| Worth seeing: | for a handful of exciting chase scenes but there's nothing new here, other than the ugliest dinosaur ever created by Hollywood's special effects teams |
| Director: | Gareth Edwards |
| Featuring: | Ed Skrein, Rupert Friend, Scarlett Johansson, Adam Loxley, Audrina Miranda, Bechir Sylvain, David Iacono, Ed Skrein, Jonathan Bailey, Luna Blaise, Mahershala Ali, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Niamh Finlay |
| Length: | 133 minutes |
| Certificate: | 12A |
| Country: | US |
| Released: | 2nd July 2025 |
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
It’s about thirty years since dinosaurs were brought back to life by the creators of the Jurassic Park tourist resort. People have long since lost interest in the novelty and the dinosaurs are now confined to tropical regions that are out of bounds for humans.
Back in the big city, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) works for a big pharma company that’s on the brink of finding a way to prevent heart disease; they just need a bit of dinosaur DNA to complete the treatment. He hires security expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to join him on an expedition to an island, to extract the samples. Zora brings her sidekick Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and they also recruit palaeontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey).
As the approach the island, they encounter a family whose yacht has just been capsized by massive marine dinosaur – one of the beasts whose DNA they need.
They accept their responsibility to rescue the family and get them back to civilisation safely, but they’re determined not to return without the samples they’ve come for.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
The saga that began with three Jurassic Park films is now on the fourth instalment of its Jurassic World incarnation – but it’s the first without Chris Pratt, making it feel somewhat detached from anything that’s come before it, and without Scarlett Johansson’s star power, you’d almost feel you were getting the scraps the dinosaurs have spat out.
The plot is computer-game like in its simplicity; first you have to round up your team, then you have to get DNA from the biggest sea dinosaur, then from the biggest flying dinosaur and finally from the biggest land dinosaur and then you can go home – but along the way, you encounter obstacles, such as dangerous dinosaurs on the prowl for food and a family that strays too close to the dinosaurs and inadvertently jeopardises your mission. They even throw in a cute baby dinosaur for good measure.
Almost every character is dispensable, so – Final Destination style – it’s a bit of a guessing game as to which order they’ll be gobbled up in.
It’s morally mixed up, with the main characters all knowing exactly what their mission is – but some, hired for their supposed ruthless efficiency, suddenly develop a conscience. The one character who is set up to be the villain is really just the one person who has the courage of his conviction and wants to see the mission through – which in another film might seem like an admirable quality.
We’re supposed to identify with the everyman family who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, but in a world where everyone knows that humans are banned from going anywhere near the areas where the dinosaurs live, they’re either hugely irresponsible or hugely incompetent – and we’re meant to find that endearing. And then, when they’re rescued by our “heroes,” rather than being grateful and sitting quietly while the scientists get on with their work, they get in the way and make things difficult.
But aside from the plot and the characterisation, one of the biggest disappointments is design of the dinosaurs; in particular, the giant mutant dinosaur is hideously ugly – not frightening, just funny looking, with a mixture of big legs and small legs, a bulbous forehead. The most inviting thing to look at is the tropical scenery.
Perhaps the biggest problem, though, was that apart from that an ugly beast, there wasn’t really anything new to see here – scientists trying to get DNA samples – fighting for survival – no particularly interesting or deep characters – thematically uneven.
From a director who’s no stranger to the creature feature, following up his debut Monsters with Godzilla, it’s all a but of a disappointment, both visually and narratively. It has its moments, as the dinosaurs attack boats or the protagonists hide from the dinosaurs in ventilation ducts, but most of what we see is incoherent and the rest we’ve seen before.