Jurassic World Rebirth
Despite some great dino-action and being an improvement over the previous two films, "Jurassic World Rebirth" is a mixed bag.
Steven Spielberg’s original “Jurassic Park” is an all-time classic. Despite now being over 30 years old, the film still holds up exceptionally well and is far smarter than your average monster movie. It’s hailed by many as one of their all-time favorite movies, and who can blame them? It’s one of the best films by one of our best directors.
Like many blockbuster hits, “Jurassic Park” spawned a (financially) successful franchise, but it feels safe to say that none of the six sequels have matched the quality of the original. Not even “The Lost World,” which saw Spielberg return to the director’s chair. When “Jurassic World” was released in 2015, it proved to be one of the biggest movies of all time, shocking everybody. While it was nowhere near the level of Spielberg’s original, nor did it have the smarts of it, it was a fun summer blockbuster. Then there were its two sequels, “Fallen Kingdom” and “Dominion,” which, despite both grossing over a billion dollars, doubled down on the flaws, creating blockbusters that felt like wasted potential and full of pointless plot twists.
Despite “Dominion” being marketed as the final film of the franchise, Universal and Amblin realized there was too much money on the table to be left untouched, and thus, last winter, it was announced that a new “Jurassic World” movie was in the works, with David Koepp, the screenwriter behind the first two films, would be returning to the franchise. Not only that, but Gareth Edwards, who is no stranger to making big-budget blockbusters like “Godzilla,” “Rogue One,” and “The Creator,” would be taking the directorial reins.
I wanted to be hopeful. Koepp returning after sitting out of the last four films, and getting an experienced genre-filmmaker like Edwards, instilled a lot of faith. I also couldn’t help but feel excited by the cast, including two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali and Scarlett Johansson. Alas, “Jurassic World Rebirth” continues the franchise’s streak of failing to recapture the magic of the first film. Even if it is a notable improvement over the last two films.
Set five years after the events of “Dominion,” the Earth’s ever-changing environment has become unsustainable to the planet’s population of dinosaurs. All the dinosaurs who aren’t already in zoos have relocated to the equator (something the film reminds us of numerous times).
Covert Operations expert Zora Bennett (Johansson) is recruited by big-pharma representative Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to travel to Ile Saint-Hubert, a now evacuated island that was once home to a dinosaur research facility. Paired with the lovably nerdy paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), Zora recruits some of her former teammates, including boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), to extract blood from three dino-hybrids on the island to concoct a wonder-drug that is capable of curing many fatal diseases.
Of course, like all films in the franchise, these characters fail to realize that just because they can do something, it doesn’t mean they should have done something.
In the meantime, family-man Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), has taken his daughters Isabella (Audrina Miranda), Teresa (Luna Blaise), and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) on a sailing trip across the Atlantic, only to find themselves shipwrecked on the same island as Zora and her team. It’s a sub-plot that constantly threatens to derail the entire movie, if it weren’t for some killer set pieces.
“Rebirth” does have a lot of things working in its favor. Edwards has delivered the best-looking Jurassic film since the original. There’s a heavier emphasis on practical effects compared to the previous three installments, and the way Edwards and DP John Mathieson shoot Ile Saint-Hubert is visually marvelous.
The big dino-centric setpieces are effectively tense, and the kills are immensely satisfying, even if there are one too many fakeouts. If there’s any reason to go see “Rebirth” on the big screen, it’s this. Which, let’s be honest, is the main reason why anybody sees a Jurassic sequel. Between a riveting sequence involving the Delgado family evading a T-Rex while on a river raft, to Zora and Henry evading a pterodactyl-hybrid while extracting blood from an egg, there’s more than enough action to have you giddily shoving popcorn into your mouth.
Alas, the characters are enormously flat; not only do they have little depth to them, but the fact that we barely get any dino-action for the first 40 minutes makes their flaws even more apparent. It helps that you have talented and reliable performers like Johansson, Bailey, and Ali on the screen, but there’s only so much they can do with such uninteresting characters. For as inconsistent as the last three films were, at least Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard had great chemistry. None of these characters click together.
This wouldn’t be much of a problem if we didn’t have to spend so much time with this group, but we do, and it runs the risk of veering into what Edwards’ did with his 2014 “Godzilla” film. Thankfully, most of these stars have a stronger gravitas than Aaron Taylor-Johnson did in that film.
The humor mainly falls flat, especially when it comes to Iacono’s Xavier, a character that starts off as an obnoxious frat-bro, only for the movie to tell us that he’s growing up. Yet, we never really see it. A large majority of his screentime is him spitting out one-liners, peeing in terror as Velociraptors roam behind him, or asking around about weed.
Again, “Jurassic World Rebirth” is far from the disaster that “Fallen Kingdom” and “Dominion” were. This had all the right ingredients to be a satisfying dinosaur adventure, but its shortcomings are just so glaringly apparent that the movie doesn’t fully deliver on its promises. If you didn’t mind the last three movies (hell, I had a great time with “Jurassic World”), you’re bound to have fun with this installment. But considering the greatness of Spielberg’s original, this just doesn’t work like it should.