Directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla; The Creator) — Screenplay by David Koepp (Jurassic Park; Black Bag).
Despite Jurassic World: Dominion being met with horrendous critical reception, the film still made $1 billion at the box office, as the franchise appears to be critic-proof. Therefore, even though Dominion was marketed as the ‘conclusion to the Jurassic era,’ Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment fast-tracked a sequel that is here only three years after the release of the previous film. To kick off a new chapter of the Jurassic era, so to speak, the producers turned to Scarlett Johansson to be the new face of the franchise and hired Godzilla and Rogue One‘s Gareth Edwards to take on the directing duties. Even if you felt burned out on the film series following Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, you have to admit that the hiring of Johansson and Edwards — the former a world-renowned thespian and the latter a director known for his understanding of scale and visual effects-heavy filmmaking — was to be seen as good news. Indeed, their film together, Jurassic World: Rebirth, is a definite step in the right direction, as there’s a lot to like about it. That said, given some of its issues, I’m still not sure if it is a big enough step for it to be particularly noteworthy or praiseworthy.
Set some time after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, Gareth Edwards’ Jurassic World: Rebirth takes place at a time when Earth’s climate has largely become inhospitable to dinosaurs, thus forcing most of the animals to live near or on the warmer equatorial islands. The film follows Zora Bennett (played by Scarlett Johansson), a black-ops mercenary, who is hired by the pharmaceutical company ParkerGenix to spearhead a top-secret mission to an equatorial island that houses dinosaurs. There, they have to retrieve biomaterial from three dinosaurs — an ocean-based Mosasaurus, a land-based Titanosaurus, and the flying Quetzalcoatlus — from which they hope to be able to manufacture medicine to cure heart diseases.
However, unbeknownst to Zora, the island is, in actuality, the location at which InGen crossbred dinosaurs, and therefore, it houses mutated dinosaurs that the world has never seen. Tagging along, among others, are the paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (played by Jonathan Bailey), Zora’s old friend and colleague LeClerc (played by Mahershala Ali), and ParkerGenix representative Martin Krebs (played by Rupert Friend). Along the way, they also run into and pick up a shipwrecked family father (played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters (played by Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda), and the eldest daughter’s boyfriend (played by David Iacono).
It’s incredible to think that despite the fact that Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park film is 32 years old this year, it is still better and better looking than any of the sequels that have come out in the last three decades. That remains the case with Rebirth, which, once again, is a sequel that pales in comparison. One of the major reasons why is that the franchise — much like with other modern sequels — has struggled to recapture the spirit while still doing something new. What that means is that in an effort to get close to that same spirit, filmmakers often opt for staying true to either previous story beats or cheap, nostalgia-infused moments or dialogue.
In the case of Rebirth, one of the big issues is just how formulaic the film is. Koepp’s narrative borrows elements from Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Jurassic Park III, so much so that there’s barely an original bone in its skeleton. Heck, even the genetically altered dinosaur experimentation that this film toys with — turning a dinosaur movie into a mutated monster movie — is pulling on a thread from the first Jurassic World film, which, of course, had the Indominus Rex. To its credit, it doesn’t have the cheap and lazy reference-heavy, wink at the camera dialogue that some of the previous Jurassic World films had, but instead, the dialogue is quite generic and feels rushed. There’s a fairly long scene between Ali and Johansson that is meant to, sort of, deliver their tragic backstories, but rather than feeling like it helps us to get more invested in the characters, the scene feels more like they’re checking off a box to be able to say they had that type of scene. The one exception is that Jonathan Bailey gets to deliver a really spirited and savvy monologue about whether or not mankind rules the Earth, but that is the only moment of writing that really feels like it has something to say.
Throughout the film, there are still references to the previous films — e.g., a certain dinosaur popping up to toy with your expectations — that pop up from time to time, but it feels less unsubtle than was the case in Dominion. But the familiarity is mostly in the way characters and plot points feel like carbon copies of what the franchise has done before and better. Indeed, the characters are so thinly drawn and so predictably set up that you almost know exactly who will die and who won’t from the moment they pop up on screen. From a performance standpoint, Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey — the three most prominent stars, all of whom I enjoyed watching in the movie — have very little to work with and, even though they mostly get by on their likability, charm, and charisma, their talents are wasted in this.
Plot-wise, it feels like two films mashed into one, with the family subplot and the main mission feeling fairly distinct and like they could each be their own film. The latter of the two is far stronger than the former on an engagement level, even though the former has a key action scene and moments of levity. As for the family subplot, it felt somewhat studio-mandated, given it even has its own Baby Yoda-esque figure, and it did, kind of, bother me that a certain character only has a leg injury when it is convenient for the plot. Speaking of studio-mandated decisions, there is an off-screen fake-out moment late in this film that cheapens the film’s ending.
Also, it is noteworthy that Rebirth works so hard at undoing the ‘dinosaurs are all over the world’ development that the previous films set in motion. In that regard, the film almost seems embarrassed to be classified as a Jurassic World movie and not a Jurassic Park film. Although I dislike the previous two films, I do think it is a shame that instead of seizing the chance to do something unique, which was made possible by the ‘dinosaurs among humans’ turn, the film instead opted for what was safest. That said, there is no denying that this movie is just flat-out better than the last two.
Because there are plenty of things that make this a definite step in the right direction, and I can see why the audience that I saw it with clearly had a great time. For one, Gareth Edwards, indeed, was a great choice to select to make this film, as his sense of scale and inventive visual staging is put to fairly good use in select sequences. Edwards and his crew really pull off some of the best action in any of the Jurassic World films thus far. The ocean and air sequences on the main mission are intense and get the most out of the scenes, while the land sequence with the Titanosaurus reaches for Spielbergian awe in a way that made me feel really nostalgic. Admittedly, the third act action is not quite as effective, though, to make up for that, there is a phenomenal T-Rex raft scene in the middle of the movie — which, apparently, is a sequence taken straight from Michael Crichton’s original novel — that is well staged, toys with your expectations, and that gets you on the edge of your seat.
Indeed, the dinosaur scenes deliver both in beauty and in action, which will be enough for many people, especially given the fact that the cast features such likable stars. The film also just looks really great, and the environment looks tactile, even though some backdrops are noticeably not there. I went into how references to previous Jurassic films are still there, but the filmmakers also had good fun with crafting little visual nods to other films like Jaws, or even, in the film’s opening flashback, to the director’s own Godzilla movie.
Although the film does have strong action, does reach for Spielbergian awe, and does have likable stars, Gareth Edwards’ Jurassic World: Rebirth takes no risks, makes no new moves, and plays it safe. It is definitely better than the last few sequels — the best compliment that I can give it is that it feels more like a Jurassic Park sequel than a Jurassic World sequel — but it is also just a generic and formulaic been-there-done-that film with a new coat of paint. It’s a step in the right direction that I’d happily watch again, but we should be able to expect more from these films, given the masterpiece it all started from.
5.9 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 