The New “Jurassic World Rebirth” Trailer Looks Interesting
(This is a wallpaper image for Jurassic World Rebirth.)
I did not expect to be talking about two trailers two days in a row, but here we are. The first official trailer for Jurassic World Rebirth, the fourth Jurassic World movie and seventh Jurassic movie overall is finally here and I’m ready to talk about it. I gotta be honest with you, I completely forgot that this movie was even coming out this year, which is why I didn’t even mention it in my 2024 New Year’s Eve Recap. But, now that I’ve been reminded of this film’s existence and reminded that it is indeed coming out this year, I now have another movie that I’m interested in this year besides Sinners, A Working Man ♂︎, Plankton: The Movie, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants 🧽.
I would add From the World of John Wick: Ballerina 🩰 to that list, but I have doubts about that movie because I have this feeling that John Wick franchise has kind of gone downhill and is has slowly declining in quality since the second one. John Wick: Chapter 2 is still my favorite one in the whole franchise, neither John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum nor John Wick: Chapter 4 could top it in my opinion. Yeah, sure Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 had some really cool and creative action sequences, but the stories were so much weaker than Chapter 2, and the lore and the worldbuilding kept getting more convoluted and started contradicting itself. Like, the rules of this world kept changing, they kept adding new rules and customs, contradicting what was established in the previous movie, it just became too much and you stopped caring after a while.
The story became so distant and far removed from what John’s original mission was to avenge the death of his dog 🐕 (the dog 🐕 his wife gave to him as a parting gift right before she died) that you stopped caring after a while, like you were longer invested because it was no longer a simple revenge story and now all deep in the politics of this weird assassin underworld, this whole secret society of assassin that exists in plain sight and everyone seems okay with, even the police, who are in league with the High Table and are probably paid off by them or even directly in control of them. And each new installment kept tumbling down the rabbit hole 🕳️ that was the politics and inner workings of this assassin underworld, introducing a new bureaucrat who’s trying to kill John Wick on behalf of the High Table each new film.
The second movie had Santino D’Antonio who hires John Wick (using the “blood oath 🩸” marker he made with him sometime in the past) to kill his sister Gianna D’Antonio so that he could take her place on the High Table, a plan that ultimately backfires on him as he pisses off John Wick after he tries to eliminate him after he completed his task as one last loose end to tie up. You don’t piss off John Wick because he’ll just come after you and kill you, and destroy your whole empire, which is exactly what he does to Santino. He ruins his moment of glory, his fifteen seconds of fame, and ends his time on the High Table before it even had a chance to start. I mean, it was a seat that he usurped and doesn’t actually belong to him, he didn’t earn his place at the Table, he stole it.
Then, the third movie had the Adjudicator, who was sent by the High Table to kill John Wick and punish everyone who ever helped him since John Wick broke the rules by killing someone on Continental grounds and killing someone on the High Table, even though that person he killed from the High Table was a usurper who stole that seat from his sister who was the rightful holder of that seat. This would’ve made more sense if they were trying to punish John Wick for helping Santino kill Gianna and steal her seat, since he was essentially an accomplice in his coup d’état. But no, they’re trying to kill him simply because he killed Santino, the de facto holder of that seat. They didn’t care that his seat at the Table was illegitimate or not, they just cared that John Wick murdered him and murdered him on Continental grounds since killing people (or “conducting business” as they call it) inside a Continental hotel is forbidden according to the rules of this assassin underworld established by the High Table.
Then the fourth movie had the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Garmont, yet another bureaucrat working for the High Table, or is a member of the High Table…I guess. He tries to kill John Wick after he kills the Elder in Morocco 🇲🇦, who is above the High Table I guess, like they refer to him as “he who sits above the Table,” as well as kill him for everything else he did in the second movie and the third movie. All so that he can get back in the High Table’s good graces after his position within the High Table’s hierarchy or bureaucracy or whatever is threatened by John Wick’s continued existence.
But, why are they punishing the Marquis? Shouldn’t they punish the Adjudicator since she was the one who they sent to kill John Wick and punish Winston and the Bowery King for helping him and she failed her mission (I know the actor who played the Adjudicator is nonbinary 🜬, but I don’t know if the character is supposed to be nonbinary 🜬 since I do believe they refer to the Adjudicator by female pronouns ♀︎)? The Marquis was never referred to or alluded to in the third movie, and is just barely being introduced in the fourth movie. And of course, despite his best efforts (which weren’t even that great since he took the lazy approach to going against John Wick), the Marquis fails in the end after being outsmarted by both John Wick and the blind assassin he hired, Caine. See what I mean? The storyline of these movies became too convoluted for their own good that you couldn’t get invested in them anymore, and it even kind of takes away the fun of the action scenes.
So, hopefully, Ballerina 🩰 will be more of a return to form, and it will be a more back to basics kind of story since going by the trailer, it seems like it be more of a simple revenge story rather than being all entangled in the politics of the High Table. This isn’t John Wick’s story, it’s Eve Macarro’s story, John is just a supporting player since he’s Eve’s mentor of sorts, and his role in the film might just amount to a cameo. The rest of the movie will be about Eve, and we’ll get to see what she can do, if she can kick ass too, if her mentor John taught her well. I really hope that Ballerina 🩰 is good, and if it isn’t then I’ll just swear off the John Wick franchise entirely. I’ll just stick to John Wick or John Wick: Chapter 2. BTW, in case you’re wondering, my grandma’s favorite John Wick movie is the first one, the one that’s just called John Wick. She doesn’t really care for any of the sequels, especially not Chapter 3, she hates Chapter 3. She said it had “too much fighting.” Anyway, back to Jurassic World Rebirth.
The movie comes out in July of this year, the trailer did specify what date, it just said July, so this will indeed be a summer release and will be a July release, the best kind. They’re really positioning this movie to be a major summer blockbuster. I will try to see the movie in theaters when it comes out in July, assuming that we’re all still here by then and nothing completely bad happens that would prevent me from seeing it in theaters in July. But, even if no external factors caused by the current administration in Washington prevents me from watching the movie in theaters in July, there is still no guarantee that I will. I only saw three movies in theaters last year, those were Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die, in that order. It would very few be the case that I end up not seeing any movies in theaters this year, and I just end up having to wait until they’re on streaming, VOD (video-on-demand), or on Blu-Ray and 4K 💿.
Now, I’ve already written extensively about this movie. I dedicated an entire post on this blog which you can go read for yourself about the images and synopsis that Universal put out last year. The trailer didn’t really tell us anything that we didn’t already know from reading the synopsis, but it did give us a better sense of the characters’ personalities, like Zora’s a somewhat sardonic covert operative seems a bit disinterested in the mission she’s been assigned to, like she doesn’t take it completely seriously and even jokes about on being able to guarantee Dr. Loomis’s safety. Dr. Henry Loomis seems to be your typical awkward nerdy scientist who isn’t really cut out to be a field worker on a dangerous mission like this and is only really on this mission because he’s a paleontologist and knows more about dinosaurs than anyone else on the expedition. He seems like he’ll be the one who will be the most in awe of the dinosaurs and will be wowed by their majesty.
And Duncan Kincaid seems to be your fun-loving somewhat shady tracker (like the first shot we see of him he’s gambling) who can get serious when the situation requires him to. He’s the one who questions the legality of what they’re doing and is the one who questions the logic of going to an island full of dinosaurs, something that Zora kind of just tells him to shut up about and play along with. That’s just the sense that I get from seeing them in this trailer, I could be mischaracterizing them. I’ll just have to see the movie for myself to see my assessment of their personalities was accurate or not. But they are all very much archetypes we’ve seen before in other movies, especially movies like this.
This trailer did confirm that the island was research facility, like Zora specifically says that it was the research facility for the original Jurassic Park, but it never specifies if the island is supposed to be Isla Sorna or a completely new island that we’ve seen before or heard about until now. Later on in the trailer, they say that this island contains dinosaurs that were “too dangerous” for the original park, and they housed the “worst of the worst” on the island, and we see some Spinosauruses in this trailer, which would imply that it is Isla Sorna. But, it could easily just be a new island, this fabled Site C that fans have been speculating about for years, and only started talking about more and more once this movie was announced. But like I said in that other blog post I wrote about this movie, I still question the logic behind there being a Site C. Why would InGen need a Site C when they have a Site B? What kind of research and dinosaur breeding were the conducting there that couldn’t be done at Site B?
My only guess is that Site C (if that indeed is what this place is) was used for their most “off-the-books” experiments, the place where they did research that they didn’t anyone to know about except the top brass at the company and the top scientists working on the island that had security clearance higher than those who worked on Isla Sorna or Isla Nublar. That could be the case since this trailer hints at yet another genetic monstrosity 🧬 that shouldn’t have been created, but was created anyway and InGen is ashamed of and wanted to hide away on this island so that no one could find it and trace its creation back to them. Except of course, our heroes discover it after being set on this expedition by this pharmaceutical company, and end up being terrorized by this creature that they created a long time ago in the 80s or 90s. Is it a hybrid dinosaur? It’s hard to tell since we only see brief glimpses of what it looks like in the trailer, and we won’t know for sure what it is until the movie comes out.
I am glad that they included the Spinosaurus in this movie, and they included multiple Spinosaurus seemingly, it’ll be nice to see this dinosaur finally get some much needed respect again after it has been disrespected for so long due to the fan backlash Jurassic Park III received after they had the Spinosaurus kill the T. rex. They erased the Spinosaurus from the Jurassic Park III logo and put a T. rex there instead, that’s wack. Then they had Rexy, the main T. rex of the franchise, destroy a Spinosaurus skeleton during the final fight scene in Jurassic World. I know that they did include a Spinosaurus in Camp Cretaceous, and it’s even the same one from Jurassic Park III, but I’m talking the live action movies.
In the films, the Spinosaurus still hasn’t received the respect it deserves because the filmmakers up until now were convinced that the Jurassic fans didn’t like the Spinosaurus and didn’t want to see it anymore movies, which wasn’t true. It may have been true for a few years after Jurassic Park III came out, but it certainly wasn’t in 2015 when Jurassic World came out and took the franchise in a much different direction. They might even include some more scientific accurate Spinosauruses as well as the Jurassic Park version we’ve all come to know and love, just like how Jurassic World Dominion featured scientific accurate dinosaurs with feathers along with the stylized Jurassic Park/Jurassic World versions that we’ve all gotten used to.
I suspect that I’ll probably like this movie. You’re talking to the guy ♂︎ who liked Jurassic World Dominion, probably the most hated film in the Jurassic franchise as of late. If not just for the dinosaurs, like it’s hard not to like the dinosaur action in these movies. Even if the stories or the characters aren’t that good, the dinosaurs usually deliver and make them worth watching. This movie of course is being directed by Gareth Edwards, the same guy ♂︎ who directed Monsters (2010), Godzilla (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and most recently The Creator (2023), and one thing Gareth Edwards likes to do in his movies is take something fantastical and make it grounded, gritty, and realistic. I feel like he’s going to take Jurassic Park/World back to its roots with this movie, and make something that is more grounded, something more serious, and dignified, getting as far away from the comic book movie feel of the last three Jurassic World movies.
One of the things people complained about the Jurassic World movies up to this point, especially Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, is that they were too unbelievable, they were too unrealistic, they were too over-the-top, started to stray into comic book movie territory. Like, they started to feel like MCU movies but with dinosaurs instead of superheroes. It didn’t help that they had an MCU actor in the lead role, Chris Pratt (an actor that people have grown tired of due to the oversaturated of him over the years and also due to his right-wing beliefs), and they even started treating at least a couple of the dinosaurs as if they were superheroes, mainly Blue and Rexy.
And even though this movie also features some Marvel actors (or I should say one Marvel actor and one maybe Marvel actor since that Blade movie is still stuck in development hell and might end up getting cancelled in the near future), it seems like it’s going to be a soft reboot of sorts and it’s going to back to more of the basics and go for a tone that is closer in line with the original three Jurassic Park movies, mostly the first two, Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, where it’s more dark, has much more horror type elements, and where the dinosaurs are not superheroes but rather animals that will kill you if you cross them. Much more peril, and less saving the day and looking cool while doing it. This is even down to the fact that it’s on an island again rather than a globe trotting adventure like Dominion was. It already looks way different from the other Jurassic World movies, like it’s shot and color graded in much different way than those movies were, a lot more darker and muted colors. There’s a lot of green, at least from what we see in this trailer, it’s a very green movie.
The big question that’s on my mind certainly is will this movie make as much money 💵 as the other Jurassic World movies did? Will it make it into that coveted billion dollar 💵 club? All three of the previous Jurassic World movies made over a billion dollars 💵 each. Even Dominion, despite a lot of people hating it, it still made $1.004 billion 💵 at the worldwide box office. Will Rebirth continue that trend? We’ll just have to wait and see.
I could see a scenario where it doesn’t make it to a billion, and only makes $856 million 💵 or $973 million 💵 (I’m just spitballing here), like it makes BVS type money 💵 rather than Avengers type money 💵 because some of that good will was burned away by Dominion. Even if I liked it, a lot of people didn’t and because they thought Dominion was a bad movie, they might not turn out to see Rebirth even if it promises to different from the previous movies.
Just like what happened with Transformers: The Last Knight. It made less money 💵 than Transformers: Age of Extinction because a lot of people hated Age of Extinction and didn’t turn out to see The Last Knight because they thought Age of Extinction was a bad movie and they had enough. It is important to point out that even if all Jurassic World movies up to this point have made a billion dollars 💵, each one made less than the one that came before it, which is a similar trend we saw with the live action Transformers movies after Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and with the Star Wars sequels. So, there is some diminishing returns there. If the trend continues, we could see a scenario where Rebirth doesn’t even make it to a billion, and will end up being the lowest grossing Jurassic World movie. Not the lowest grossing Jurassic movie overall, I still think this movie will make a lot of money 💵, but certainly the lowest grossing of the Jurassic World movies specifically.
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