Jurassic World Rebirth has a scene from Michael Crichton's book that was cut from the original movie

Today is a day for dinosaurs! Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment have just unleashed the first trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh installment in the long-running franchise about dinosaurs chomping up humans who too foolhardy to think, "hey, maybe we shouldn't resurrect long dead creatures to sell theme park tickets." I've had the trailer on loop for the better part of the day, and despite some initial misgivings about this movie existing at all, the hype is starting to get me.

It helps that Jurassic World Rebirth has a really strong creative team behind it who seem to be genuinely fired up about the movie. Director Gareth Edwards is a long-time fan of the franchise who has made an undeniable mark on sci-fi filmmaking with movies like Godzilla (2014), Star Wars: Rogue One and The Creator. Vanity Fair published an extensive preview of Rebirth which includes some telling quotes about Edwards' perspective on the series — and what will set this new movie apart from the last three Jurassic World films.

“Jurassic Park is a horror film in the witness protection program,” Edwards explained. “Most people don’t think of it like that. We all went to see it as kids. But I was scared shitless, to be honest, when I was at the cinema watching the T. rex attack. It’s one of the most well-directed scenes in cinema history, so the bar’s really high to come on board and try and do this.”

I read this quote and immediately shouted, "YES, GARETH EDWARDS." Jurassic Park was my first movie in theaters as a little kid, and that T. Rex attack on the cars scared me so bad I had to be taken out of the theater. This dude gets it.

“There’s something very primal that’s buried deep inside everybody,” Edwards added. “As mammals, we evolved [with] this fear of the bigger animal that’s going to come one day and maybe kill us or our family. The second we see it happening onscreen, you’re like, ‘I knew it…. We had it too good for too long.’”

Jurassic World Rebirth will have a tense water scene involving a T. Rex from the book

The horror roots of Jurassic Park go back even farther than the film, to the original novel by Michael Crichton. The 1990 book is a sci-fi techno-thriller, but people are still being chomped up by dinosaurs left and right, so the tension is often very high and the atmosphere unrelenting. Jurassic World Rebirth also sees the return of David Koepp, the screenwriter who worked on the first two Jurassic Park films. Koepp hinted a while back that the new movie will include a scene from Crichton's novel that he wasn't able to fit into the original Jurassic Park. Now we know what scene that is.

Producer Frank Marshall confirmed to Vanity Fair that it's a sequence which occurs late in the book where Dr. Alan Grant and the kids Lex and Tim drift down a river on a raft, trying to sneak past a T. Rex which is sleeping on the nearby shore. Lex accidentally coughs, the T. Rex wakes up, and it plunges into the river after them.

“The tyrannosaur was now chest-deep in the water, but it could hold its big head high above the surface,” Crichton wrote. “Then Grant realized the animal wasn’t swimming, it was walking, because moments later only the very top of the head—the eyes and nostrils—protruded above the surface. By then it looked like a crocodile, and it swam like a crocodile, swinging its big tail back and forth, so the water churned behind it.”

Obviously, this will happen with different characters in Rebirth, since actors Sam Neill (Dr. Alan Grant), Joseph Mazzello (Tim) and Ariana Richards (Lex) aren't slated to appear in the new movie. But that's not to say there won't be connections to their characters, especially Alan Grant.

Jurassic World Rebirth's Dr. Henry Loomis has some connection to Alan Grant

Beyond Edwards and Koepp, as well as long-time Jurassic producers Frank Marshall and Steven Speilberg, the other big element that's getting me excited for Rebirth is the cast. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson as a covert operative named Zora Bennett, Wicked's Jonathan Bailey as Dr. Henry Loomis, and Mahershala Ali as a mercenary named Duncan Kincaid. It also features actors like Rupert Friend (Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Ed Skrein (Rebel Moon), so this film is fairly stacked.

As with Edwards, Johansson is a life-long fan of the Jurassic Park movies. “I was really crazy about the film, and I slept in a Jurassic Park pup tent in my bedroom I shared with my sister for a year,” she revealed. “Anytime the trades would report a new Jurassic movie, I would forward to my agents like, ‘Hey, I’m available.’”

Johansson recalled how she tried very hard not to mention her childhood Jurassic Park tent to Steven Speilberg when it came time to talk about joining the franchise, which is pretty heart-warming. “I hadn’t really sat with him and talked about work, and we spent hours just catching up and chatting, and then at some point, many hours into it, he was like, ‘Wait, we’re supposed to talk about Jurassic. Do I hear you’re a huge superfan?' I said, ‘It is actually true. I’m confirming. I’m a huge superfan,'" Johansson recalled, emphasizing that she did not bring up the tent. “I was like, ‘He’s going to think I’m this weird stalker.’”

"Obviously with all the Avengers stuff you meet so many fans who are profoundly moved by the characters and the world that you’re a part of...I get it. It’s always wonderful to meet people like that. I probably should have just told him. But I was like, ‘Just be professional. Don’t seem desperate. Don’t mention the tent.’"

It sounds like all three of the leads in the film had a fairly large hand in crafting the specific details of their characters, but there's one in particular who caught my attention: Bailey's Dr. Henry Loomis. According to the actor, he has some mysterious connection to Neill's Alan Grant. “I’ve always wanted to make Dr. Alan Grant proud,” Bailey teased. “You’ll have to wait and see to see what sort of link there is between them.”

I know I'm certainly intrigued. In Jurassic World Rebirth, a team led by Bennett, Loomis, and Kincaid will head to a brand new island which was the testing site for the original Jurassic Park, predating even The Lost World's Isla Sorna. There, they'll have to procure DNA from the largest dinosaurs of the land, sea, and sky in order to create a cure for heart disease. It sounds altruistic enough, but given the franchise's history of corporate subterfuge, I'd bet money that at least one person on their team will have other ideas. (I'm looking at you, Ed Skrein.)

Jurassic World Rebirth is out in theaters on July 2.

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