Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

The Jurassic World Rebirth trailer has arrived, and there’s some really interesting beats being hinted at. The overall story sees Scarlett Johansson leading a team of not-quite-mercenaries to the region on Earth every dinosaur has migrated to/been dumped to help a scientist played by Bridgeton’s Jonathan Bailey perfect a major medical breakthrough. It clearly goes hilariously badly, instantly, and none of these people have ever seen Tom Cardy’s Jurassic Park song.  But as we prepare for these people to discover that no fence is not good news, here’s what Alasdair Stuart noticed…

0.02 – When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth

That iconic shot of the T-Rex roaring as the banner drops at the end of the original movie is still an incredible image. Calling back to it here, and using it to show the idea that dinosaurs are old hat in this world is really smart.

0.12 – Tail

The tail reveal here is great three different ways. It’s a lovely image, it calls back to the velociraptor hunting sequence in The Lost World and it then flips your expectations to reveal it’s actually a Titanosaurus. Veggie saurus, Lex!

0.18 – Scales

The fact it’s a Titanosaurus also makes two subtle points The first emphasizes the ‘three biggest dinosaurs’ element of the plot with the Titan being the biggest land dinosaur. It’s also a bit of a mission statement. ‘Like the original, but bigger.’

0.50 – Mahershala Ali

The (maybe) eventual Blade is one of those actors it’s always fun to see. That being said, the moment later on where he’s using a red flare to attract something unpleasant looks very heroic sacrifice-y. That being said, it worked out well for Claire back in Jurassic World, so fingers crossed.

0.54 – Isla Sorna?

Earlier Jurassic Park sequels did a lot of work with Isla Sorna, the testing ground and ‘industrial’ island that InGen perfected the dinosaurs on. This is not that island but we don’t know where it is, yet. There’s clearly a dinosaur cloning facility here but we don’t know whether it’s Site C (Isla Nublar being Site A, Isla Sorna Site B) or something built by one of the other companies we’ve seen in the World movies especially. Although there are visual clues later on that this is definitely a InGen facility.

0.56 – Preserved in amber?

Why is there a raptor in a tube? Is it alive? And let’s just take it as a given that the colour of the suspension fluid is a callback to the amber that started led to the dinosaur DNA in the first place.

1.13 – Temple?

Look at the area where they’re harvesting the Quetzalcoatlus sample. That’s a manmade structure, an ancient one, all the way up a cliff face. Who lived on this island? And who took over from them?

1.17 – Kick

Scarlett Johansson kicking a dinosaur in the face. We miss you, Black Widow,

1.23 – Raptors?

The trailer wants us to think these are raptors so badly I’m convinced they’re not. The structure, and scale, seems just a little off. A little too big.

1.41 – D-Rex

But then again, I might be reading too much into it because right after this we get one of several shots of what seems to be the movie’s fangy ace in the hole. A mutated dinosaur is rumoured to be the big villain. The ‘D-Rex’ as it seems to be called draws on elements of the LSA from Cloverfield and the Xenomorph from Aliens and in the little moments we see here it’s terrifying. Huge, deeply wrong looking and a massive threat. It’s also shot like a monster not a dinosaur which has us wondering whether it’s an accident, or an abandoned test subject. And that brings us back to just who owned this island, why and how long they’ve been gone.

1.45 – Jeep

Pretty sure that’s a Jurassic Park-liveried jeep ploughing through a gate. So if it’s an InGen facility, then, again, why the D-Rex?

1.52 – Suits

We’re meant to, and DO!, get excited by another shot of the possible D-Rex here but who are the folks in hazmat suits? And once we think about that, two other questions present themselves:

– Why do they need the suits at all? Does the D-Rex breathe a different atmosphere?

– When did this happen? Because the scenes in the lab we see earlier in the trailer suggest it’s abandoned and this doesn’t look abandoned.

2.03 – The Kid

I’ve seen some eye-rolling about a kid being in the cast, but this blink and you’ll miss it moment explains why. She’s wearing a life jacket, looking utterly terrified. No one else is in jackets (which is bad safety but good cinema). What this looks a lot like is an extrapolation of the ‘wild dinosaurs wrecked our vehicle’ moment we’ve seen in a bunch of previous movies in the franchise. They rescued the kid and now everyone needs rescuing. Especially given how likely it is that the third ‘big’ dinosaur they need a sample from is the Mososaur attacking them…

Jurassic World Rebirth opens on 2nd July. In the meantime, if you’ve got Netflix, we cannot recommend Camp Cretaceous highly enough. It’s a fantastic cartoon and a great exploration of the franchise.