Welcome back to Jurassic Park; are you tired of the ride yet? Jurassic World Rebirth is the seventh film in the Jurassic Park film franchise, and unsurprisingly, it’s still bad. The newest film follows paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) as he joins a covert mission to extract dinosaur DNA for medicines. The mission is led by mercenaries Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), and is funded by pharmaceutical executive, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). Along the way, they encounter Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a father who has been shipwrecked with his two daughters, Teressa (Luna Blaise), Isabella (Audrina Miranda), as well as Teresa’s boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono). These two groups must manage to survive the hostile island filled with dinosaurs and try to return to safety.
Director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) is able to breathe a little life back into this mess. However, not much could save this from screenwriter David Koepp’s (Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Zathura: A Space Adventure, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Presence) nothing of a script.
Plot and Script
Jurassic World Rebirth is the third film that David Koepp has written that has released this year. Sadly, it is not on the same level of Black Bag or Presence. Both of those prior films, while not perfect, feel thought through and developed. Rebirth, however, feels like a rough draft of a narrative—the bones of a better movie are present. This is not totally unexpected since Koepp wrote the first two Jurassic Park films, but one would hope he would have returned with refreshing ideas. There are none in Rebirth. It’s a soulless rehash of events from prior films or lifted from the original novel by Michael Crichton.
Furthermore, all the dialogue is dull and uninspired. Every character and every scene has the most basic dialogue to get the most basic information about the characters across. As for the plot itself, it’s contrived and is one that has been done several times over in the franchise: returning to one of the many islands with dinosaurs on it because there is potential to get rich from it. Watching this sort of narrative play out for the nth time is just exhausting.
And once again, we see the same themes play out: love your family and don’t trust big corporations. These are fine themes to have; there’s nothing wrong with them. Still, if every movie in your franchise belabors the same two points, then it becomes tiresome. This is especially true if you do nothing new or don’t attempt to expand on them in some meaningful way. This failure on the script level affects every other aspect of the film.
Performances in Jurassic World Rebirth
Sadly, no actor shines in Jurassic World Rebirth. Everyone involved feels like they are phoning it in. Our two main leads, Johansson and Bailey, are regrettably not good in this. Part of it is because of the material they are given to work with. Another part of it is that neither of them seems very interested in being on set. Every take feels like it was done as quickly as possible and with as little enthusiasm as possible. Similarly, Friend as the film’s antagonist is beyond boring. Both the character and the performance leave so much to be desired. Generic evil businessmen are a constant in the films. In this particular franchise, it’s hard to care about anything that happens when he is on screen, as it’s all so predictable.
Of course, on the other side of the coin are the actors portraying the family stranded on the dinosaur isle. Garcia-Rulfo as a dad is serviceable, as are Blaise and Miranda as his daughters, respectively. It’s easier to buy the family side of the whole film in terms of character and motivations. Simultaneously, their storyline feels so disconnected from everything else that it comes across like a studio mandate to have them in it all. Lastly, Iacono’s Xavier is one of the more annoying characters in recent memory.
Mahershala Ali’s Role
One bright spot amongst all the cast, Mahershala Ali, is maybe the only person actually having some fun. Unfortunately, he is criminally underused, and it almost feels like a waste. It would have been a real treat to see his character more centered and his emotional conflict around a certain death actually fleshed out instead of a brief line of dialogue and the rest left subtextually until the end where it’s clichéd and ultimately undercut by the film’s refusal to have actual stakes.
Gareth Edwards and Dinosaurs
Aside from Ali, director Gareth Edwards shines here. This is far from his best work, yet his sense of scale is only matched by a handful of directors working today. And that sense of scale does help instill a sense of terror into the dinosaurs once again. They actually feel like living creatures again and not just computer-generated nonsense (with one glaring exception). Edwards is also very effective at keeping production designer James Clyne et al’s set pieces moving and feeling tense. It’s quite refreshing after two-thirds of the last trilogy were some of the most basic-looking blockbusters out there.
For as much as the dinosaurs feel more natural and like a return to form of the first two films, there is one big exception to this: the D. rex. The D. rex has been all the rage in the marketing for Jurassic World Rebirth. Ultimately, it’s a huge disappointment, making a brief appearance at the start and the end of the film. Edwards is able to utilize it effectively, but since it’s never hinted at after its initial showcase, it does feel somewhat out of left field when it makes its reappearance. And as cool as the design is, it just feels like another attempt from the franchise to reinvent the wheel. The genetically modified dinosaurs are so exhausting when the actual ones are more than enough to be scary and entertaining.
The Verdict on Jurassic World Rebirth
Jurassic World Rebirth is barely functional and held together by a few set pieces that work mostly to Edwards’s understanding of scale and horror. Unfortunately, everything else here comes across like a first draft. None of it feels like a meaningful expansion of the world; it’s all just a studio trying to wring as much money as possible out of a brand while they still can.
Score: 2/5
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