Jurassic World Rebirth - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

After the rather underwhelming trilogy closer of Jurassic World: Dominion, one wouldn’t be wrong to assume that the franchise might crawl back into some amber and fossilize for a little while. After all, it was a solid decade between Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World. A little breathing time before franchise relaunches is a good thing. And yet, we’re a mere three years out from Dominion, we’re being ushered into a new era of dinosaur mayhem with David Koepp behind the keyboard and Gareth Edwards at the helm. It’s pretty good, but I could have used a longer break away from cloned dinos to really feel the excitement again. 

The last time we saw these dinos, they were thriving, living alongside man in the biggest cities and the wild wilderness. But now they’re dying out all over again. The environment is proving too unsustainable for long-term habitation, forcing the creatures to live along the equator. But that doesn’t mean man is done experimenting on these titanic creatures. Big pharma company ParkerGenix is on the cusp of a major health breakthrough valued in the trillions, and Dino DNA is the key. But they need live dino DNA. 

Corporate goon Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) is tasked with securing viable samples, and to do that, he needs the help of SpecOps mercenary Zora Bennett (yes, that’s her name, and she’s played by Scarlett Johansson). To do her job, she’s going to need her merc pal Duncan Kincaid (the very Blade-ready Mahershala Ali) and some of their disposable fodder friends, along with the resident Dinosaur expert Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). Their job is to get the DNA samples of the biggest dinosaurs on the island and get out. Their mission is complicated when shipwrecked civilians enter the scene, and a slew of big, hungry mutated beasts see these encroaching humans as their next fresh meal. 

If I have an issue with Jurassic World: Rebirth, it’s a prime example of cinematic promises made and promises broken. The opening prologue of the film, where we see an InGen facility hard at work creating all sorts of nasty hybrid beasts for the park, is some of the best Jurassic franchise action we’ve had in years. It’s a creepy facility with beasts of all sorts that we’ve never seen before, just ready and waiting to break out. All it takes is a Final Destination-level moment with a misplaced Snickers wrapper, and this film is off to the races with the big mutant D-Rex! And then it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s content to retread old ground for a couple of hours.

This movie opens with the promise of some new and exciting creature feature monster mayhem, and instead segues into a plot that’s basically a mashup of The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. A new island, a new secret facility, and thinly drawn stock characters with pretty faces - mayhem ensues. To be fair, the action sequences are well done, they’re well executed and exciting, but everything in between feels like wasted time, inconsequential, or just plain flat. Worse, it doesn’t live up to the opening. For the majority of the two-and-a-quarter-hour runtime, we’re left waiting to get back to the same level of excitement as the opening moment and really see these mutated monstrosities of genetic tampering take over the action.

I caught this film in theaters and thought it was diverting entertainment. I didn’t love it as much as some out there, nor did I hate it as much as others. I liked a lot of it, but still ultimately came away underwhelmed. You can feel the welcome flavor of David Koepp behind the keyboard again, and Gareth Edwards has a flair for big-scale Dino vs Human action, but the whole adventure felt basic. I thought ScarJo was badly miscast here. Mahershala is great in everything, even if he looks like he’s marking time for another draft of the Blade script to be delivered. Manuel Garcia-Ruflo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda were just fine as the grieving shipwrecked family, but they didn’t belong in this story. Their arcs were enough for their own film, which might have been an exciting Swiss Family Robinson-style adventure in its own right. 

I'm two viewings through now, and my biggest thorn remains what I mentioned previously: the opening is the most exciting piece of the film, and this story never really builds on that. I would have been all in for this one to go full Aliens and let that opening play out in real-time. It’s impossible to reexperience the splendor of big, huge dinosaurs majestically crossing the screen, complete with Spielbergian Wonder Gaze, when we’ve had SIX films already do that. But this film tries to do that all over again. Sometimes it succeeds. Othertimes it fails. 

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray 
The dinosaurs once again stomp onto 2160p as Jurassic World: Rebirth comes home to physical media with a 4K UHD + Blu-ray + Digital release from Universal and SBS. The 4K is pressed on a BD100, and a BD50 serves up the 1080p goods. Both discs are housed in a standard black two-disc case with identical slipcover art. For my review copy, the embossing on the slipcover was comically misaligned, so hopefully that’s not a widespread issue. The disc loads to a static image main menu with the bonus features selection along the right side of the screen.

On 4K, Rebirth offers an impressively filmic 2160p Dolby Vision 2.39:1 transfer. Reportedly shot on 35mm and finished with a 4K digital intermediate, the film looks terrific on home video. Sadly, this film didn’t receive an IMAX release (at least not here in the States; I'm not sure about elsewhere), so I never had the massive screen experience in theaters; I just had a standard 3D screening. This 4K treatment is terrific - it might well be the best-looking Jurassic film on the format! Details are crisp and clear throughout. Facial features, costumes, set design, the practical effects, creatures, and even the CGI critters all look great. When things went CGI, the monsters look and feel like they have weight and dimension, something that doesn’t always hold up for high-rez transfers. But the big beasts look pretty damn great! The Dolby Vision grade is strong, letting the bright primaries of the Thailand location scenery really pop, along with healthy skin and scale tones for our humans and dinosaurs. I was most impressed with black levels; this movie loves its dark, shadowy places, and they were flawless. Ultimately a terrific transfer that makes the best of cinematographer John Mathieson's work.

Matching the video transfer is a dynamite Atmos mix. You can’t have big heavy dinosaurs stomping around with weak LFE, that’s just a rule. This mix delivers the full channel immersive experience and then some. Given all of the dinos that are being hunted for their DNA, I was really impressed with how well the mix handled the different locations. We get a high-seas hunt, an overhead battle of swooping pterodactyls, a river escape from a pissed-off T-Rex, and then the big bad nasty mutant D-Rex bookending the film. Needless to say, after all of that, the front/center, side, rear, and height channels are all supported within the soundscape and plenty of heavy thundering thudding LFE to rattle the floorboards. Completing the experience is a great score from the always excellent Alexandre Desplat.

Kudos to Universal for not skimping out on the bonus features! This set feels like an old-school true to the term “Collector’s Edition" offering, with multiple interesting and worthwhile commentaries, a focused and engaging multi-part making-of documentary, and some other fun tidbits to chew on. Gareth Edwards pulls double duty with two great audio commentaries with various contributors. The Making-of doc Hatching A New Era is six segments running almost an hour long that offer a great look into the making of the film. Then you get the standard tried and true deleted scenes, gag reel, and smaller featurettes. All around a very healthy package of extras for a modern release. 

• Audio Commentary with Gareth Edwards, James Clyne, and Jack Ravenscroft
• Audio Commentary with Gareth Edwards, Jabez Olssen, and David Vickery
• Alternate Opening (HD 1:39)
• Deleted Scenes: (HD 4:17 Total)
• Raptors
• Mutadon Attack
• Jurassic World Rebirth - Hatching A New Era: (HD 56:20 Total)
• The World Evolves
• Off the Deep End
• Trekking Through Thailand
• Rex in the Rapids
• Don’t Look Down
• Mini-Mart Mayhem
• Gag Reel (HD 1:52)
• Meet Dolores (HD 3:57)
• Muchned: Becoming Dino Food (HD 5:34)
• A Day At Skywalker Sound (HD 10:24)
• Hunting for Easter Eggs (HD 6:35)

At the end of the day, Jurassic World: Rebirth is fine. It’s another Jurassic film that manages to be entertaining but still can’t measure up to the excitement and wonder of the first film. And it could have. This film had a window of opportunity to be a little new and different. The opening is tight, tense, thrilling stuff, but the final product doesn’t capitalize on that monstrous momentum. As is, I’ll give it credit for being better than the previous two Jurassic World films, but that’s not a steep slope to climb out of. At least for those who loved this entry, they’ll be able to pick up a banger of a 4K UHD release. I’m talking excellent Dolby Vision video transfer, fantastic Atmos, and an impressive bonus features package. I liked it, didn’t love it, but I dig the disc so I'm calling it Recommended