‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Details Reveal How New Movie Is Influenced By ‘Jaws,’ ‘Star Wars,’ & ‘Alien’

Universal Pictures is prepping their major leg of promotion for “Jurassic World: Rebirth” as a trailer is expected to drop tomorrow, as the first-look footage is set to be seen during this weekend’s Super Bowl. Ahead of that, we’re getting some solid insight into what this new movie will be about, how these new characters factor into the greater scheme of things, and the legacy of author Michael Crichton’s world of resurrected beasties through technology.

In a new Vanity Fair profile for the film, we’re learning new concrete character and plot details about the seventh installment that is being labeled as a soft reboot penned by David Koepp, who worked on the two films helmed by Steven Spielberg, with Gareth Edwards (“Godzilla”) taking the director’s chair.

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What movies are Edwards and the team pulling from for their latest dino adventure? Well, there are some answers, and it’s a little less predictable than you might imagine.

Jonathan Bailey’s (“Wicked”) character is a paleontologist named Dr. Henry Loomis, who is being compared to Richard Dreyuss’ oceanic expert from “Jaws” while Scarlett Johansson is filling more of a Sheriff Brody spot on the team as covert operations expert Zora Bennett. Meanwhile, Oscar-winner Mahersala Ali (“Green Book”) plays Duncan Kincad, a black-ops logistics expert who shepherds them into the island and is said to be using some elements of Robert Shaw’s grizzled shark hunter Quint.

The primary mission sees this ragtag trio drop into an unexplored island near the equator that was first used to create experimental dinos that didn’t end up in the other parks. Aiming to retrieve genetic material that could lead to a medical breakthrough for humanity.” Over the last thirty years, these abandoned dinosaurs have endured their isolation and keep growing compared to their previous incarnations in the other films, possibly making them less predictable.

Instead of park-ready dinosaurs, the setting features a bunch of experimental versions. Edwards says he took influence for these new dangerous dinos from sources like H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph from “Alien,” a bit of the Rancor from “Star Wars: Return of The Jedi,” and a dash of the original T-Rex from the 1993 movie. Leaning hard into the more horrific elements sounds like the game plan here.

“These are the dinosaurs that didn’t work. There’s some mutations in there,” longtime franchise producer Frank Marshall told Vanity Fair. “They’re all based on real dinosaur research, but they look a little different.” Folks paying close attention to more recent information would know that dinos are expected to have similar bright coloring to modern-day birds, adding a new visual flare to the toothy critters.

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Edwards is no stranger to working within established sandboxes, having previously made “Godzilla” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” before returning to original ideas like AI-focused action pic “The Creator.” The British filmmaker has developed a noteworthy working relationship with the Hollywood VFX community throughout all these projects, including ILM on “The Creator.” That film employed an interesting cost-saving technique of shooting mostly overseas exteriors that saved on building pricey sets by adding digital VFX assets to those real in-camera shots in the post-production stage. ILM has been part of the “Jurassic” franchise from the jump, and it is undoubtedly a pairing that could have been a selling point for Amblin/Universal to hire Edwards over other candidates.

“Jurassic World: Rebirth” will be released on July 2, and the first trailer will debut online tomorrow.