in quite a bit as this film's events are unfolding.
Jurassic World Rebirth isolates humans and dinosaurs once again
Most crucially, Edwards' film once again establishes a situation where humans can, for the most part, avoid dealing with dinosaurs. There are no active dinosaur theme parks. The public has largely lost interest in dinosaurs, as they've been alive again for more than three decades. It's old news. While the short film "Battle at Big Rock" offered a promising, cool vision of this franchise where we get a first-person view of the chaos that results from dinosaurs existing where humans live their day-to-day lives, that's not something that Universal and/or the filmmakers were interested in exploring here, for better or worse.
Whatever one's thoughts are on "Rebirth" as a whole, the decision to scale things back in this way does raise the question once again of what the whole point of "Jurassic World Dominion" was. Trevorrow went out of his way to help set up this "dinosaurs and humans coexisting" concept, which Universal supported (in no small part because the first "Jurassic World" was one of the biggest movies ever). It does feel a little odd for them to just walk that all back now. At the same time, "Dominion" focused largely on giant locusts as opposed to dinosaurs attacking cities. So if they weren't ever going to fully commit to that idea, even in a movie where it ostensibly should have been a big part of the plot, maybe pulling things back makes some sense.
Whatever the case, this film largely exists as a standalone story. The future of the franchise is uncertain, as no direct sequel is set up. There are no post-credits scenes to speak of. If there is an eighth "Jurassic" movie — and there likely will be — barring a reboot, the next filmmaker will once again have to find a good reason for humans to head to a place where these dangerous animals live.
"Jurassic World Rebirth" is in theaters now.