TAKE ONE Presents... - The Dinopod 8: JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH (2025)

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Simon and Jim are back for a Dinopod bonus episode on the recently released JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH. They discuss how this film fits in with a recurring theme of 2025 blockbuster films going 'back to basics', the elements that distinguish this film from the other Jurassic World films and make it more of a Jurassic Park film, how the impeccable pacing, competent structure, and intelligent writing distinguish this from the previous Jurassic World trilogy, what the film gets right about treating dinosaurs as animals, open source technology, and the nature of ecology in the Anthropocene, and how sick they are of mutated hybrid monster dinosaurs.The Impossipod will return later in the month for an episode discussing MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION.Content warnings: domestic violence and child abuse, genetic experimentation and mutation, violent death, capitalist exploitation of pharmaceuticals.Our theme song is Jurassic Park Remix by Gabriel Filósofo available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/gfilosofo/jurassic-park-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/XQ6WLBM6

Hello and welcome to Take One Presents the Dinerpod, a podcast where we watch all the Jurassic Park franchise films in order, contextualized them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie. I'm joined as always by Jim Ross. Hi Jim. Hello. So we are on a break from our regular The Imposopod series where we're reviewing all the Mission Impossible franchise films because a new Jurassic Park film came out and we've gone back to review it and slot it into the dinopod. We did this with Alien Romulus when that came out, we slide that into the feed after we'd already reviewed all the other alien films. And we're doing the same for Jurassic World Rebirth because it came out a few weeks ago and we've both seen it and we have some thoughts on it and how it fits into the larger

kind of Jurassic Park and World franchise. So yeah, I usually ask where did you see this? Where did you first see this? And I guess you first saw this, what, a week ago, two weeks ago? I think it was a couple of weeks ago now. I eventually ended up doing it because so I was traveling on holiday when it first came out. So I didn't see it like bang as it hit cinemas.

And I actually went I actually went to see it because I was a bit free. I was worried it was going to disappear from theaters. As it turns out it's still hanging around actually. So there wasn't any such rush. But then, you know, I now get to share opinions

on it with the world. You do. You do. Yeah, I went to my usual place, the tallest cinema in the world, the Cine World on Renfrew Street in Glasgow. Tall Cinemon the World for now. For now, yes. There's discussion about the landlord reclaiming the building from Cineworld. I can't imagine they'd do anything other than sell it to another cinema chain because it's made to be a cinema. Unless you want to strip it all out and start again. but I think it would be a loss to

the Glasgow City Centre if it were not a cinema because there's a dearth of good multiplexes in the actual city centre I'm actually kind of surprised at the lack of multiplexes in some places like I lived in Oxford

up until about two years ago like I'd spent about 18 minutes and it's a real lack of them there as well it's a bit weird there's like an odd little odian a view that's like out of town and then there's a very nice curve on but like that's this kind

of it into you know in terms of multiplexes there's a picture house and stuff but yeah it's odd that some places just seem to lack them yeah but it's there for now the old tallest cinema in the world so I was up on the seven floor or whatever and it was

a fairly empty screening I think I went like second day it was out it doesn't track with it which doesn't track I mean I think I was like one of about three people in mine admittedly a few weeks actually. It doesn't track with, like, I'm sure you'll get to the box office in a bit, but it doesn't track really about money it's made.

Yeah, yeah, no. Summer blockbuster hit. Yeah, we're recording this firmly in the kind of summer blockbuster season, where all the blockbuster films, I think, have been out by this point. I can't think of anything else coming up. That's particularly huge. No, I think that might be, but... I mean, certainly, like, the big hit, at the time we're recording this. Yes. All the big hitters are out.

Your Superman's, your Mission Possible Final Reckonings, the Jurassic World thing. So, yeah. Well, well, I'm sure we're forgetting something and somebody will be screaming into their device right now, but yeah. What about the Thunderbolts? But yes, while we're discussing this, let's briefly discuss context and 2025 in film. So we're also going to discuss this on the Mission Impossible Final Reckoning episode when that comes out.

So this box office might look a little bit different because we're recording in 2025. So box office charts are changing as we record, as we go. And also confusingly, we're recording this after we've done the final reckoning, but this will come out before the final reckoning. Yeah, a peek behind the curtain. Yeah, just to make it extra confusing for everybody. but at the time we are recording 2025 is

storming ahead with film and there has been some good films this year but the box office at the moment at the time we're recording looks like this number one is Neijar 2 number two is Leelow and Stitch which has grossed a crazy amount of money an obscene amount of money

for a live action remake a Minecraft movie is at number three Jurassic World Rebirth which we are discussing is at number four How to Train Your Dragon Five, Mission Impossible Final Reckoning down at number six below Jurassic World Rebirth

Superman is currently at number seven I imagine that will rise a bit more since it's currently still in cinemas F1 is at number eight surprisingly high for a film with a star who allegedly strangled his own children Detective Chinatown 1900

at number nine and Captain America Brave New World The Marvel Slot at number 10 Or as I prefer to call it Very Fine People on both sides The motion picture Didn't see it, don't intend to see it Yeah

I'll leave it there I thought I'll get back into the MCEU I'll go see Fantastic Four And I've not been dragged back into the MCEU The Fantastic Four Aggressively Fine I seem to describe so many aggressively fine

and I might go further into bad I've had time to sit with it so Jurassic World Rebirth hasn't done bad this year it's up at number four currently so that's pretty good you know that like you said that is surprising to me compared to the critical reaction to it and the reception to it that I've seen

where it just seems to have got forgotten a little bit in the kind of midst of Fantastic Four and Superman coming out. Yeah, and it's an interesting one. Like, if you take, like, I would say kind of like the, if you take Liloed Stitch out of it, which I, and a Minecraft movie, which have, like, completely come out of nowhere as far as I'm concerned, it shows how touch I am, I am with, the kids love them. Yeah, right. I would say the ones that I kind of, like, would have pegged as being big budget films that

the studios behind them wanted to make a lot of money, right? I think you'd be looking at Jurassic World Rebirth, mission possible, the final reckoning, Superman, and probably the Fantastic Four, right? Because that's kind of like the you know, a

bold new direction for Marvel. It looks very similar to all the other directions they've taken. But, and I would say that they all had a fairly big risk of underperforming, but I think if you asked me to put money on the that I thought would underperform.

Most, frankly, I probably would have picked Jurassic World Rebirth, and it's completely the other way around, right? It's made significantly more money than the rest of them, right? And I think by the time Superman gets to the end of its run, it will probably close that gap of it. It's about $200 million behind it worldwide. I think it'll close that gap a little bit, but I don't see it. I don't think it'll pass it.

I think it's been out long enough that, you know, I think it's going to be incremental gains on. at this point. Yeah, I actually look this up just before recording and people are estimating it closes at about 650 million, which will put it about 100 million below Jurassic World Rebirth. We'll see, we might be wrong on that, but... And I wouldn't have predicted that, like given the reception to Dominion and, you know, I don't know, just general vibes, I don't really have anything deeper than that. I'm surprised. The reception to it, the marketing as well, The marketing for this film has been abysmal.

Like, the trailers and the posters all looked terrible. I've got a note on this in my notes, actually. This film truly has some of the worst promotional stills I've seen of any major film. It's like real sort of like student Photoshop, my passion is graphic design level type stuff. Like, it's not good, really bad. Yeah, because I think we recorded our last Dino-Pod episode. where we talked about the future of the franchise before most of the marketing and trailer and stuff had come out

so we hadn't seen the actual footage but the trailer didn't look great and all the posters like you say have looked incredibly amateurish and it's just not had a huge marketing push I have not seen billboards and posters around town for Jurassic World Rebirth and yet it's done really well

so Jurassic World Rebirth is directed by Gareth Edwards who directed Rogue One and the creator and Godzilla and Monsters and it's written by David Cope who wrote the original Jurassic Park screen wrote the original Jurassic Park from the novel by Michael Crichton Yeah, in terms of how this film came about essentially Spielberg Stephen Spielberg came to David Cope with an idea and said will you write this new film in the series

David Cope said, I'm not interested in that. I don't want to write Jurassic again. But Spielberg turned him around on it and said, this will be good. We can do this. We can change the tone as well. So David Cope was particularly concerned that the tone had been changed by the Jurassic World films, which I think is a fair criticism, a perfectly fair thing to say. So Cope wanted to revisit the concept.

concept of humans in a dinosaur environment, whereas the world films had kind of changed this and shifted towards animals living among people. Scope wanted to have the limitation of the dinosaurs living on a remote island or a remote environment because he said, in an interview with IndyWire, he said, I find limitations freeing. By imposing that limitation on himself, he actually had an easier time than the Free Jurassic World movie. because they got so big and that becomes hard to work with. He essentially made, even went so far as to create a list of rules for himself. So this is an in-83 with the playlist.

He created a list of rules. I actually wrote a list of our Nine Commandments, which is inspired by Chuck Jones, who had written Nine Commandments for the Roadrunner cartoons. That's not true. Chuck Jones made those after the cartoons came out, but never mind. But Cope said, I made a list of things that we had to abide by. one was that the events of the previous six movies cannot be contradicted or denied

because I don't like a recron, those are no fun. Two, humor is oxygen. Science must be real, you know, all the things that we wanted our movie to be. I'm a great fun doing it with Stephen and then with Gareth Edwards. It's funny to say that science must be real in this film about dinosaurs and mutant dinosaur hybrids. Yeah, yeah. Take that over a pinch of all. I get the point, but yeah, okay.

So, Cope spends all these years working on the script. This was around kind of 2023. He's fully working on the script. And Universal unveils the project. They were originally looking at David Leach to direct. He previously was a second unit director on Jurassic World. But instead, they went with Gareth Edwards. Gareth was having a break from big franchise filmmaking.

He went and did the creator, with his own thing and was shot for like $80 million. But when they came to him with Jurassic, he said he couldn't turn it down. Like that was one of the only things he would do a big blockbuster for. Yeah, they shot the film of 35mm to harken back to look at the first film. There's a lot of production details that all talk about bringing it back to the Jurassic Park series, you know, making it more Jurassic Parky than Jurassic Worldie. and I think as we go through

the development of the film and now we get into the plot I think this film is it's more beholden to the original I think than the Jurassic World was that and I think that comes with positives and minuses right? That's the first thing Louise Loughrey, film critic for The Independent that's the first thing she says in her review

that this is more Jurassic Park than Jurassic World and for her that's why it works. For me, that's why it works. So they filmed the film. Edwards eventually finishes a cut. He wanted it to be under two hours' length. His first cut was one minute below this, but he eventually had to put five minutes back in, because the Universal wanted it back in, so it's just a smidge over two hours. Yeah, there's a couple of other production things that I'll, I think I'll talk about as we go through. But yes, let's maybe go through the film. So if you've heard our Alien Romulus episode. This is a bit different from normal episodes because I can't sit in

the cinema and take as extensive notes on structure as I normally do. Our Mission Impossible episode will be the same. So we'll loosely run through it and share our thoughts as we go through. But the film opens with a flashback to an Ingen laboratory on an island in the Atlantic where they're making genetic experiments where they're making dinosaur hybrids and one of the dinosaurs escapes

a guy gets a what a Snickers bar or something stuck in the mechanism that reaches the door that product place didn't lodge itself in your brain then no it was Snickers oh yeah it was Snickers

oh it was definitely Snickers and this this lumbering beast which the film will call the derex for the rest of the film escapes and wrecks havoc blah blah blah then we get some background we get some background on what's happened to the earth since the dinosaurs escaped in dominion for someone who says he didn't want to rec on he sure is undoing a lot of

fallen kingdom and dominion because the dinosaurs it turned out all died in the harsh climate of the earth and only survived in some equatorial zones resembling the original climate back when dinosaurs were around and those areas are now no travel zones so they're cordoned off and humans are not allowed to interfere we're introduced to what Wikipedia tells me is Martin Kreps

I would not have known that name but he's played by Rupert friend I need to look up for my written review could not remember it for the life of me No idea. But he's played by Rupert Friend. He works for a pharmaceutical company. We're introduced to him in his car where he looks at his wing mirror as he sees a dinosaur stuck in the road or whatever.

The wing mirror obviously says objects in mirror may be closer than they appear. Because there's several Easter eggs kind of referencing the original Jurassic Park. Kind of member berries which had me worried. during this first half hour of the film there's at least one other but I can't remember it off the top of my head and Spielberg and Cope did not want these in the film these were inserted by Gareth Edwards and the studio

so Spielberg and Cope actually asked that these references be removed entirely but Edwards was allowed to keep most of them by the end I think there's some interesting stuff that they do with them later in the film which I'll get to but Mr. DNA at one point you know Mr. DNA the animated character from the first film

was also in it at one point, but he was cut. I don't have a Mr. DNA impression, unfortunately. Dinosaurs. Dino DNA. So, we're told on the radio or through exposition that the public are sick of dinosaurs, the public a board of dinosaurs, there's like a brachiosaurus or a brontosaurus lying in the road when we're introduced to Martin Kreps I'm a little sick of this plot point

that the public are bored of dinosaurs I'm extremely sick of it to be honest that happens in Jurassic World as well where Henry Wu says we need to create bigger and better dinosaurs because the public are sick of them like are they kids love dinosaurs

you know kids still love dinosaurs people will travel miles to to see birds and other animals, I travel to see a dinosaur. I travel miles to see birds that occasionally show up in my garden anyway. Exactly. Right.

It's also, I want to linger on this point just for a minute, right? Because fortunately, I would say the film moves on from this idea pretty quickly. It does. Right? Okay. To its credit, right? But it's just like, can we kill this? Because, like, in particular, before I watched the film, I came across this quote in Vanity Fair, right? And it's I forget it's full name Marshall. It's one

of the producers on the film. And it says, Credits Cope, the screenwriter, for introducing the notion that people are fed up of dinosaurs to rebirth. He came up with this idea that dinosaurs were passe now. People were tired of them.

They were an inconvenience. The banner's coming down again, he says, and that's a reference to something that happens with Jonathan Bailey's character that we'll get to in a minute. But I'm like, no, he didn't. This is the entire premise of Jurassic World. The entire premise is they have a theme bar, people are fed up of them, and so they're going to meddle with genetics and do all this weird shit to make them exciting again.

Like, this idea that we're fed up of them, it's been kicking around in this franchise for over a decade. Like, this is, you know, like, oh, no, it's just, I did. I'm going to return to this point later. because this notion kind of like that ideas are new or we're doing new thing when they're not I think is one of my issues with this film yeah and this is an early example of you know re-gifting you the same things that like the franchise has done before right and not especially well I did think of this plot point when I was in I went to the natural history museum in London during my my brief summer break down there and there was a queue area set up for the dinosaur

bit but no one queued because there was it was busy but it wasn't cue busy whereas there was a queue to go see the mammals maybe the kids are into mammals these days but yeah you know this is a metatextual plot point it's like saying that people are sick of these movies

and therefore people are sick of dinosaurs people would be bored of dinosaurs because people are bored of the Jurassic Park movies no they just got bored of these movies that doesn't mean people are bored about dinosaurs yeah hasn't occurred to anybody

that maybe Jurassic World Dominion was just a bit shit yeah but anyway Martin recruits Zora Bennett played by Scarlett Johanson she is a mercenary

for hire together they go and see. He had some vague idea around collecting dinosaur specimens to create pharmaceuticals, which gets explained in a bit more depth later.

They go and meet... Em's on a bit. A bit. They go and meet Dr. Henry Loomis, who is played by Jonathan Bailey. And this is where we get the big... The museum is shutting down because kids

don't like dinosaurs anymore. So the whole dinosaur area with all the fossils and stuff is shutting down the advances in paleontology that they would have had by having access to dinosaurs are astounding but it's not been enough to keep this museum going and he explains a little more the goal is to retrieve biomaterial samples from three large prehistoric specimens the three biggest dinosaurs because they hold the key to a heart disease treatment so this This is from the Jurassic World Rebirth production notes, which Universal Pictures put out and are available online. Amusingly, this is just a word document, and they have forgotten to change the header from Jurassic World Dominion production notes. This is really in keeping with the shoddy posters.

You never guessed this was like a $200 billion film. Yeah. So this gives an insight into Universal Pictures production. Anyway, it's production notes for that And it's just, you know, this is the cast and crew, this is some thoughts about it And David Cope says While doing research, I found that certain dinosaurs, larger ones in particular, did have extraordinary long lifespans

And the reason was that they had remarkably low incidences of heart disease That led to the idea that a drug could be synthesized from their DNA Because the greatest killer of humans is heart disease The nice thing about that premise was that it was true to the core theme life finds a way, life extension. Everyone can get on board with that. To me, that seemed a valid reason, combined with the promise of a massive payday

for the covert operations team, for smart, competent people to take the risk of going an adventure into the most dangerous place in the world. Fine. I'm not being dismissive. I don't mind this. I don't know.

This part, I'm okay with it. the way that the mechanic that they introduce for why they need to go to certain parts of the island to certain species I think is really weak I have expected when this was brought up to like

I expected a map of the island to come up on screen to select which part I wanted to fast travel to it's very video gaming yeah it feels very video gaming to have free mcuffins that you need to get and the dinosaurs

that have those three morphines happen to be land-based, air-based, and sea-based. It's almost like they're looking for a good variety of set pieces. Yeah. You know, I don't know, like, the whole kind of like, I don't know, oh, we could create a drug to avoid heart disease because they all had great hearts because they were masters. Like, it just seems a bit weird. Like, I'd put it down to maybe they weren't eating a lot of sausage suppers

on like, kind of like modern humans. Maybe that's why they had less heart disease. But, you know, like, whatever. I think the mechanics of kind of like, you know, you need the three biggest ones I found a little bit, okay, a little bit eye-roly. The notion itself, yeah, fine, you know, it didn't break my suspension of disbelief. I feel like it's a bit daft, but, you know. It's a little bit eye-roly, but I think the film is paced well, so I think it speeds through these opening scenes at the appropriate pace. It is neither too fast nor too slow.

I think in general the whole film is paced very well. I'm very well structured. So it clips along nicely, where he's like, yeah, okay, we have to do this. Let's get to the island. And I find that actually interesting, because I have seen a few criticisms. Since I published my own review, I've seen a few criticisms of the pacing of this opening kind of like section of the film. And I find that a bit weird, because, like, did any of you watch Jurassic Park?

Like, you know, I mean, like, in that sense, in terms of, like, the way the film flows. Oh, in that it takes a while to get to. Yeah, like, you know, and it's like, I'm not saying it's slow. I don't think Jurassic Park is, I don't think this film is slow either, but it's also not kind of like, you know, the cold opening with the D-Rex, notwithstanding, a little bit like you have the opening with the Veloceraptor in Jurassic Park, right? It takes its time, right? It's not slow, but it's also not leaping straight into it with, you know, without setting things up. So in that respect, I find that an autocratism has been kicking around. I do think the film's pieced pretty well.

I think it's paced very well. We cut to the equatorial zone where they're going to go find these dinosaurs and Zora to call it Johansson

recruits her friend Duncan Kincaid wouldn't have known his name Mahershala Ali who is another mercenary who can help them get the he owns a boat

which helps going to collect the samples from Mosasaurus, Titanosaurus and Quetzalculus. So they're off, they have this device that will shoot into the dinosaur, and then once it's automatically extract blood, and once it's done, it will spring up into the air, like a toast popping out of a toaster, and come back to Earth with a deployable parachute. And I think it's good that they spend some time on that,

set that up. At some point we cut to a family, Ruben Delgado, who is played by Manuel Garcia Rolfo. I also wouldn't remember the names of any of the family. Maybe the annoying one who will get to. But they're sailing nearby, he's just out sailing with his family. He owns his own boat. And they're a little Spielberg family. They are incredibly Spielbergie. And the introduction to them is very Spielbergy. You know, it's a father, two daughters, and one of the daughters has brought along Xavier, her boyfriend, who is the most annoying man in the world. He gets a little arc, but he is pretty annoying throughout. Yeah, and there's a couple of character moments he has where he's shown to be sort of like

Under at all, he's a good egg, right? Yeah. He's still annoying. Yeah. So the boat gets capsized. People can be perfectly nice people and also still extremely annoying. Incredibly annoying. Yeah. The boat gets capsized by a mausasaurus and they use a radio to call for help.

The expedition team turn around to go and help them. So we get the first indication that Mahershal Ali is interested in more than money, he's a nice guy. and he goes to get them much to Rupert friend's dismay because he only cares about money grumble grumble capitalism as you can tell from his opening scene where he is dressed entirely in black

yeah black shirt black jacket black tie yes he's the baddie he's a capitalist guy so they go and they soon encounter the Mosasaurus and

this is the point that the film clicked for me because there is a scene on the boat where they're speeding to, alongside the muzzosaurus, trying to shoot their little gun into it to get the blood sample. And it really clicked for me, like this scene really worked for me. I've been on boats, birdwatching, and it felt like that, like it felt true to life where you've got this speeding thing you're trying to get, in my case, a photo of a bird that's also moving alongside the boat. In this case, they're trying to shoot a dinosaur. But it felt true to life.

It felt impactful. You could kind of feel the spray in their faces and the impact of that. It didn't feel fake. This is the point at which I think the pacing of the early bits paid off. And it just feels like it zooms into a kind of action mode with enough time for character development, you know? I think this is one of the highlights of the film for me. and I think it's probably along with one other thing

that I can think of that we'll come to later a prime example of what this film is doing well, right? I think, you know, we've spoken about the pacing of the film being good. I think the pacing of this scene is also very good. You know, in terms of kind of like when to

up the ante, later and all this sort of thing. I think this is also probably the first instance where you start to benefit from Gareth Edwards' ability to communicate The way I put it in the written review is Threat its scale, right? Yeah.

And I do not recall, like the Mosasaurus has appeared a few times in these Jurassic World films. For me, this is probably the most effective sequence with it, right? It communicates the scale of this thing in a way that the other films just have not. there's more than a hint of jaws about this whole thing, I presume quite deliberately. But yeah, the fact that you're not kind of like getting particularly clear shots of the moses source or a lot of it is really quite effective, which means that when it does go into

a slightly more ridiculous moment, is it this part of the sequence where kind of like she makes eye contact with the eye? Is that something that happens in this sequence or is it a little bit later on. Probably I can't remember. Yeah. Like, you know, which let's be honest, is a little bit daft, but it's earned it, and it has impact because it's been so restrained,

you know, which is not to say that it's not, you know, fast-paced engaging, it is, but because it's been a lot more restrained up to this point, it's earned that, and it kind of gets away with it, and it's an impactful moment rather than an eye-rolling, no pun intended one. Yeah.

I feel like even by this early point in the film, they've had some discussions that set out the character's stalls. So obviously Rupert Friend is the bad capitalist, who's just out to make money on pharmaceuticals. Scarlett Johansson is a mercenary, but also recognises kind of the nature of these animals and is being persuaded by Dr. Loomis, Jonathan Bailey, who is more, let's treat these animals with respect.

You know, they're kind of Ian Malcolm role. Let's treat these animals with respect. Let's think about what these pharmaceuticals could do for the world if we did not restrict them to one proprietary company. I feel like they've already had that discussion between Loomis and Zora. Like, why don't we just take these and not sell them to the pharmaceutical company? Yes, at one point they come close to the island and the Mosasaurus is working with, working alongside a group of Spinosaurus who attack the ship and one of the kids falls overboard, Rupert Friend could have saved her but chooses not to to let her fall. So the whole family jump overboard to save her and they get separated from the expedition team. The ship is forced on the ground. and there's some kills from Spinosauruses.

I enjoyed that there's an actual discussion of mutualism and how the Mosasaurus is working with the Spinosaurus in a kind of tandem in a mutually beneficial ecological way where they can both feed by working together. That felt criteria. Yeah, and it's worth just, I want to take a moment, just to contrast that with the, um, god's sake, what did they call it? The, um, what's the main dinosaur in Jurassic world?

I've gone, forgotten the name of it. The Indominus Rex. Indominus Rex, yeah. Right, I want to contrast that a little bit with the way this comes about with the Indominus Rex and the velociraptors in that film. Oh yes. Because I think what's interesting about this is it's not, and, and, this is a key thing that we'll bring up later, right?

This film ditches the weird sort of anthropomorphization that Trevoro's films or Trevorrow. Can we go on Travoro? I think we meant of Travoro, didn't we? That Trevoro's films HUD, right? And I didn't really realize it at the time, but looking back, having now watched the entire film, this is a key example of it, right?

Because in Jurassic World, you have the stupid moment where they kind of like talk to each other, they're then kind of like, you know, then basically turn around and look at the humans as if to say, yeah, we're together now, what you're going to do about it, right? Whereas this one, it just happens, right? They're being attacked by wild animals, right? They're being attacked by one, and then all of a sudden they're getting attacked by other ones. They're going to be able to, oh, holy crap, this is a thing. They're working together.

It's not this weird sort of like, dun, dun, dun, done. Yeah, moment, right? It's just handled so much more organically, and it makes, and it doesn't like, sad. energy and pace from the sequences built around it as a result. Yeah. They don't decide to work together. They have, there has been an evolutionary process whereby they have learned this behavior that benefits both species. Like that kind of behavioral conditioning is realistic. And two animals. Like, yeah, one of the things I really liked about this film was the

dinosaurs that behave like, that are treated like animals. And I think that lines up with Spielberg's original ethos in Jurassic Park and Lost World, where he wanted them to be animals, to not be monsters, to be treated like animals. And this does that. Trevor didn't necessarily treat them as monsters, I mean, Indominus Rex and the, whatever, the Indo-Raptor were definitely just monster creatures. But he also treated them, like you're saying, as anthropomorphized. like humans in a way that was that didn't work

so the expedition team wander around the island for a bit they have some discussions about dinosaurs and life and evolution and changing dynamics of ecology

which are actually good I quite like I got into Jonathan Bailey's character as this kind of Ian Malcolm substitute it was kind of like almost So it's kind of like an amalgamation of Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm, really. Yeah, but as they're wandering around, they get these character beats that are given time to breathe and that feel impactful.

You know, it takes its time at the start, like I said, which makes it more impactful when they get stuck on the island, because we've got to know these characters a little bit. It just feels planned and structured, you know, which, you know, shouldn't be a... a huge thing but feels very different compared to Jurassic Part 3 or Dominion which did not feel plant or structures

they eventually come across a titanosaurus herd that's one of the dinosaurs that they need to get it's a herbivore so it's fairly easy but there is a beautiful scene where they get the titanosaurus DNA and they're waiting for the DNA to

for the blood to fill the vial and they see this mating ritual between the titanosaurus and there's this big swell of music it's um alexandra de splat doing the uh the music and it's not all that memorable you know it's not john williams but it's pretty good uh this music when the titanosaurus is a mating is particularly beautiful and it leads to the crescendo that takes its time in getting to the full kind of Jurassic Park theme, the traditional Jurassic work theme from John Williams.

And I loved it. Like, I was weeping in the cinema at this, this scene that does something new with the kind of traditional, you know, brachiosaurus scene from Jurassic Park, which we said was replicated in a couple of the other films. Where it's like, you see the majesty of these creatures. But it does something new with it, and it withholds the main theme for just enough. the mating ritual feels more animalistic, which speaks to, you know, like you said, less anthropomorphization of these animals. Really worked for me. I think this sequence kind of worked for me.

I think it, and I think I'm going to get to the bits of the film that I was less keen on as we go through, right? Because they are there, right? And I, you know, I'm not going to jump the gun on that. I think this sequence does work for me and I think it highlights a little bit what aspects of it do work right so we've spoken about one action sequence I think we'll probably end up talk about another

and I think those are done very well that's one of the film's main strength for me the one thing I will say about this film is it is a lot more restrained I would say than the other kind of certainly the other Jurassic World films right and I think you could even say

the Jurassic Park sequels as well in some sense it's a lot more restrained so then when you do get to these moments they do actually have genuine impact it's not just trying to go bigger all the time every scene right it has built this and it takes its time with this

scene to build it up right so is it an homage to Jurassic Park yes but that's where it ends up being it ends up being an homage right which I think has a less pejorative feeling to it than you know some of the other kind of like callback and Easter eggy type things. I think it does genuinely do something good here, and that comes

through its restraint and building to it, I think. Yeah, it's not nostalgia baiting, it's sensitive homage that works and that's given time to breathe. Yeah, like this, and this is the key difference for me. This scene works even if you haven't seen Jurassic Park. There you yeah. Right? That's the thing for me. This, this to me, I can imagine this, being an incredibly memorable scene for someone if this is the first one of these films they've seen. If you've already seen Jurassic Park, you'll go, okay, right, they're doing the thing, like,

it's something like they've done it with a different sort of scenario that they're doing here, you know, like, it still works. But that's the key thing for me. It works if you haven't seen Jurassic Park. And I think the film generally looks great. I think Garif Edwards knows how to get the best from his VFX team and work for his VFX team. Like, this has been Garraf Edwards' big thing since Monsters, his first big film.

And it was part of the discussion around the creator, you know, how did he get it to look so good on an $80 million budget. Because he knows how to get the best from his VFX team. So I think the dinosaurs in this generally look great. I think it's got the best VFX since the Park films, probably since The Lost World. Yeah, I think it all looks... With one exception, with one exception, which will come too short. There's a reason I'm bringing this up now before we get to. So the team go to Cliffside, where they're going to find Quetzalcoatlis,

which is a large kind of flying terosaur type creature. And they need to get the final sample. They hope to get it from an egg rather than the actual creature to avoid confronting the animal. So they repel down to reach the nest, which is in an ancient temple, which isn't followed upon, but it doesn't particularly matter. And there's a scene where they have to wrestle this Quetzalco Atlas, and Jonathan Bailey falls through the foliage of whatever. I haven't found a source to back this up, but I'm pretty certainly certain that the only reason for this to be an ancient temple is so it looks superficially like an Indiana Jones scene. That's my theory Oh yeah

This was an improvement to the script An improvement quote unquote That Garif Edwards made So Cope was very encouraging of Edwards To include extra stuff And it was originally just going to take place on the cliff But Garif Edwards suggested changing it to an ancient temple

Do you want to talk about the green screen in this scene It felt pretty ropy you know it's you know it's it's a tough one right because I do I think that the green screen in this sequence is any worse than you know a lot of rushed big budget films no I don't think so um but I think to your point earlier I think the rest of the effects are so well done that it does kind of to me anyway it kind of stuck out like a sore thumb right and I don't think I don't think you really notice it when they're kind of like, you know, crashing around the temple

bit and it's kind of like the indoor part of the segment. But when you get back to kind of like them climbing up the cliff, I think it's really pretty noticeable. There's something off with the lighting or something. I don't know. I'd be interested in whether it was a reshoot or something. It just doesn't

look as, it just doesn't look as polished. And I think coming so soon after that Mosasaurus Spinosaur sequence we spoke about which I'm going to be fairly convinced probably involved quite a bit of green screen

of its own. It's weird. It's weird. I don't really know what I'm there. It looks pretty ropey to me. Yeah, especially strange since this scene was a focus of quite a bit of the trailers and the marketing. There was a lot of focus on this cliffside action sequence and you'd think they would have polished it up a bit. Yeah.

Meanwhile, this family are still heading through the jungle, they're also heading through the island, hoping to find a village or a complex where they can call for help or whatever. Xavier is almost attacked by a velociraptor, but that is preyed upon by a muterun, which is a raptor-hibrid that will come up later in the film. the little girl befriends a smaller dinosaur, an aquilops I've forgotten about this Yeah, it is entirely forgettable and it doesn't matter

I forgot about this completely It feels quite Spielbergy But not in a way I enjoy It's not a huge part of the film But there is a raft sequence They find a raft But the problem is that it's next to a sleeping Tyrannosaurus rex and this whole scene from the sleeping Tyrannosaur to the chase down the river

is taken from the first Jurassic Park novel written by Michael Crichton and I think it's something that Cope had in his mind of like it's a shame we didn't include that in Jurassic Park so he's reproduced it wholesale here and for me it works like this is the first T-Rex scene I think I've liked since Jurassic Park 3 because the T-Rex

feels like a T-Rex it feels like a threat it feels like an animal rather than our old friend Rex is a T-Rex which Jurassic World always did yeah it feels that it's an interesting one

I think that this is another thing which with the real quote unquote dinosaurs I'll come back to the other ones in a minute it gets right right they do feel like animals and I think the thing that the thing that struck me about this particular

the thing that struck me about this particular sequences it really does feel like an animal kind of investigating something and it gets confused by things like yeah exactly it doesn't really

it's like it's it doesn't feel like it's it feels dangerous but it doesn't feel malicious right that's that's that's that's thing for me, right? Whereas I think some of the Jurassic World's things in trying

to like bolt on these sort of like human almost motivations and emotions onto things, it really does take you out of it a bit. This didn't, right? I didn't feel like the T-Rex was malicious, but I didn't feel like it was a dangerous fucking wild animal,

right? Which also happens to be the size of like two double-decker buses or whatever, right? And this entire sequence really is to me another expression of what was so good about getting at Gareth Edwards for this film

in particular the bit that always sticks out to me is there's a shot as they're kind of I think it's as they're kind of like floating away in the raft and it's the shot of the T-Rex and it's kind of in a valley right where they are so it's kind of like you know land on either side and then behind it there's just sky and there's something about

that choice of shot that really gets across how terrifying this thing would actually be right because it's enormous and that really gets across the scale of it in a way that I do not think any other film

since the original three arguably maybe in the first one I don't think certainly none of the Jurassic World films have got that across to anywhere near the same extent no

no and I really appreciate that you know it doesn't feel like it is assigning moral value to these animals in a way that Jurassic World really did often felt like it was making value judgments about

animals like you know this the Indiraptor whatever is bred to be evil and it's clearly evil because it's coloured evil as Velociraptor is our friends whereas blue is good yeah and you can't make those moral judgments on animals

you know it reminds me of that future Armagagag where they they combine the DNA of all the world's most evil animals. And they've got a picture of a shark and whatever. The twist for that gag is that it turns out to be human when you combine all the DNA of the evil animal. So both groups eventually reach the Ingen complex. There is a little village, like in Lost World, where Ingen workers lived. and still has power and still has a little supermarket, the power comes on as night falls.

At this point, one of the family says, you know, he tried to push me overboard about Rupert Friend, and Rupert Friend holds them at gunpoint and steals the samples from Scarlett Johansson and flees to the helipad on his own to be rescued. A pack of these mutadons, which are these raptor terrors or hybrids, descends on the others, and they have to escape through underground tunnels. There is a scene here where they're going to a supermarket and they're being tracked through the supermarket by these mutadons. And for me, this is one of the scenes that mirrors a scene from the first film. This is so clearly mirrored the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park, even down to specific shots. where they're being pursued by this dinosaur in the first film of a Losteraptor in this

Mutedon among these shelves and in this space where food gets prepared. It's almost shot for shot, except that they escape through the ceiling, they escape through the ceiling in the original, and they escape through the floor in this. So it's kind of an interesting inversion of that, and there's another scene towards the end as well that I'll get to. That is kind of an interesting subversion, uh, inversion rather, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of these scenes. The one thing I will, I'm going to linger on it now,

I'm not a fan of the mutadons. Like I, I, oh, yeah, like, all of the mutated dinosaurs. Yeah, I think we need to come back and talk about it. I think maybe as we get towards the, you know, the, the end of the film here, we'll come back and talk about them, because these in particular,

I just find them a bit ridiculous. This scene, again, I think, is well enough done, but it's these little accents where the film kind of lets itself down from time to time. Yeah, as the film barrels towards the D-U-X, I'm sure we'll go into it. But I want to go back at this point to talk about the relationship between Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey. They have been talking in kind of these character moments about what to do with the blood samples. I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but they've been talking about what to do with the blood samples

and should we give them to this pharmaceutical company who are going to turn it into a drug that is a private command? commodity and sell it and you know help people make profit off people with heart disease and Jonathan Bailey is saying no this should belong to the world and he actually says we could open source this we could put it into the public domain for open source we could open source license whatever can be made from this and and that worked great for me like you know Trevor wrote in his in interviews around Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom and Dominion talked about this idea

of introducing open source and it was so clear that you'd no idea what open sourcing actually means or what it involved because there was no hint of that in any of the films

no this is explicitly about open source and about open access and about sharing scientific knowledge with everyone and Jonathan Bailey says

you know we can share this with everyone this belongs to everyone this belongs to the commons and that worked for me like that is that that kind of discussion of open science and open access is I think what Crichton would be talking about had he lived to this point where we we have more discussion about open science and open access and the intersections with open source which I bang on about

because this is my day job because this is what I work with day to day I'm an open source software developer who works on open access publishing but a lot of this came across in the film and worked well and and is so clearly a theme that is returned to again and again and has impacts on what the characters do like there is a moral framework that the characters are working to with regards to scientific knowledge and openness and open sourcing this technology and keeping it from greedy proprietary pharmaceutical companies yeah and i i i i i i i i i i I find myself caught in two minds about this, right? Because I think it's an interesting angle for the film to take, right?

And, yeah, you know, spoiler alert, Scarlett Johansson does realize there's more to life than money and agrees to open source. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that is her about. I think it would, yeah, exactly, right? Because, you know, she's very financially motivated at the start film. And there's, you know, there's reasons for that,

in particular as a conversation she has with Maharshal Ali, where they reflect on kind of, like, colleagues they've lost. in their line of work. I don't think it's revisited particularly meaningfully, but, you know, it's there. I appreciated it. I don't think it did much with it necessarily, but it's there.

And that's kind of how I feel about this. I think it's an interesting angle for the film to take. I'm not sure it's woven in as well as it could be. It does feel a little bit... That's the thing. It feels a little bit bolted on to me, but it's a bolt on that I appreciate, and it's a bolt on that I think is interesting, right?

Which is a lot more than can be said for some of the bolt-ons in previous editions of this franchise, where they don't only feel bolted on, but they are stupid and not particularly interesting. I think this is an interesting one, and it feels like an interesting graduation from the ideas that were kicking around in Jurassic Park, right? In terms of the consequences of reintroducing these things, is that information proprietary? Should it be proprietary? Is it only proprietary under certain circumstance? It introduces interesting ideas. I don't know if they're woven into the script particularly well, but it does provide an interesting angle to this film that has been lacking in some of its immediate predecessors.

Yeah, sure. I think I largely think the same. Obviously, it's not woven in as nicely as. The genetic stuff was woven into Jurassic Park. but I will take and I think at this point from this franchise these actual discussions these actual adult discussions about ecology and the Anthropocene

and you know commercialisation of scientific knowledge I'll take that What have we weaponised the raptors I'll absolutely take that the film treating me like an adult who can handle talking about ecology and the Anthropocene

over the Jurassic World stuff All that is to get this out of the way before the big finale, which is kind of big action sequences. So the helicopter, there was going to be a helicopter that would come down to the island and hover for two minutes or whatever, and if they saw anyone, they'd pick them up. So they get to the helipad just in time for that. But then, oh no, the helicopter is destroyed by the D-Rex, the distortus wrecks, which is this big mutant hybrid that we saw from the start of, from the flashbacks. back at the start. And it looks a bit like a Tyrannosaurus crossed with a xenomorph. It's got the big bulbous head

of a xenomorph and it's a bit T-Rexy. And it's got like six limbs or something. So I'm going to put my cards on the table about this thing straight away, right? So basically, I would say what it looks like is it looks like I think the description I've seen, which I think is fairly accurate, is it's like a T-Rex, but it has two additional legs. which you can stand on to make it walking on four legs if it wants

to but it still has the little T-Rex arms and it has kind of like the top of the head of like a beluga whale yeah right I'll put my cards on the table here I think it looks fucking ridiculous it looks stupid I'm sorry it just does it looks like somebody has taken

a whale toy of a child cut the head off and melted it and a pair of arms onto a T-Rex toy. It looks ridiculous. It's meant to be the sort of like terrifying thing, right? Look what they were doing. And I just think it looks, it just looks so stupid. You spend more time trying to figure out what the hell this thing is

than actually being scared of it. Yeah. You only see it in shadow. most of the time, before you get a good look at it, you know, it's Jaws style, you don't really see it until the very end. But, yeah, it looks less scary than a regular T-Rex. Like, I don't care for it either. And don't be wrong, right? To return to a point I made about restraint earlier, I think the way in which it kind of, like, Edwards gradually reveals this thing, right?

because you do get it in just little glimpses here and there, and then you get a bigger, clearer look at it later on. Again, I think it's showing more restraint than the other Jurassic World films have, and that is to its credit. So whilst I think this thing looks stupid, frankly, I think you see so little of it in the buildup that it doesn't come at the cost of, you know,

being able to build up to the showdown, the finale of the film effectively, right? I think if you, because I think if it, if it did what, you know, some of the Jurassic World films have done, then you'd be just overwhelmed with, good God, this thing is stupid, and then it would take you out of it completely. I think the restraint shown in revealing it works in its favour. I think it needs it because I do think this thing looks daft. I do think it's silly.

Yeah, and I'm not interested in the D-Rex. I'm not scared of the D-R-X. By this point, the film had one. me over and given enough goodwill that I didn't mind it, I was interested in where the characters were going, so I could ignore, I could treat the D-O-X as just kind of a big threat that I don't have to engage with, but I'm not at all interested in mutant dinosaur hybrids, like, at all. Like, no, this concept in this franchise needs to die, frankly.

So, yeah, I mean, this was done in Jurassic World, like, this was done before. This was done in World and Fallen Kingdom. we've seen this, you know, done before. I mean, frankly, it was hinted at in Jurassic Park. Yeah. You know, I mean, like, the entire plot point there is that kind of like they've got this stupid hybrid of like, you know, a dinosaur and frog DNA. And that's why the whole thing gets away from them, right? We've done the, you know, you don't understand what you're doing, look at what you've created thing, just in a more subtle way in Jurassic Park.

And in a more explicit and also stupid way in Jurassic World. this has been done a lot Yeah It's been done and I'm not interested I want to see actual dinosaurs Which this film does give you a lot of In fairness But then it ends with

With these mutadons And this Derex And I just don't care I want to return to the mutadons I actually think the mutadons I know you to be bored and anything else And like it honestly It really does feel like

A sort of like Hollywood boardroom pitch Of like Oh okay well we're done to Velocerat velociraptors lots, we've got to make them scarier, how are we going to make them scarier? They could fly, maybe? You know, like... So, yeah, I mean, the concept

annoys me, but I wasn't annoyed in the film because I didn't know in the film, or didn't notice if they said it, that these were mutants. I thought this was just a dinosaur I was unfamiliar with. No, they... So the way, when they're going through

the lab earlier, there's a tank with one in there. Right, didn't catch that. So I just thought it was another dinosaur, so I wasn't bothered like it. There's like a failed, there's like a failed, failed, grotesque one in a tank. Sure. And I think you see it in the opening. But to me, I think the problem I heard with them is it's, it doesn't feel like an organic threat, right?

If you think about like the, like, the, the most iconic moments with the velociraptors in this series before, right? There's two that jumped to mind to me, right? the first one is Muldoon tracking the raptors in Jurassic Park, right? The clever girl moment, right? Where he's been hunted, right? He's been hunted by wild animals. But he knows they're there, and they've just kind of outsmarted him with their skill in doing so. The next one, which I think probably a lot of people probably think of, is the long grass scene in the lost world.

Now, here, to me, they feel like the fucking flying monkeys from the wizarding. of Oz, right? They just appear out of nowhere. There is no, like, you know, it's that they are just, this thing that quite literally get dropped in to be a threat out of nowhere, right? Because they just

parachute in, literally. I, I, they really, really annoyed me. I find it so irritating. And it's also, it's just so transparent because at the scene where you first see one in the wild, I think, right, is when

Xavier, the annoying boyfriend, goes to pee, right? And you see a raptor approaching him, but then this thing gets killed and eaten by a mutadon, which then fucking flies off with it, right? It's just it's the same thing that happens in kind of like, comic movies where to get across the threat of the new

thing, right? You get the new thing to kill the old thing. It's the Spinosauri-S-T-U-X scene from Jurassic Park. Exactly, right? And, It's just, honestly, more so in the D-Rex, right, because the D-Rex, yes, it's stupid, I think it looks silly, but, you know, they show some restraint with it. This thing, they show no restraint with it, and I feel like it's kind of at odds with some of the strengths of the film elsewhere. These things really annoyed me, I'm not going to lie, and they annoyed me in the moment as well. They are exactly where they need to be, when they're needed, and they can do exactly what they need to do. These things fly, but they can also crawl around, you know, grapes under.

ground as well as needed. Yeah. Didn't annoy me, but I can see how, if they did, that would ruin the whole finale for you. Didn't bother me, because, like I say, I didn't know there were mutants. I did say I was written my cards on the table.

I don't think I really quite anticipated throwing the entire deck on the table, but, you know, still. So the D-Rex bounds around being boring. On the D-X, it kind of looks like there is a a YouTube series called Monster Factory where the Macquarie brothers two of the Macquarie brothers use video game character

creation screens and they push it to make these grotesque creations it's like one of those you know it just has too many legs and big bull this head yeah it does look like you've pushed one of the sliders too far as they push the sliders as far as they can go it looks like that

and it bounds around and it tries to get them the exhibition people. I think it eats a Rupert friend because he has to have some comeuppance for being a bad capitalist. But they reach a point where they're pinned down by it and Mahershala Ali heroically lights a flare and runs off into the swamp to lead the directs away from the family and the expedition team. Doing the in Malcolm but kind of heroically as a last sacrifice. So they find a boat and they all escape. as they're heading out they actually see a flare

and it is Duncan Mahershal At Ali who has managed to escape the DREX and survive I didn't need that I would have taken Marshall Alley actually sacrificing himself

I think that would have worked better and been a bit more impactful but whatever they're zooming away from the island they agree that they're going to distribute the medication without a pattern they are going to open source it, it's going to belong to the world

to help heart disease and there is a shot that is another one of these interesting inversions of Jurassic Park where they see I think it's dolphins or porpoises flapping splashing along beside the boat

and it's like the final scene where they're flying away from the island and they see the pelicans alongside the helicopter in Jurassic Park except that these are sea creatures rather than birds so it's interesting to reflect on you know how evolution has brought earth to this point and how these creatures have evolved from dinosaurs and blah blah blah just another interesting inversion of Jurassic Park that co-puts in the script and that is the end of the film I liked it I liked it a lot I think it's I think it works well it is paste well I think the structure works it's just it's nice to see a comment

competent blockbuster, and I thought this was competently written and put together, and for the most part worked. We've talked about the niggles I had with it and some of the plots, but it worked, it treated me like an adult, it didn't patronise me too much. It was more, the first thing I wrote in my notes was I found this to be more Alien Covenant than Alien Romulus. Yeah, I think by in large, I'd agree with that, right? I think where I find myself in an odd place with this film is I really liked the bits I liked

and I really disliked the bits I disliked. Yeah. And on the average I've kind of come out a little bit in the middle because the thing is the things that it does well I think it does very well and I'm thinking about things like the underlying idea

of kind of like I think the open sourcing thing is an interesting way to build upon some of the stuff that happened in the original Jurassic Park films, right? But then I think the things like the Derex and the Mutedon are extremely uninteresting, stupid ways to build upon some of the things that happened in the Jurassic World films. I think it does some of the callbacks to Jurassic Park well. You know, in particular, I'm thinking about the scene with the Titanosaurs that we've already spoken.

talking about but then it also does sort of callbacks to Jurassic world with the hybrid in ways that are just a bit tiresome and it treads ground which I think has been done before in things like you know people are uninterested in dinosaurs now and like you know well they're not because this is the seventh one of these films like like you know the metacometries becoming a little bit ridiculous at this point so that's the thing for me I think it's a bit of a highs and lows thing it does some really stupid things

and it does some really good things as well I think when I posted my review I've got here I've said you know my route and view of film I liked ish I think but was annoyed by maybe because it wasn't good apart from the bits that were

and that like that is the really inarticulate way of putting it so yeah it does a lot right I think this is a weird thing I'm going to say but I'm just interested to see what you make of this if this had been Jurassic World

right forget the Jurassic World trilogy exists right if this had been Jurassic World I think that would have been interesting and I also don't think they would have had the same extent of the hybrid dinosaur

gubbins right they could have introduced that and it would have been fresh and more restrained, and I think that would have been an interesting way to build on the original Jurassic Park trilogy. I think this film suffers from being the seventh film rather than the fourth. It suffers from having the title Jurassic World. Like I said at the start, it feels more Jurassic Parky than Jurassic Worldy. In some ways, these two trilogies feel very different in terms of tone.

And I feel like David Cope, led by Spielberg, has deliberately tried to go back to a Jurassic Park tone. But now this franchise is called Jurassic World. So he has had to build on, yeah, like you say, that other trilogy, which he didn't have any part in, but has had to incorporate into his world in a way that feels clumsy. And yes, like you say, this would feel better, this would feel more natural as a just. Atlantic Park 4. Yeah, and it's like, it feels a little, and I keep returning to

kind of like, you know, so one of the things that we try to do here, right, in as part of these is contextualize these blockbuster franchises and the way they develop. Where it actually feels reasonably similar to me, right, is actually something that nearly happened with the alien franchise and

basically did happen with Superman, right? not to get too time. I was just about to mention Superman in terms of context. Right. And the thing that if, you know, the thing, I don't know, I don't know if this is where I'm going with this, you maybe think I'm a nutter here, right? But the thing that actually reminds me of, in terms of kind of like where this feels like it's a better continuation of Jurassic Park than it is of Jurassic World and it suffers as a result of it, right? because other films exist it feels like and this is not a comment on the quality of the film

right because I don't want to spin into that discussion but it feels a little bit like Superman Returns right in terms of it's a film that should have basically followed on so the conceit of Superman Returns as I remember it is

it's basically a continuation of the I'll say the Richard Donner films right I'm not going to get into the Richard Lester Donner the Superman 2 cut thing Yeah, but it feels like a continuation of Superman, Superman 1978 and Superman 2, and it basically then ignores three and four, right? This film would be better if it continued on directly from Jurassic Park 3, or even the Lost World, frankly, right, and ignore Jurassic World. That's the sort of film it feels like to me, but because it's not doing that and it maybe can't do that, I think that muddles it, and it muddles it in a way which, is really to the film, to me anyway, to the film's detriment, right?

And that's where it reminds me a little bit of that. And a similar thing kind of nearly happened with the alien franchise, right? When you remember, I think we spoke about it, when Neil Blomkamp was going to direct a film, which continued on from the end of aliens and ignored Alien Three onwards, right? And it's interesting, again, these echoes are kind of like, this is almost like the halfway house, right? They've kind of done this, but they've not. And I think it shows that that sort of approach doesn't work unless you take a clean break. For me, anyway, like, you know, other opinions are available.

But that's kind of what it reminds me of a little bit. Yeah, I think I disagree. I think I can see your point. I think this would work better if it were a continuation of Jurassic Part 3. But I think this is part of a trend of, in the current context of Block 3, blockbusters of going back to basics, where current blockbusters are going back to what worked, you know. And this is where the Superman 25. Exactly.

So I was going to bring this in with Superman 2025, which is a, you know, stripped out back to basics comic book film about Superman. You know, it's not tied into larger franchises. It will be because it's the start of James Guns, DC studios, whatever. But at the moment, it just, it feels like a back-to-basics Superman film. And it's all the better for that. I think Fantastic Four has tried to do that as well to some extent by being linked to the MCU, but in a different universe. But standalone-ish.

But standalone-ish. Yeah. I've heard it described as, you know, a new onboarding point from MCU fans. But I think Jurassic World Rebirth is tying into that by trying to, to go back to basics, trying to go to what worked, which is the original Jurassic Park films. And I think it's, I think it's more successful than you seem to think. I think it does that well.

Would it be better if it, if Jurassic World, if it didn't try to Jurassic World, yes, but I don't think it doesn't work, you know? I think it does work at what it's trying to do, which is take it back to that old town. I think it works just, right? I think the main thing for me is, right, that, you know, this film is called Jurassic World Rebirth, right?

I just don't see where it goes from here, you know? Like, and that's why I feel like if it was building on something, a slightly different set of predecessors, maybe there's something here. But it's just the case of, to me, right? And I acknowledge I'm maybe being a little bit harsh here. the fact that one of its best sequences comes from the original novel

is kind of emblematic to me of the complete lack of ideas this franchise has had for at least the last 20 years if not arguably since the original film because when I talk about kind of like parts of this film working because they show restraint relative to the other films

that goes back to the lost world, right? Even if I had fun with the conclusion of the lost world, which I said on the episode we did for it, right? It's not restrained in any way, shape or form, right? And it's I do not see where it goes from here, right? And I feel like the fact that they're drawing on scenes from the novel 30 years later really just kind of shows me that like, I don't think they have a lot of ideas for where this goes. And I see that in this film. I see things. I see things that they could have done better or well and have done better or well. But I also see bits of it running on fumes, the D-Rex, the mutadons, the, you know, like the family

didn't really work for me, it feels a bit sub-Speelbergian, it feels like a sort of a slightly different echo of Jurassic Park 3, you know, again, we're going to like a research facility on an island just as we did in Jurassic Park 3, just as we were, they also did an extent in Fallen Kingdom, like, we're kind of recycling things now, and it feels like a bit of a roll of the dice as to whether

it works. I think it largely did here, but also you know, we're running out of things to say or do here. 100%. I mean, this comes down to the central irony of this whole podcast series that we have done, is that

you know, we review blockbuster film franchises when neither of us, I don't think, particularly like blockbuster film franchise making. I certainly would have preferred a world where Alien, Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible were all standalone movies that they never made a sequel to. And I, you know, centrally, I think the franchise is a capitalist endeavor produced by Hollywood Studios to try and make more money to try and make profit by wringing out old ideas and recycling

what's already been by not doing anything new or original. Yeah. That's all, folks. Yeah, pretty much. Any producer who greenlights a sequel should be hanged in my ideal world.

But that's not going to happen. In terms of franchise filmmaking, I don't like franchises and I don't like recycling of old ideas. Just come up with something new. But in that context, I thought this worked as a blockbuster film. I was entertained. I had a good time. I feel like I said this about Jurassic World as well. But I'm going to say that this worked better for me because it has more discussion of kind of actual ecology

and the Anthropocene and open source and stuff, that feels more Crichtony. That feels more in line with the original. That makes it feel more of a sequel. And the funny thing is, for all of the kicking that I've given bits of this film, right? And I think this says more about the state of this franchise than anything else, right?

When I go back to the rankings we did, in the last episode where we were focused, dynopod focused, right? I think this is definitely going to slip in at least fourth, right? Because I think I've got Jurassic Park, the Lost World, then Jurassic World, right? I feel like this probably comes in just buying Jurassic World for me. I'm even debating in my head whether, because it has slightly more interesting core questions underneath it, it should sit above Jurassic World.

I don't think it ultimately will. I'll need to see what I think about that. Ultimately, it is one of the better Jurassic Park sequels. I think that says more about the state of the Jurassic Park sequels than it does about this film, though. So, I saw a review from Tansy Garden, who does the Great Going Rogue podcast, and who has obviously followed all of Gareth Edwards' work, because that was originally a Rogue One podcast. She wrote that, you know, a lot of people giving this negative reviews are clearly showing that they haven't seen Dominion, because Dominion is trash. Dominion is garbage and this is a perfectly serviceable blockbuster. This is competent in a way that Dominion was not.

And I think I agree. If you give this a negative review, go and watch Dominion by contrast because this is leagues better than that. In terms of ranking, I've opened my ranking and I'm surprised to discover that I have Jurassic World 2nd after Jurassic Park. I'm not quite sure why I did that. I'd have to go back and listen. But similar to you, I was thinking in my head, is this above or below Jurassic World? And I think I have to put it below,

because the lost world is surely ahead of this. Also, I've got Jurassic World at second, so this puts Will you rebirth in at 4. Maybe I have to move all these around. But, yeah, if I'm just slotting it in, I've got Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, the Lost World, Jurassic World, Burrith, and then the rest. I think for me,

it's, I think ultimately Jurassic World will probably sit above it because I just, I found, Jurassic World is extremely entertaining. I don't think it has as interesting questions sitting underneath it, but I don't think it's sillier elements annoyed me quite as much, right? You know, for better Russ, the D-Rex is stupid. than the Indominus Rex, right?

In my view, anyway, it just is. The mutadons are stupider than Chris Pratt training a pack of velociraptors, right? Now, if you ask me on a different day, right, I may well flip that around and it could easily sit above it, right? I think they're kind of in that, but to me, it's definitely a much more common better plot out film than Jurassic Park 3, and it's light years ahead of the other two Jurassic World sequels. Yeah. It is a more interesting film. Those, I mean, those films, and I think Dominion in particular, not only do they have the same silly elements that annoyed me, but they built the entire film around them, you know? That's the thing. I mean, the stupid elements of this are extremely annoying, right? And I don't like them at all. They've not built the film around it.

Exactly. They're a competent skeleton here, a competent structure that keeps you safe even while they're. There's mutant stuff and D-Rexes and nonsense. Yeah. So, yeah, I find myself in a weird position with this film. And I think certainly if you read, if anybody reads my written review, I do not come out. I do not sound positive on it. I don't think I am positive on it. But it's, there is stuff to like in this film.

There are interesting things in it. There's nothing interesting in Dominion. Yes. There's very little, there's very little interesting apart from a few shot choices. In Fallen Kingdom, you know, I think I would describe myself as positive on it. I think I said, I liked it. I think it is a good film. But again, I think that speaks to kind of the nature of franchise filmmaking.

Like, the fact that this is competent, that is well plotted, that it is paced correctly, that is paced well, sets it far higher than like Dominion, obviously, but also other stuff at the box office this year. It sets it a more fantastic four for example because it is competently plotted and paced in a way that blockbuster films just so often aren't these days.

Yeah, and Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, which we discussed more fully later this year. Yeah, and certainly in terms of, like returning to your point about kind of like the trend in blockbusters of it kind of like returning to basics, right? To me, I think probably

of the films that are doing that recently I think Superman probably did it the best for me of kind of like the blockbusters that they say but like to be honest with you does this I think this takes more risks and falls

on its face more often than the Fantastic Four does for instance I would rewatch this ahead of that you know like I you know like it is a it's a more interesting film

it has better action sequences than that film and I think it is a more interestingly crafted film right? It's like I say, it has its stupid moments, it has its D-Rexes and it's mutad-ons and I think, you know, stupid bits from like, oh, for God's sake.

I don't think Fantastic Four has a lot of those, but like, you know, I don't know. If I come out of this and I'm more scared of the T-Rex that I've seen in six previous goddamn films than

and I am of Galactus in the Fantastic Four films. Something's gone wrong with the Fantastic Four film, right? You know, that's the thing, right? So, is it a perfect film? No, very far from it. I do think it's, I do think it's better than I think we had any right to expect based on recent form here. And I think it's not great,

but I do think it's paying for the sins of its two immediate predecessors in particular. in terms of some of the critical reception it's hard. I don't really understand why it's getting quite the kicking that I've seen some people give it. Yeah, exactly. You know, I've seen much worse

pass without much comment, really. So yeah, no, it's an interesting one. There is that part of me where I just can't shake that feeling. If this had been Jurassic World, right? So we're returned to three. It thrived in kind of like whatever

lost in gen facilities or where and it had largely besides that the same plot, right? Honestly, I think it would be a much more interesting film. I think you're right. I hadn't thought of that but that is an interesting alternate world, alternate history.

Where that could have worked a lot better. So I think that's Jurassic World Rebirth. I liked it more than you and put more positive on it than you, but I don't necessarily disagree with anything you've said I think it is

a funny one yeah I can say a few sentences and I'll sound like in some sentences I hate it in other films I like and in other sentences that I like it that's really how split my personality is on this film frankly yeah

yeah I liked it I never want to see any of the characters again like I don't care about it's not like I'm negative towards them I just I'm ambivalent Like, it's not like I'm crying out for... I know, so I actually love it when you come out with these, like, casually devastating lines sometimes. I don't want to see any of the characters ever again.

I think this might be neurodivergence, because I don't mean to be negative, I'm just stating a fact. No, it's just that I don't see. It's like, it's casually devastating. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't, I don't need to see the continuing adventures of Scarlett Johansson's character, or, Jonathan Bailey's character. So I don't know where they'd go from here. Maybe don't go anywhere. Maybe this is it. Maybe all franchises should die.

That's the theme of Take One Presents. That's our contextualization. Get one of them. But that is where the Jurassic World franchise is up to. So, yeah, thank you for joining us for this extra episode of the DinoPod. We're currently continuing the Impossopod and releasing that at the end of every month. So please do continue to subscribe to this feed and listen to the Impossible episodes where we're viewing Mission Impossible films right up until the end of Final Reckoning. When this comes out, we will be reviewing Mission Impossible Rogue Nation in our next episode.

and there's already episodes out on one, two, three and Ghost Protocol for you to listen to. So please do listen to those. You can follow Take One at Take On Cinema.net. You can follow Jim at at Jim J.R on most places.

And you can find me at SimonXIX. On most places, SimonXX.com. But yes, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. and join us again in our next episode of the Impostopod where we discussed Mission Impossible but thank you for joining us for this brief tour

back into the Dinopod. Thank you. Bye.