Okay, for starters, I need to say that just because a good crew is behind a project, that does not guarantee a good result.
Time and time again I've been hyped for a new movie or show or game because I took a look at the people behind it and I was like 'Oh! they made a thing I like! This HAS to be good, right?' only for the thing to come out and be not very good.
So in this post I'm going to do exactly the thing I should have learned not to do: getting my hopes up.
I'm not gonna lose sleep over whether or not the next Jurassic film is any good, but I'm liking what I'm hearing about this next movie (mostly) and I wanna talk about that stuff here.
The Director
Jurassic World: Rebirth (more on the title later) is without a doubt 100% confirmed to be directed by Gareth Edwards.
I could make a whole post about his movies and my history with them, but I'm going to make a brief statement about how I feel about his films. (this didn't end up being so brief, oops)
"Godzilla (2014)" isn't a great movie. It has EVERYTHING I want in regards to good suspenseful Spielbergian tense scenes, but it has almost NONE of the human elements that I look for in the stuff I like.
Here are some of my favorite scenes from the movie:
I love the buildup, the music, the way sound is used, the scene where the kids in the bus are screaming right before he breaks through the bridge is chilling.
This is perhaps my favorite scene of the film. I fucking love the MUTO. The way Gareth shoots them and obscures them in darkness where sometimes all you see is their glowing parts. Their sound design, the music surrounding them, amazing creatures and I think a big part of why they're so effective for me is the directing.
This is probably more a credit to the composer, Alexandre Desplat, but I just love the way the music flows in this film, even if it's not a very strong film overall, it's lowest points are carried by the music.
Most people gripe about there not being enough Godzilla in this Godzilla movie, but then I wonder if those are the same folks who love Godzilla: Minus One. I'm not going to go through the effort of counting screen time, but to me the best part about Minus One was the human stuff. But regardless of which film has more or less Godzilla screen time, it doesn't matter to me. What makes for engaging and meaningful stories to me is the human element. I will have 0 investment in the monster stuff if there is no good human story to ground me in the action.
Bryan Cranston's character was the only one who had any potential in this regard, but they kill him before the 1 hour mark. He really sold the character who was obsessed with finding out the truth behind the mysterious accident that caused his wife to die. The next best thing is Ken Watanabe's character, but he's only really engaging because he's Ken Watanabe saying cool lines, not much there past that.
Anyway, this film could get a whole essay written about it, and I probably will write that one day, but the short of it, is it has outstanding directing and suspenseful scenes, but subpar writing and lacks that human element I need from films. But I think that's largely the fault of the screenwriter.
"Monsters", truth be told, I haven't watched in a long time, but back when I did see it I rewatched it quite a lot and I enjoyed it. It was a nice demo of what Gareth was capable of with his sort of on the ground guerilla sort of style of shooting his films. Very iconic style, very cool. Unfortunately, I have yet to see any of his films really be outstanding overall. At best, they have cool action/suspence and decent characters, but none check off ALL the boxes for me to make for truly amazing films.
Speaking of decent characters, "Rogue One".
I recently re-watched this movie with some friends, and I'm not gonna lie, it's aging pretty well for the most part. The first act is really cheesy with its constant OG trilogy references and hard to be invested in because it moves so fast, but once we get to that rainy planet where Jyn's father dies, the characterization and chemistry among the main characters comes through. ALSO THIS IS THE MOVIE THAT SPAWNED CASSIAN ANDOR LFG BABYYYYYYY THE GOAT OF STAR WARS.
Ahem... anyway, Rogue One is a fun movie, I like the character dynamics and the action stuff is plenty of fun, but my favorite part about it is the human element. I love how sassy Krennic is, he's a pretty good villain, but this movie should've been a show, it had WAY too much going on for it to just be a movie. On Gareth's part, he brings his style to this movie and makes it work the best he can I think. No doubt it would've been even better without Disney's meddling and need for fan-service shit. Unless of course that was Gareth's conscious decision to do that stuff, but who knows... Wait, wasn't this supposed to be a post about Jurassic World?... Sorry.
I just wanted to talk about how I feel about Gareth. I certainly think that with the right writer, he could craft an absolute masterpiece, but from the films of his that I've personally scene, he has yet to make that film. Speaking of writers...
The Writer
In the writer's chair (is that a thing?) we have David Koepp working on the screenplay. He's written some great shit, no doubt about that. Of course the original Jurassic Park---probably my favorite movie of all time---Mission: Impossible, and Spider-Man, (funny Tobey version). But he also worked on the latest Indiana Jones movie apparently? Which I haven't seen myself but I haven't heard very good things about that one. Hopefully this doesn't mean he's fallen off as a writer, but again I haven't even seen that movie, so I'm not particularly worried about what he's going to bring to the table. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
He very much gets the human element for the films he's written for. This is the man behind Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker for cryin' out frickin' loud. To be honest, I doubt this movie will have any characters who are THAT good, but hey, who knows.
The Cast
Before I get into the actors playing this film's characters, I wanted to point out the casting director, Jina Jay.
Before looking stuff up for this film, her name wasn't familiar to me, but she has credits for films like Gareth's own Rogue One, DUNE (she COOKED there), and she apparently is responsible for getting Ryan Reynolds to play Detective Pikachu... I haven't seen the movie but I heard people liked it, so that's cool.
Her having worked on Rogue One and Dune in particular tells me that she has a good eye for casting. I may be getting a little too excited about this, but she is possibly the main reason we have DIEGO LUNA AS CASSIAN ANDOR BABY WOOOO-
Scarlett Johansson is a good actress. In the movies where Black Widow is best, like The Winter Soldier, she shows her chops. I think with the write character, she can do some amazing things. She was also in that one movie I haven't seen where she's yelling at Adam Driver and she seemed to be doing a good job there. She knows how to scream, and she's gonna be in a dinosaur movie, so at the very least maybe she'll bring back some of that raw fear we got from Laura Dern in Jurassic Park. (Bryce Dallas Howard was good at that in the JW movies, her screaming bits were good.)
I don't know ANYTHING about the rest of the cast, but hopefully Jina Jay was able to bring together the right actors for the hopefully decent characters written by David Koepp for Gareth Edwards to direct.
Visuals
If you look at the sneaky behind the scenes stuff we've seen from fans, you'll notice that there's some cool sets being built. We've got mayan temples in the jungle, multiple boats that are clearly meant to be attacked by something, and from what we've seen, and knowing Gareth, it seems like there's going to be a decent amount of (if not almost exclusively) ON LOCATION shooting. No volumes, no overuse of green screens, none of that shit. Some nice immersive in-camera on location jungle locations, which sounds pretty sweet.
We've got Andrew Ackland-Snow as senior art director. Art direction is something I find to be very important, a good vision goes a long way. He worked on Dune: Part Two which is just... that says a LOT. If this next Jurassic film looks even a fraction as inspired as Dune Two did, then we at the very least we are in for an absolute visual spectacle. Not just like flashy CGI dinosaurs eating people with explosions, I mean very carefully crafted, striking visuals. God please let this movie be as good as it has the potential to be. 😭
For cinematography, we have John Mathieson. He worked on some absolute bangers like LOGAN, which has very iconic shots, and Gladiator.
If Gareth, John, and Andrew can come together and even conjure a tiny bit of what made their other movies LOOK so good, then this will probably be the most visually consistent and artistically driven Jurassic World film we've gotten yet.
Also, I'm not sure where their source is for this -- but according to Jurassic Outpost, this film is being shot on film! Not digital. If this is true, then I think that is going to do a huge part in selling the reality of the dinosaurs.
Sound
Unfortunately, it seems we don't yet know who's doing the score. If it's Michael Giacchino again, I have no complaints. He's one of my favorite film composers ever, and he wrote some amazing music for the JW movies (one of the few parts of those movies I really enjoy), so if they bring him back I'll be a happy camper.
Gary Rydstrom is going to be a sound design consultant. He created the iconic sounds from the first two JP films, so him being involved in any way is nice. He had the same position in the JW films, which are hit or miss with the sound design for me. At best we get dino sounds like the Indoraptor which just sounds so good and scary, at worst we get the Ankylosaurus which sounds stupid.
OH MY GOD I'M JUST NOW FINDING OUT THAT THE GUY WHO DID THE SOUND DESIGN FOR GODZILLA 2014 IS GOING TO BE ON THIS ONE! Sorry, I just have an intense autistic obsession with the sound design from that movie, and knowing that Erik Aadahl is going to be working on Rebirth is just...
Erik also worked on other films that have amazing sound design, such as the Kung Fu Panda films, Megamind, A Quiet Place, and the Sonic movies.
Conclusion
I'm not going to get into the rest of the cast and crew, but this film is in very good CREATIVE hands. Now whether or not studio/producer meddling is going to have any effect on the film, I suppose time will tell.
I'm definitely more hopeful about a film directed by Gareth Edwards than fucking Colin Trevorrow, that man has like no vision he just wants to make stupid dinosaur movies and call it a day. J.A. Bayona tried his best with Fallen Kingdom, but that film is severely holding him back with its awful writing.
Colin seems to be nowhere near Rebirth, so hopefully that means it will actually be made by people who want to make a movie you want to not fall asleep to, and I think we have that.
Oh yeah, I said I was going to talk about the title. So it seems like Universal has been licensing the name "Jurassic World: Rebirth", for various things relating to different forms of media and merchandise. It's widely accepted that this is likely going to be the title for the next Jurassic World movie, and if so then I have no problems with the title itself. Not terribly creative on its own, but within the context of the movie who knows maybe it's genius, have to wait and see on that.
From what we've heard, this is supposed to be I guess a soft reboot for the series going back to "the roots", whatever that means. To ME that means down to earth, fun characters in a suspenseful situation and you want to see them come out of it but also lowkey want to see people be eaten... Okay it's deeper than that. The original Jurassic Park is a criticism of mankind's avarice and need to constantly discover and control and create things to the point of molesting nature and bending it to man's will.
Also what Jurassic Park is about to me is a desire to show the audience REAL dinosaurs. Maybe they're not the most scientifically accurate today, but back then those were the closest things we had ever seen to what we know about the real animals. The blending of computer imagery and practical effects were done in such a careful and thoughtful way to ensure the most convincing versions of these animals were being shown to us.
If that's what they mean by going back to what made Jurassic Park special, and they do it well, then I'll take one ticket to Jurassic World: Rebirth, please.
One thing I'm kinda eh about is this movie is apparently taking place on another island. They spent the entire Jurassic World trilogy getting the dinosaurs off the islands and into more varied locations across the globe... just for there to be another movie taking place on an island.
Well, if it's good enough then I suppose I won't care too much.
Sources: IMDB, @jurassicoutpost on X.
Wait, is the Next Jurassic World Movie Actually Going to be GOOD?