By George & Josh Bate
It’s been over thirty years since Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park film debuted in theaters, becoming a pop-culture sensation that has endured in the hearts and minds of people ever since. Spielberg’s adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel felt real, raw, and featured some of the best visual effects ever put to film (that still hold up today). The legendary director was able to tell a story so immersive that audiences all over the world left the theater feeling as if they had just encountered dinosaurs in the same way that the heroes did. These extinct creatures were portrayed as both wondrous and terrifying, often simultaneously, thus cementing the film as an all-time great blockbuster. In the years since, Universal Studios have made several attempts to expand the franchise, and have generally been successful in keeping Jurassic Park relevant decades later, at least from a box office perspective. However, these sequels, especially the last few Jurassic World films, have failed to take the franchise in creative, new directions and are hindered by dull characters and, at times, awful plotting. With reception for the last outing, Jurassic World: Dominion, being decidedly negative, Jurassic World Rebirth promises to herald in a reinvention of the series. And, while certainly not serving as the ‘rebirth’ of the franchise the title suggests, the latest Jurassic film has enough intense, carefully engineered, and horror-filled dinosaur sequences that ensure interest in this franchise isn’t extinct quite yet.
Jurassic World Rebirth follows the events of the previous film and introduces audiences to a world in which dinosaurs are no longer awe-dropping; instead, they have faded from the public eye, and the world has grown tired of them. Most species struggled to survive amidst a rapidly changing climate, so the majority of dinosaurs are now confined to a small region around the equator. No one ventures to this region, due to the dangers it poses and the laws that prohibit people from doing so, but that doesn’t stop pharmaceutical representative Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) from organizing a trip there. Krebs wishes to collect blood and tissue samples from three dinosaurs, which he and his company believe is the key to making a new medicine that will do wonders to combat heart disease. To achieve this mission, Krebs hires Scarlett Johansson stars as a conflicted corporate operative Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), and enigmatic adventure Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali).
Based on its title, Rebirth teases a new era for this franchise, and after the series low of Jurassic World: Dominion (which bizarrely chose to focus on locusts more than the actual dinosaurs), a fresh start is desperately needed. Despite that promise though, Rebirth does more of the same, rather than operating outside the safe confines of the franchise formula. The story unfolds very similarly to previous installments and fails to inject any innovation into the proceedings, although its rooted in a refreshingly streamlined premise that has the potential for some relevant real-world social commentary. Like its recent predecessors, director Gareth Edwards’ film is also hindered by bland characters with such little depth that they can be barely classified as characters and awkward humor cringe-worthy in its conception and execution.
Where Rebirth repeats the mistakes of recent franchise fare, Edwards’ film distinguishes itself through genuine filmmaking craft and some expertly crafted action sequences. It is clear while watching the movie that it is the product of a filmmaker of the highest caliber, one with a penchant for strong visual storytelling and his finger firmly on the pulse of tension. The Rogue One and Godzilla director more than delivers on the primary selling point of a Jurassic movie with a myriad of thrilling dino set-pieces. A fairly routine first couple sequences aside, Rebirth kicks into gear when the group of characters arrive onto an island populated with genetic experimentations of dinosaurs. A scene involving a T-rex hunting a family on a raft and a grand finale involving arguably the scariest dinosasur to ever feature in a Jurassic film are just some of the gripping, heart-pounding sequences that Edwards constructs and that are alone worth the price of admission.
These sequences are elevated by Edwards’ willingness to lean into the horror roots of Spielberg’s classic. A number of dinosaur set-pieces in Rebirth feel like they are ripped straight out of a genuinely terrifying horror film, rather than a big-budget family blockbuster. Concealing the dinosaurs with careful lighting, shrouding them in shadows, and treating them like classic movie monsters allows Rebirth to evoke the terror in such an effective manner. In the recent Jurassic World films, dinosaurs no longer feel unique or special, and they rarely provoke fear, but, here, Edwards makes these creatures feel special once again, thus giving the film a flicker of the old bite the franchise once had.
A first act ocean sequence, for example, finally gives some attention to aquatic dinosaurs, and is a real standout. With the characters fighting off a giant, dangerous water predator while trying to remain stable on a small boat, this entire scene feels like Jaws with dinosaurs, which is the exact sort of wacky thrill-ride that audiences come to the theater for. Later on, a scene in which the aforementioned family attempts to steal a life-raft from under the nose of a sleeping tyrannosaurus rex is one the film’s most nail-biting moments, showing that when the scale of these beasts is portrayed correctly, and with adequate terror, this franchise is still capable of providing some truly memorable moments.
Investment in the top-tier dinosaur sequences comes easy, although the same can’t be said for a host of dull characters. For starters, there are simply too many characters at play, so much so that the “team” (if they can even be labeled as such) is split into two for the bulk of the film: those that came for this mission specifically and an oddly placed, completely unrelated family of four, whose scenes are bogged down by particularly off-putting and even mean-spirited humor.
Scarlett Johansson feels miscast as the mercenary Zora, who has a shell of a character arc that is as forced as it is cliché. Mahershala Ali, meanwhile, is woefully underused. Like Johansson, Ali’s arc is empty, devoid of emotion, believability, and even lacks sufficient background information needed for the audience to simply understand the character to the fullest.
Jonathan Bailey, meanwhile, is a rare standout in the cast, playing a naïve scientist who remains conflicted about aiding a pharmaceutical company in their efforts to exploit the animals he’s spent his entire career researching. Bailey gives one of the only truly believable performances in the film, and has an aura of likability and charm the film desperately needs more of.
If the central trio of Johansson, Ali, and Bailey fail to inspire much interest, one can hardly describe the mundanity of the other major players. Rupert Friend’s compelling villain Krebs aside, the team is rounded out by a shipwrecked family, whose puzzling inclusion does nothing but drag the film down. The conflict surrounding Manuel Garcia-Rulfo’s father figure and David Iacono as the daughter’s boyfriend feels frustratingly tired, as do the endlessly amounts of flat jokes Iacono is tasked to deliver.
In this sense, Edwards and his cast of talented actors are let down by a script that fails to develop interesting characters and is resoundingly uninterested in reinventing the franchise.
VERDICT: 6/10
Far from the reinvention of the Jurassic franchise that the title suggests, Jurassic World Rebirth proves to be gripping viewing with outstanding and terrifying action set-pieces. Director Gareth Edwards shows off his filmmaking prowess in carefully constructing a number of intense dinosaur scenes that lean into the horror of Spielberg’s 1993 classic. Unfortunately, Edwards’ directing is let down by an unoriginal story and, more damningly, a host of poorly developed characters and cringe-worthy humor. Jonathan Bailey stands out as the naive and passionate paleontologist, while two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali is woefully underused and Scarlett Johansson is miscast as the team mercerency. For its palpably intense dinosaur action and thrills alone, Rebirth warrants viewing and shows that, despite stumbles elsewhere, the Jurassic franchise is not extinct yet.