At last, some characters you won’t want the dinos to eat - Universal Studios

Jurassic World Rebirth is a giddy resurrection for a franchise many had feared extinct. While technically the seventh in the series about cloned dinosaurs running amok, it feels like a brand new thrill-ride. Indeed, you could have skipped films two to six, and it won’t matter one jot. What’s in this sequel’s wing-mirror as it rattles along is, simply, Jurassic Park.

The pleasure centres that Steven Spielberg first activated in 1993 are tickled and teased again with winking finesse by a new director, Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One), who understands them down to the ground. He aces the assignment – not an easy one at all – which is to lure back absolutely everybody the 12A certificate will permit.

Director Gareth Edwards aces the assignment - Universal Studios

Forget Jurassic World (2015) and its two eminently disposable sequels. Know only that dinosaurs have been captive all over the world since the events of the last film, Dominion, in 2022. They aren’t even an attraction any more in this jaded parallel universe, reduced to being sad, fast-expiring exhibits in zoo enclosures no one bothers to visit.

Back on one of the islands, used as an experimental lab for genetic tomfoolery, a few particularly rare species still exist in dwindling numbers. It’s these that become the target for a snatch-and-grab mercenary mission, funded by a pharmaceutical company, to extract priceless haemoglobin that could be a game-changer in medical research.

Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey in Jurassic World Rebirth - Universal Studios

Zora Bennett (a fighting fit Scarlett Johansson) is the covert-ops specialist who’s head-hunted for the job. She is wooed at the start by Rupert Friend’s Martin Krebs, a big pharma exec whose shifty manner and way of dangling giant pay cheques make him look like an increasingly suitable candidate to wind up in something’s maw.

They are joined on this fraught transatlantic quest by a wildly attractive palaeontologist (Jonathan Bailey, having the time of his life); the ship’s captain (a hardly less-appealing Mahershala Ali), and a half-dozen other characters who ought to be casting very nervous glances at the undergrowth.

But first they have to reach dry land. Crew are flung overboard in the island’s shallows, while aquatic dinos show no mercy. Once ashore, we trek from one elegantly established, tightly edited and remarkably satisfying scene of mortal peril to the next.

The film is a set-piece bonanza which balances the requisite Spielberg homage with just as many debts to the logistical genius of James Cameron (notably Aliens and Avatar). Cinema audiences, if mine was anything to go by, will coo, gasp, spot the callbacks to earlier films, and burst into spontaneous applause on a regular basis.

The characters, sketched by returning screenwriter David Koepp, fit familiar templates: it’s the casting that lifts them. Johansson, Bailey and Ali are almost impossible to dislike, serving megawatt charisma that’s well worth however many millions they were paid. Flirtatiously getting to know each other in the best, breeziest way, they ensure our emotional investment in their survival. Perhaps above all, this has been the ingredient missing from the franchise for 30-odd years – people to root for! It’s such a crucial fix and they nail it.

Jurassic Park Rebirth: ‘One tightly edited and remarkably satisfying scene of mortal peril to the next’ - Universal Studios

While the composing reins have been handed over to Alexandre Desplat, with no gripes from me, you won’t miss the two soaring themes John Williams gave Jurassic Park, because they are served up on a platter, like crowd-pleasing hors d’oeuvres. What I’m calling the “awe and wonder” cue won’t leave a dry eye for anyone with childhood memories of when they first heard it.

Edwards has lined up all of this with the enthusiasm of an exceptionally attentive tour guide. Time and again, we hop to the next spot on his itinerary and realise it’s exactly where we need to be. Nothing insults your intelligence, even as the film light-heartedly mocks its own.

The craft is exemplary – it’s easily the best-looking, best-sounding film since the first. But it takes a deep, personal love of the medium for a director to deliver such crunchy impact, thrills, spills and euphoric highs while treading anew in footsteps as craterous (and muddy) as they come. If it’s not the blockbuster of the summer, I’ll be amazed.

12A cert, 133 min. In cinemas from July 2

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