It's no secret that the past three Jurassic World movies have been a bit divisive among fans. Starting with 2015's Jurassic World, the new trilogy starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard moved far away from the core formula of the original movie by having dinosaurs gradually make their way out into the world at large, where they caused all sorts of chaos. Universal capped off that series with Jurassic World Dominion, a huge crossover movie which saw the return of original Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum. Since Dominion was marketed as the "conclusion of the Jurassic era," it felt like it could be a proper capstone to the series.
It was and it wasn't. Yes, Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard's characters are seemingly on the shelf along with other franchise alums, but Universal is powering ahead with a new Jurassic World film due out this summer. Jurassic World Rebirth is taking the series in a fresh direction — by returning it to its thriller roots. We finally have some more details about the film, which will see a team of elite operatives and scientists head to a dangerous new island in search of dinosaur DNA. Check out the first trailer below:
Jurassic World Rebirth has some terrifying "mutated" new dinosaurs
Jurassic World Rebirth is directed by Gareth Edwards, the filmmaker behind Godzilla (2014) and The Creator, and was written by David Koepp, the writer for the original two Jurassic Park films. It stars Bridgerton's Jonathan Bailey as scientist Dr. Henry Loomis, Scarlett Johansson as a seasoned special operative named Zora Bennett, and Mahershala Ali as the mercenary Duncan Kincaid, who will be responsible for getting Bennett and Loomis' team to a remote island housing the most dangerous dinosaurs on Earth. Their mission? Gather dinosaur DNA from the three largest terrible lizards on the planet in hopes of making a new miracle cure for humanity's ills.
That's right, we're going back to a dino island! But this won't be one we've seen before. When I watched the trailer and heard the line about how this island "was the research facility for the original Jurassic Park," my immediate thought was that we were looking at Isla Sorna, the island introduced in 1997's The Lost World. That island, referred to by Jurassic Park creator John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) as "Site B," was very clearly set up as the research facility and breeding ground for the original Jurassic Park. However, Empire spoke to the the team behind Jurassic World Rebirth and discovered that this is a totally new island — the real original research island for the original Jurassic Park. We could quibble about that, but on the whole this trailer looks pretty great so I'm inclined to wait and see how the movie justifies it.
What is the new dinosaur in Jurassic World Rebirth? Why does it look like a Rancor?
We do get a glimpse of how that might work in the trailer, which features a slew of returning dinosaurs like the Mosasaur, Velociraptors, T-Rex, Spinosaurus and Dilophosaurus, as well as a terrifying new creature that Duncan Kincaid tries to distract with a flare, Ian Malcolm-style. What is that dinosaur? Why does it look like a dome-headed Rancor from Star Wars?
Producer Frank Marshall dropped a hint to Vanity Fair this week when talking up the movie. “These are the dinosaurs that didn’t work. There’s some mutations in there,” he explained. “They’re all based on real dinosaur research, but they look a little different.”
The obvious bet is that the Rancor-dino is one of these mutations, since it doesn't look like any existing dinosaur and has yet to be named by the team behind the film. That could also help explain how this new island is the "original" research site for the first Jurassic Park without contradicting the second film in the series about Site B. My guess is that things went so badly there that genetic engineering company InGen was forced to abandon it and set up shop on Isla Sorna instead. But the dinosaurs they left behind flourished, and now they're big and hungry.
We'll see how much of our star-studded cast they get to devour, and who survives, when Jurassic World Rebirth stomps into theaters on July 2.
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