New Photos and Details for JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH - "It's a Giant Love Letter to Steven Spielberg and His Earlier Films"
Universal Pictures has shared a few new images from Jurassic World: Rebirth, which is being directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, The Creator).
This movie is just the beginning of a brand-new story that they hope to tell over the course of multiple films. During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Edwards said:
“I can't speak for Universal, but it did feel like a new trilogy, in a way. I'm not sure what their plans are, but it felt like the beginning of a brand-new chapter in this franchise.”
He went on to say that the movie is “a giant love letter to Steven Spielberg and his earlier films.” He explained: “There are moments in this movie that remind me very much of Jaws. It’s like little greatest hits of all those aspects of his films that I loved growing up as a child. It's essentially a little adventure odyssey across this island, a survival story, really.”
Well, that sounds like fun! I love the early films of Spielberg, and if the movie actually manages to capture that tone… awesome!
Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali, are essentially the new faces of Jurassic World, and the site goes on to say that “Edwards likens the trio’s dynamic to Brody, Hooper, and Quint from Jaws, played in that 1975 Spielberg classic by Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw — disparate individuals hunting a prehistoric creature.”
The report reveals that the film is set five years after the events of Dominion, “in which dinosaurs mingled with humans all over the globe, these creatures are now dying out.
“The present-day planet proved to be inhospitable to the prehistoric ilk, except for a small region in the tropics around the equator, where many of them now congregate.
“The three most colossal dinosaurs of land, sea, and air within this biosphere hold genetic material precious to a pharmaceutical company that hopes to use the dino DNA to create a life-saving drug for humanity.”
Johansson plays Zora Bennett, “a special-ops, ex-CIA type,” who is contracted by said company to infiltrate the region and extract the DNA from these monoliths.
“She has a sibling-like bond with Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala), her most trusted ally who captains their team’s ship — ‘He’s kind of like the Ahab of our movie.’
Bailey is the paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis. “He’s out of his depth in terms of the military element of the mission. He's very comfortable on digs and expeditions but not the life-and-death risks that Kincaid and Zora are getting into.”
The official plot synopsis reads: “The planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. The three most colossal creatures within that tropical biosphere hold the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.”
There’s also a curveball to the story, where Zora’s team receives a mayday signal from a civilian boat that capsized from an attack.
As a fan of the Jurassic Park films, I really do hope that this movie manages to capture that original Spielberg magic.
Original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp wrote the script for the film, and Universal Pictures will release Rebirth in theaters on July 2, 2025.
