‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ Review: A Lacklustre Legacy Sequel
One of the biggest blockbuster franchises is back to kick-off the July box office, as ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’ stomps into theaters. The seventh movie in the franchise that began back in 1993, it makes a clean break from the other three ‘Jurassic World’ movies, ditching the established cast and cutting that trilogy’s storyline short.
In ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’, dinosaurs had escaped from captivity and were shown spread across the globe, living alongside humans. Now they are dying out, struggling to live in our climate, and have retreated to a small area around the equator, which is now restricted access. Mark Krebs (Rupert Friend), a pharmaceutical businessman, believes that dinosaurs could hold the key to curing heart disease. He hires mercenaries Zora (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan (Mahershala Ali) to provide protection, palaeontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) as field expert, and takes an expedition to one of InGen’s old islands to take samples from three dinosaurs: the sea-dwelling mosasaur, the massive sauropod titanosaur, and the flying quetzalcoatlus. Naturally, the mission soon begins to fall apart once they encounter these prehistoric creatures.
I’m not sure why the film is titled ‘Rebirth’, as nothing gets reborn. The dinosaurs are dying out, there’s no attempt to revive the theme park, and this is most certainly not a new chapter for the franchise.
After the last three ‘Jurassic World’ movies that got progressively worse and less believable, I thought this might have been a reset for the franchise, a chance to return to the ground and get back to what made this franchise unique. With original writer David Koepp returning, and ‘Godzilla’ (2014) director onboard, I thought it could be, at the very least, a decent by-the-numbers sequel like ‘Jurassic Park 3’. That’s sadly not the case.
It seems this movie has learnt all the wrong lessons from the declining box office of its predecessors. The basic premise that these animals provide some magic cure for heart disease follows the same unfounded science as the ‘World’ movies, and is a poor excuse for a story, but if it was needed to get the plot moving, I could have overlooked it, but the problems don’t end there.
The film is packed with the kind of dumb decisions and extreme coincidences that make you alternately laugh and cringe. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that in the opening scene, an entire scientific facility is brought crashing down because of a Snickers wrapper. There are so many crazy things like this littered throughout, as characters act in the most baffling ways to keep the story, such as it is, turning over.
It’s a thing I never would have expected to say of a ‘Jurassic’ movie, but it’s boring. There are large scenes dedicated to characters sitting around and talking, especially in the first act, as an attempt to describe their characters and motivations, if they have any at all, in a subversion of the old writing adage “show don’t tell”. It doesn’t work either. None of the characters are particularly endearing. Scarlett Johansson is a copy/paste of Black Widow from the MCU, Jonathan Bailey’s persona is a rip-off of Ian Malcolm, who makes occasional outbursts about morality, nature, and (ironically) corporate greed, but without any of the intelligence or contemplation of the original movie’s philosophy. The stand-out is Mahershala Ali, but that’s only because of his charisma, rather than his unimportant one-note mercenary character. There’s also a family on a sailboat who were completely excluded from marketing and feel like they were tacked on. Their purpose is unclear, they have no bearing on the story, and I can only imagine they’re added in as padding, though it feels like their story was one of two scripts pitched, which got condensed into one.
It’s such a shame, but I can’t say I’m surprised. This was a chance to reboot the franchise after the last three movies, but it just feels tired, worn out, and bored with itself. You can feel the lethargy as the film drags itself through all the familiar tropes. The perfunctory action scenes that aren’t smart or filled with tension, but instead go for the bombastic “more teeth” route, with lots of running and screaming, meaning it’s not even fun to watch for the visuals.
It’s a completely forgettable film because there’s nothing to it, just a flimsy fetch quest plot that keeps the characters running from point to point so we can have another tiresome scene of dinosaurs smashing things and eating people. Even stranger is that the mutant dinosaurs that were so hyped up before release have almost nothing to do in the film, and not impact on the plot, making me wonder what their purpose is.
This is the ‘Alien: Romulus’ of the franchise (though much less entertaining than that movie), a retread of past scenes and events with a few unadapted bits from the books thrown in. But that’s the kind of film that should have been made one or two entries ago, and ‘Dominion’ already wrung the nostalgia tap dry, so this movie has nothing to recommend it.
It’s sad to see how far this franchise has fallen from the original movie, with its slick plot, pertinent commentary, and interesting characters. Now, it’s just nothing, so heart, no intelligence, no spectacle. The Monsterverse has better action, the ‘A Quiet Place’ movies have better horror and suspense: I really see no reason for this franchise to continue.
