Jurassic World Rebirth Ruins A Great Dinosaur For The Sake Of Accuracy

The following post contains spoilers for "Jurassic World Rebirth."

Say what you will about the flaws of "Jurassic Park III," but 24 years after its initial release, it remains a more than worthy sequel and a fantastic creature feature — just ask Sam Neill. At just 93 minutes, this is a lean, mean monster movie that goes straight for the fun stuff and wastes no time. (Sure, the velociraptor dream sequence is goofy, but it also makes sense in context!)

Most importantly, this is the movie that embraces its Ray Harryhausen influences and lets the dinosaurs fight in big, entertaining fashion. Granted, there are still thrilling set pieces of dinosaurs chasing and killing humans — the pteranodon sequence remains a highlight of the franchise — but it's the fight between a T-rex and a spinosaurus that elevates this movie to a new level. From the moment we first see the spinosaurus burst from the jungle and clash with a plane, it establishes itself as a major new menace in the franchise. This is not just a hungry dinosaur doing what dinosaurs do. The spinosaurus doesn't simply attack the dumb humans who dare get near it, but instead, it relentlessly hunts the Kirby family and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) across Isla Sorna for days on end for seemingly no reason.

Indeed, the best shot of "Jurassic Park" is a simple one: After Grant and Eric (Trevor Morgan) finally reunite with Eric's parents thanks to Eric tracking the sound of his dad's phone ringtone, they realize that the phone had been missing for a whole day. It's at that moment that the phone rings again, and we realize this was all a ruse to gather the humans together in one place where they can easily be devoured by the film's villainous mastermind: the spinosaurus. The T-rex may be the literal symbol of the franchise, and the velociraptor may be the most vicious dinosaur, but the spinosaurus is, without a doubt, the single most evil dinosaur in the entire franchise.

This makes the spinosaurus' appearance in "Jurassic World Rebirth" the biggest disappointment in what is already a rather lackluster movie, where it gets an ugly redesign that ruins what was one of the best dinosaurs around.

We first get a glimpse of the spinosaurus in "Jurassic World Rebirth" when the Delgados spot one in the distance from their boat, right before they experience a wreck after a mosasaurus attack. Later, when the dinosaurs return to finish the job and also wreck the boat that belongs to Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), we see three spinosauruses working together with the mosasaurus, picking up whatever human the big aquatic monster leaves behind and even trying to jump on board to attempt to eat the humans.

The spinosaurus is no longer a badass monster that stalks its prey across an entire island for no reason. Instead, as one character points out in "Rebirth," the spinosaurus has a coexisting relationship with the mosasaurus and sort of just eats whatever scraps it leaves behind. It's been reduced to a tag-along sidekick rather than a proper threat on its own.

When it was first announced that the spinosaurus would return to the big screen in "Rebirth," it was cause for celebration, but to see them in the finished film could not be a bigger disappointment. Not only does the dinosaur act extremely uncool, but it looks even worse. Rather than resembling a big T-rex with a sail-like spine, the spinosaurus now looks like a cross between a crocodile and a duck, being much more of an aquatic creature than in "Jurassic Park III." It takes away any sense of danger, any scary factor, and instead leaves us with a dorky heron dinosaur that science tells us mostly fed on fish.

It must be said that the look of the spinosaurus changed between movies because scientists have new data about how the spinosaurus may have looked in reality. The original look from "Jurassic Park III" was faithful to the then-current belief, but the problem is that spinosaurus specimens are notoriously incomplete — the original fossil holotype was destroyed during World War II. Until 2014, scientists really only had parts of the skull and the sail, and could only make guesses as to what the rest of the creature's skeleton looked like. Adding to that, the spinosaurus simply defies what other similar dinosaurs could do and what they looked like, so there has been a lot of debate as to how exactly the spinosaurus functioned, particularly around how it moved and whether it could actually stand upright. 

Though traditionally thought of as a biped, a 2014 paper popularized the notion that the spinosaurus was actually quadrupedal, leading to the weird croco-duck creature in "Jurassic World Rebirth." The problem is, it shouldn't have to be this way. For one thing, attempting to follow scientific theories and presenting them as fact in the movies can be a losing battle when theories around dinosaurs change all the time — it is now believed yet again that the spinosaurus actually could stand upright. 

More importantly, each and every dinosaur in "Jurassic World Rebirth" is a mutant — not just the Distortus Rex. From the original "Jurassic Park," the franchise has made it extremely clear these are not accurate representations of the real dinosaurs, but they've been modified with DNA from frogs and other creatures. Why can't the spinosaurus remain a badass predator, and just use the DNA meddling as an excuse? It's not like the dilophosaurus had a frill and could spit poison — and don't get me started on the wildly inaccurate velociraptor. We don't go to the "Jurassic" franchise for accuracy, but to watch scary monsters chase after humans. Here's hoping the next movie will restore the spinosaurus to his former glory.