Jurassic World: Rebirth review

JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH: 

GARETH EDWARDS TRIES TO INJECT NEW LIFE IN THE LONG-RUNNING FRANCHISE, BUT THE WOW FACTOR IS GONE! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Scarlett Johansson in Jurassic World: Rebirth

 

            The dinosaurs are running wild again just like the Weird Al song in Jurassic World: Rebirth, the seventh installment of the Jurassic Park film series dating all the way back to 1993 with Steven Spielberg’s groundbreaking original landmark. However, ever since that first film’s success, Hollywood has been trying to recapture that magic with varying results and the closest being 2015’s Jurassic World (The fourth entry) which was an enjoyable summer popcorn movie but still didn’t hold a candle to the first Jurassic Park. 

            After several bumpy entries in the franchise, director Gareth Edwards (Godzilla (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Creator) steps in to hopefully breathe new life in the series with Rebirth under a script penned by the original film’s writer, David Koepp (Panic Room, Spider-Man, Black Bag). The trailers didn’t grab me all that much mainly because I was heavily disappointed in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion, but I was hopeful that with a new cast and crew helming it maybe Rebirth could bring this series back to its glory days…eh, sort of! 

            Jurassic World: Rebirth is an improvement over Fallen Kingdom and Dominion as it doesn’t involve any bizarre subplots with a little girl who’s a clone or locusts and does attempt to recapture that Spielberg magic from the original movie at times. Unfortunately, it never really takes the series anywhere new and repeats a lot of things seen in the earlier films. 

            The film follows covert operation expert, Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson-Lost in Translation, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Under the Skin) and paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey-Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Testament of Youth, Wicked 1 and 2) being tasked with a top-secret mission to receive biomaterial samples from the three largest prehistoric specimens which hold the key to a new heart disease treatment. Zora and Henry along with their team leader, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali-Moonlight, Green Book, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) embark on their expedition to retrieve their samples from the dinosaurs that have since been living around the equator and mayhem ensues. 

             The film also stars Rupert Friend (Pride & Prejudice, Companion, The Phoenician Scheme) as Martin Krebs, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven (2016), Sicario: Day of the Soldado, 6 Underground) as Reuben Delgado, Luna Blaise (Fresh Off the Boat, Manifest, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe) as Teresa Delgado, David Iacono (St. Vincent, Fresh Kills, Fear Street: Prom Queen) as Xavier Dobbs, and Ed Skrein (The Transporter: Refueled, Deadpool, Alita: Battle Angel) as Bobby Atwater. 

            Overall, Jurassic World: Rebirth is better than most of the previous Jurassic Park sequels and should make for an enjoyable enough popcorn film for the summer if that’s all you’re looking for. But coming off of Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park movie which revolutionized CGI and special effects while also having a gripping story and memorable characters, it feels cheapened and never takes the franchise anywhere new. 

            The movie starts off simple enough with a fetch quest led by Black Widow, Fiyero from Wicked, and The Prowler to retrieve the dinosaur DNA samples to cure diseases, but as it goes on and more characters and plot elements are introduced, it gets overly complicated and crowded. The classic case of two different Jurassic World 7 scripts being smushed together into one. 

            I was with the Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey plot where it was just about the three of them embarking in the jungles to extract the dinosaurs’ DNA, but then the film introduces a family that was pleasure cruising around the Dino Island (Because that makes sense!) but they get stuck on the island and have to escape. So now you have a family to worry about on top of Plot A involving Scarlett, Mahershala, and Jonathan and they hardly ever correlate with each other. 

            Despite the film’s messy script, I’ll give it credit that the performances are decent particularly from Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey who bring a lot of likable charm to a dinosaur/monster movie where…I only care about those three people. They have their fair share of fun quirks and banter and I wanted to see them survive and achieve their goal in the end; I honestly cared more about them than Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard from the previous entries. 

            There are some thrilling sequences with tons of dinosaur tension, most notably a scene involving a sleeping T-Rex and an inflatable raft (Which apparently was a segment from Michael Crichton's original Jurassic Park book that never made it into the film) and another where a group of characters escape a dinosaur in a sewer. But a lot of them feel like copy and paste versions of scenes from the other Jurassic Park movies, one of which literally felt like a retread of the raptors in the kitchen sequence from the first film except in an abandoned convenience store on the island…also, the human characters have way too many close calls with these creatures! 

            The dinosaur effects really lean into CGI this time around and while I can’t say they’re bad-looking, they just look like graphics from a video game. Compared to the first Jurassic Park which had a ton of ingenuity and craftsmanship with methods like animatronics and puppetry among other practical effects on top of the computer graphics, it just doesn’t feel that special anymore. 

            Jurassic World: Rebirth is a fine enough summer blockbuster for those looking for large-scale thrills to marvel at while munching on popcorn (Actually, despite this being a very mid review, I don’t regret watching this on the big screen). I admire Gareth Edwards for his efforts at trying to inject new life in this franchise, but as with every Jurassic Park sequel since 1997, Spielberg did it best the first time around in 1993 and nothing can top it, but who cares? This movie will still gross over a billion dollars.