Wyatt Rippy

I'll preface this by saying two things. 1. I am extremely biased toward this franchise. I have no issue admitting I hate certain aspects of the World trilogy and that I have nostalgia goggles on for the Park trilogy. 2. I'm not reviewing this as if it were it's own thing. I'm reviewing this against the other movies in the Jurassic franchise.. With that out of the way, I can solidly say that Jurassic World: Rebirth is my favorite Jurassic World movie and my third favorite movie in the franchise overall. I'll do a ranking at the end of this but safe to say that Rebirth is tied with TLW as my second favorite. The cast really pulled this whole thing together. Claire and Owen from the previous movies had little to no chemistry which was a stark downgrade to Alan and Ellie from the first film or even Ian and Sarah Harding from the second film. Duncan Kincaid (played by Mahershala Ali) and Zora Bennet (played by Scarlett Johansen) are the real stand outs for me. They have one notable scene while on the ocean chasing the mosasaurus that, while not illiciting any emotion, was a nice character building moment. Jonathan Bailey (playing Dr. Henry Loomis) is the third lead and is a combination of the cynical Ian Malcolm and the dino-loving Alan Grant. He isn't a weak, nerdy character that can't fend for himself nor is he an action star grabbing flies out of mid-air. One scene with Loomis having his own Alan Grant/triceratops moment kept my eyes from being dry in the theater. The music was just as much to blame for my watery eyes as was the imagery. The music, this time composed by Alexandre Desplat who previously worked with Gareth Edwards on Godzilla, might be my second or third favorite soundtrack from the whole series. Everyone knows the main theme and Desplat does it wonderfully. He interjects and three key moments that elevate the scenes without relying on it at every given moment. On top of that, every time the original theme plays is an earned moment that got me excited or hit me in the feels. Not to mention the boat chase with the mosasaurus which might have the best piece of music from the entire movie. The dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals look the best they've looked in a long time. Gareth Edwards brings his knack for scale and scope to the Jurassic franchise, making the people on screen feel small compared to some of the largest animals in the franchise. Aside from that, the CGI is the best it's been in this franchise since 1997. The previous World trilogy had issues with painfully obvious green screen and poor VFX. Rebirth suffers from neither from what I could see. If you didn't like the last three films, you might like this one. If you have Jurassic fatigue however, I don't see this alleviating that. In my opinion, Rebirth has made good progress in the series for how it portrays dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, and I look forward to where they go from here. Franchise ranking: 1. Jurassic Park 2. The Lost World/ Rebirth 3. JP3 4. Fallen Kingdom 5. World 6. Dominion