Latest news with #Quetzalcoatlus
Elle
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
The 'Jurassic World Rebirth' Ending Says a Lot About Our World
Spoilers below. In the universe of Jurassic World Rebirth, access to proper health care is so bad that we have to hunt dinosaurs for medicine. No, really. The premise of the latest entry in the beloved dinosaur franchise is a little ridiculous, but it's also rooted in some truth. When the film begins, we learn that the last living dinosaurs on Earth carry a rare material in their DNA—one that doubles as a life-saving drug capable of curing heart disease. The only thing is, the dinos are isolated in islands on the equator where humans are forbidden. So, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), the head of a pharmaceutical company called ParkerGenix, recruits mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to arrange a crew, including her longtime friend Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) for the impossible mission. They also bring along scientist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, arguably the highlight of the film!) to advise them on their secret quest. It must be done quickly and clandestinely, so they can beat other companies to the punch and capitalize on the discovery. Oh, and they can't kill the dinosaurs, because their blood is only potent when extracted from a living beast, which makes their mission even more difficult. And of course, they're going after the three biggest species by sea, land, and air: the Mosaurus, the Titanosaurus, and the Quetzalcoatlus respectively. It's insanely dangerous, but Zora and her team believe it's worth it—for the cash, naturally. Not long after they begin their mission, Dr. Loomis starts to ask an important question: Should we really be giving this drug to a private corporation? He understands that Zora and her colleagues need the money, and that this quest will mark an unbeatable milestone for his scientific career, but is that really worth helping a company profit off sick people? Throughout the crew's video game-like adventures, from rescuing the stranded Delgado family, whose sailing trip was interrupted by a ship-sized dinosaur, to climbing into a Quetzalcoatlus's nest, Loomis starts to get Zora to second-guess their end goal too. Wouldn't it be better to open-source the medicine and democratize the knowledge so that it isn't reserved for a select few? In the final confrontation, Loomis, Zora's crew, and the Delgados reunite at their end point, an abandoned town center, where a rescue team is scheduled to pick them up via helicopter. But there is a mutated monstrosity on the loose, otherwise known as the Distortus Rex (or D-Rex), in the way of their exit plan. However, what the film wants to make clear is that the real threat that emerges from the bushes—as dinosaurs in this franchise often do—is Martin Krebs. He stood by when innocent teenager Teresa Delgado (Luna Blaise) fell off their boat and is now pointing a gun at the rest of the group to hand over the DNA samples. He seems eager to keep them to himself. The group has hope for their ride, but the helicopter gets devoured by the D-Rex. There are also a couple of raptors hunting them down through buildings and underground tunnels. The best way out is a life raft waiting on the dock—but the Distortus has them cornered. Martin is eaten by the dinosaur, and Duncan lures it away into the brush so the rest of the team can make their escape. Somehow, Duncan survives too. As the survivors make their way back across the ocean, Loomis asks Zora who they'll give the DNA samples to. 'Everyone,' she replies. It's meant to be a quietly triumphant ending—victory over human greed, as many films have shown us before. But depending on your situation, it might come off as inspiring or insulting the moment you step out of the theater. Aside from the dinosaurs, hybrid monsters, and impossible survival statistics, the prospect of democratized medicine seems depressingly unrealistic in our current world. Just today, the House of Representatives passed a domestic policy bill that includes Medicaid cuts and benefits for drugmakers. In the non-Jurassic world, to quote Jeff Goldblum in the original films, 'Life finds a way…' But, it seems, only for those who can afford it. Of course, it's possible that Zora's altruistic choice is really just a wink at the potential for extending the franchise—this time with Johansson, Bailey, and Ali leading the charge. It also isn't all smooth sailing from here; while open-sourcing life-saving DNA sounds great in theory, it's also very possible that it ends up in the wrong hands and some bad actors exploit the dino data to create their own monsters. But if that battle comes in a future film, at least those characters won't have to worry about heart disease.
Irish Independent
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Jurassic World Rebirth review: All-sprinting, all-leaping Scarlettsaurus bites back in winning revival
'Six zeroes' is what she's promised by way of pay packet, seven if you count the '10' at the front of the number on the cheque. Watching one of the most celebrated actors of her generation booting a Quetzalcoatlus in the face is quite a sight, and that's taking into account a cinema universe where spectacle is the foundation for everything that matters. Besides claiming to be a lifelong fan of the franchise, Johansson of course has form in the action-adventure arena and was never going to look especially out of place here. But who knows, maybe art does imitate life somewhat in that opening scene, as one of the world's highest paid actors is enticed into uncharted professional waters by way of a chunky dangled carrot. Cynicism aside, maybe this is all perfectly logical. In another blurring of boundaries in Gareth Edwards' film, society has become so dinoed-out that shady boffins in a secret research unit have turned to hybridisation to dream up gnarly new species so that the masses might be kept interested. No prizes for spotting a slight mirroring with Brand Jurassic. They might make zillions in box office receipts and merchandising, but the films themselves have seemed like an ever-tiring exercise in scouring for ways to keep its revived reptiles alive. One solution has been to simply unleash a bigger, meaner monster on ticket holders, an Indominus rex or Giganotosaurus. Another way to refresh things, however, might be a major star of Johansson's wattage to anchor everything. Jurassic World: Rebirth reaches for both implements in the toolkit and, by and large, it's worked. Firmly in the 'one last job' boat, Zora could do with a few mill to retire early on and help her get over some previous unpleasantness in the field. Martin Krebs (Friend) wants her to lead a crack team to a remote island, the last place where dinosaurs from the Jurassic World experiment have not yet succumbed to the ravages of climate and starvation our own species has caused. If she can help nerdy palaeontologist Henry Loomis (Bridgerton's Jonathan Bailey) collect blood samples from three of the biggest behemoths, Krebs tells her, Big Pharma will develop a cure for heart disease. The island region is now an international no-go zone, however, so Zora brings in Mahershala Ali's tropical smuggler to help get the team in and out in a jiffy. Meanwhile, in nearby seas, a father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is bringing his two daughters (and the most useless boyfriend in cinema history) for a trans-Atlantic voyage in the family yacht when they are capsized by a peckish Mosasaurus. The merciful mercenaries respond to the distress signal and suddenly the adventure has some Spielbergian civilians to humanise the unfolding adventure. In one of many subtle nods to the Alien films, the rescue mission also serves to bring out the amoral corporate weasel in Krebs. When the two parties get separated during a lively landing, we are gifted an extra strand of dino-jeopardy to thrill at. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more Will good old reliable T-rex or some new-fangled Uber-rex be any match for Johansson's sassy smirk? Not a chance. The all-sprinting, all-leaping Scarlettsaurus turns out to be the most formidable of them all, and money well spent for a franchise that we can all agree was in dire need of a breath mint. It's not perfect by any means. There are moments where character backstory and stakes are hurriedly shoehorned in, and the plot makes no attempts to innovate three decades on from the seismic first instalment. More pleasingly, this is a straight-up 'best of Jurassic' that leans into the textures, sounds, and sheer floor-to-ceiling spectacle of that unstoppable mid-'90s heyday Spielberg executive produces and co-devises along with original screenwriter David Koepp. Above all, the fantastic beasts and the island where we find them look incredible, with Edwards (Rogue One, Godzilla) pulling off precisely what he was hired to do – sci-fi sweep and grandiosity with canny human foregrounding. Get those things right, you're reminded, and the extinct will live long. Three and a half stars
Los Angeles Times
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Jurassic World Rebirth' is a cold-blooded clone in which wonder has gone extinct
Hold on to your water glasses because you can hear the plot of 'Jurassic World Rebirth' coming from a mile away. A ragtag group of adventurers land on a remote island planning to exploit dinosaur DNA — and some of them get chomped. The only new thing about this seventh installment is the cast: Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali as freelance covert operatives Zora and Duncan, Jonathan Bailey as paleontologist Henry Loomis and Rupert Friend as a pharmaceutical titan named Martin who wants to treat coronary disease by harvesting samples from three massive reptile hearts. Gauging by the response every time this sequel has come up in conversation, it should have been subtitled: 'This Time There's No Chris Pratt.' I went to the theater with my own heart as big as a Titanosaur's. (Goofy name aside, it's a real herbivore and you'll see a herd of them.) After all, screenwriter David Koepp wrote the screenplay for the 1993 origina and the franchise's latest director, Gareth Edwards, made a serviceable 'Godzilla.' Alas, Edwards has made 'Godzilla' again. 'Jurassic World Rebirth' is a straight monster movie with zero awe or prestige. It's incurious about its stomping creatures and barely invested in the humans either, tasking Johansson and most of the cast to play fairly similar shades of hardy and determined. You'll see a nod to the 1962 adventure 'One Million Years B.C.' (you know: Raquel Welch, fur bikini), which is more of a template than a kitschy joke. There isn't a shiver of surprise about who gets the chomp, only disappointment that the fatalities are so bloodless — they're mild even for PG-13. Some of this ennui is by design. The narrative backdrop is that after 32 years of who-coulda-thunk-it rampages, humankind is tired of dealing with the darned things. Audiences can relate. To establish this miserliness of spirit, the present day scenes start with a Brooklyn traffic jam caused by an escaped sauropod laying collapsed and dying on the side of the road. It's the same species that transformed Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum into giddy, glassy-eyed children, only now drained of all majesty. Some creep has even spray-painted its hindquarters with graffiti. Plenty more dinosaurs will arrive in the film's two-hour-plus running time: swooping Quetzalcoatlus, splashing Mosasaurus, frilled Diophosaurus and a bitty Whoknowswhatasaurus that Ali's Duncan keeps in a bamboo birdcage by his boat dock in Suriname. But the only one that made me feel anything was that pathetic sauropod abandoned like a sidewalk sofa. A beat later, 'Rebirth' cuts to a shuttering museum exhibit where workmen are trashing their copy of that iconic banner that reads 'When dinosaurs ruled the earth.' The original 'Jurassic Park' inspired a generation of kids to dream of scientific discoveries. This era is throwing in the towel. The action sets sail with a hefty oceanic sequence where Edwards leans on his expertise in sluicing fins and underwater ka-thumps. Our heroes also scoop up a rather ungrateful shipwrecked family: yachtsman Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his daughters Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Teresa's good-for-nothing boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono). Initially, we can't wait for Iacono's louse to get eaten but we come to treasure his comic relief, particularly when Xavier wanders off to relieve himself next to a nest of velociraptors. Danger lurks and the doofus just stands around with his johnson in his hand. Eventually, the crew makes land on Ile Saint-Hubert near French Guinea, where a genetic dinosaur laboratory was evacuated 17 years earlier. In an opening flashback, we learn that a technician concocting a freakish T. rex littered a Snickers wrapper, causing a chain reaction that within two minutes resulted in the snacker becoming a snack. You may consider yourself inured to product placement. Even so, its use here is brazen and strange, from this case of death by chocolate to an 'E.T.' embezzlement in which Isabella befriends a baby Aquilops with red rope licorice. There's even a scene in an abandoned convenience store which, despite a decade and a half left in the custody of pesky dinosaurs, the snack labels remain tidily pointed toward the camera. At least that setting has a modifed raptor pausing at a soda cooler to admire its reflection. I don't think Johansson and Ali will take as much pride in 'Rebirth,' assuming they bother to watch it. Both get through the film without embarrassing themselves, in part because neither is very committed. Johansson's tough security expert swaggers, Ali smiles and our sturdy goodwill for both actors keeps us from holding the movie against them. Early on, the two get one scene together where they put on a pretense of speaking in shorthand about the emotional costs of a career in Blackwater-style skulduggery. It has the air of a stretch before buckling in for a long haul flight. This is composer Alexandre Desplat's 'Jurassic' debut and he dutifully reworks John Williams' famous notes of wonder and yearning a few ways, like a subtle tinkling when Bailey's strapping science geek imagines the joy of witnessing a dinosaur not in a zoo or a theme park, but in the wild. Bailey is a fine actor and his Loomis would be the soul of the movie if he wasn't battling for screen time. He's the only character who seems to like dinosaurs — everyone else sees them as dollar signs or boogeymen. The series itself has gotten so bored with the beasties that it continues to invent new ugly mutants. 'Rebirth' unleashes the Distortus rex — imagine a parakeet's head on a bodybuilding cockroach. All the dinos struggle to feel convincing as they seem to change size every time you look at them (and the CG backdrops are chintzy). Yet, I still prefer the trusty regulars like the amphibious Spinosaurs, who resemble dog-paddling hellhounds, the pecking Quetzalcoatlus that gulps people like sardines and, of course, the Tyrannosaurus rex, now striped and able to hide in ways that defy physics but at least get an audible chortle. 'Rebirth' is a confounding title for a downbeat entry that's mostly preoccupied by death and neglect. Who knows whether we're at the head or tail of the Anthropocene, but the movie seems weary of our dominion. 'I doubt if we make it to even 1 million,' Loomis admits, adding that he hopes to die in shallow silt so he can become a fossil too. With the franchise officially out of ideas, how about skipping to 'Jurassic Park: One Million Years A.D.' so a futuristic species can resurrect us for some malevolent fun and games?
Asahi Shimbun
14-05-2025
- Science
- Asahi Shimbun
New genus, species named for pterosaur fossil in Kyushu
A team of researchers re-examining a fossil found about 30 years ago in Kumamoto Prefecture concluded it is a new genus and species of pterosaur, a prehistoric flying reptile. It is the first such naming of a fossil discovered in Japan, the researchers from the Mifune Dinosaur Museum, Kumamoto University and Hokkaido University announced on May 13. The new species, named Nipponopterus mifunensis, is on display at the museum. According to the announcement, the fossil dug up in 1996 in Mifune, Kumamoto Prefecture, came from a layer of the Late Cretaceous (100.5 million to 66 million years ago) in a riverbed upstream from a dam. The fossil was of the cervical vertebrae. But the lack of fossil information about pterosaurs at that time made it difficult to more clearly identify the fragment. The research team used a CT scan of the fossil and compared the data with those of other pterosaurs. That led to the conclusion the fossil was a new species of azhdarchid pterosaur, which had a long neck. The fossil was dated from about 90 million years ago and is from a close relative of Quetzalcoatlus, a large pterosaur that lived in North America in the latter half of the Late Cretaceous. The research team published its findings in the March issue of Cretaceous Research. Azhdarchids appeared in the Late Cretaceous in a wide area encompassing Asia, Africa and the Americas. But there are few fossils because the skeletons are so fragile. (This article was written by Eiji Zakoda and Ryo Sasaki.)
BBC News
03-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Tracks show flying giants walked with dinosaurs
Some of the largest animals to ever take to the air actually spent much of their time on the ground, a new study at the University of Leicester have been examining the tracks left by a type of pterosaur called Quetzalcoatlus, which had a wingspan of up to 10m (32ft).They believe the quantity and widespread location of their footprints show the creatures began to spend more time on the ground about 160 million years ago and continued to do so until they died out with the dinosaurs 66 million years team said the tracks offered an insight into the behaviour of these animals which cannot be gleaned from studying the fossilised bones alone. Pterosaurs were a group of flying reptiles which existed at the same time as the dinosaurs, but were evolutionarily distinct from using 3D modelling, detailed analysis and comparisons with pterosaur skeletons, the team said they have matched some tracks with Quetzalcoatlus and others with two separate groups of Smyth, a doctoral researcher in the Centre for Palaeobiology and Biosphere Evolution, said: "Footprints offer a unique opportunity to study pterosaurs in their natural environment. "They reveal not only where these creatures lived and how they moved, but also offer clues about their behaviour and daily activities in ecosystems that have long since vanished." He said footprints of Quetzalcoatlus have been found in both coastal and inland areas around the world, supporting the idea these long-legged creatures not only dominated the skies but were also frequent ground group of pterosaurs, ctenochasmatoids, which are known for their long jaws and needle-like teeth, mostly left tracks in coastal deposits, indicating they waded along muddy shores or in shallow lagoons, using their specialised feeding strategies to catch small fish or floating prey. Fossilised tracks were also matched to a third group, dsungaripterids, which had powerful limbs and jaws, with toothless, curved beak were designed for prising out prey, while large, rounded teeth at the back of their jaws were perfect for crushing shellfish and other tough food Smyth added: "Tracks are often overlooked when studying pterosaurs, but they provide a wealth of information about how these creatures moved, behaved, and interacted with their environments. "By closely examining footprints, we can now discover things about their biology and ecology that we can't learn anywhere else."
