Review: JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH

 by Rob DiCristino

An adventure 65,000,032 years in the making.

Life found a way. The park was open. And now, Universal Pictures is proud to present the latest and greatest iteration of the Jurassic saga: Jurassic World Rebirth. You see, it’s called Rebirth because, well. It’s called Rebirth because the dinosaurs are, you know. Well, alright, so there are new species that are, um. This is a new chapter in the story of, huh. Shit. Okay, look. This movie is called Jurassic World Rebirth because the title could not possibly matter less to the millions of nostalgia-drunk millennials eager to spend their money on anything that will remind them how great it felt to be twelve years old. Hell, Rebirth doesn’t even make a lick of sense in the context of the movie: The only thing “reborn” here is Universal’s blue ribbon intellectual property, a franchise with more improbable survival instincts than the man-eating chunguses it resurrected back in 1993. Discerning audiences would have rejected this slop ages ago, but here we are, seven billion dollars later. What, you want innovation? Creativity? Scientific nuance? It’s Jurassic Park 7. Shut up and eat your popcorn.

The “adventure” picks up years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, just around the time humanity is starting to grow tired of the prehistoric marvels that once captured our imagination. No new theme parks have risen from the ashes of the first. Museums are ghost towns. Dinosaurs have evaporated from our cultural consciousness. After all John Hammond’s imagineering, these beasts are now little more than inconveniences, roadblocks to be navigated around — literally, in the case of a wounded long-neck mucking up traffic in downtown Manhattan — and blamed for the travel ban that governments have slapped on the warmest vacation spots around the equator. These are the only places dinosaurs can thrive, David Koepp’s screenplay reminds us at least three times in the first five minutes, making them perfect targets for Big Pharma exec Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend, whose character might as well be named “Stanley Evil”) and a team of mercenaries led by Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson, visibly overjoyed to be earning a majority share of first-dollar grosses).

Their goal? Develop a revolutionary heart disease treatment from the blood of the three largest dinosaur species remaining on Earth: Titanosaurus (big long necks), Mosasaurus (the whale-looking fuckers from the Chris Pratt movie), and Quetzalcoatlus (school bus-sized pterodactyls). Krebs, Bennett, her partner Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), and paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) head-up a party bound for the island of Saint-Hubert, where — oh yes, you guessed it — yet another abandoned InGen genetic research facility lays in wait. Unlike Islas Nublar and Sorna, however, Saint-Hubert is actually an island of rejects, a nightmare alley of cross-species mutations the sight of which would have sent Hammond to an even earlier grave. After rescuing a shipwrecked family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Audrina Miranda, Luna Blaise, and David Iacono) and braving a Mosasaurus attack that knocks their own boat out of commission, the team must survive on Saint-Hubert and collect the three blood samples before the rescue helicopter arrives.

With Gareth Edwards’ history of directing special effects-heavy curios and Jurassic veteran Koepp fresh off penning two Soderbergh bangers, there was a real possibility that Jurassic World Rebirth might have been just the reset this hopelessly-corkscrewed franchise needed. After all, we did dinosaurs in theme parks. We did dinosaurs in San Diego. We did dinosaurs in a haunted mansion on top of a cloning laboratory where Toby Jones held auctions for sociopathic billionaires who wanted to turn velociraptors into soldiers. We’ve done it all! There’s no artistic imperative to keep making these movies, but as Loomis himself remarks, “When evolution is impossible, survival is the best-case scenario.” And he’s right: These movies don’t need to evolve. They don’t need to pioneer. They don’t need to justify. They simply need to exist and collect our money. In that regard, Jurassic World Rebirth sufficiently fulfills the bare minimum requirements of the franchise: People travel to an island populated by dinosaurs. The dinosaurs eat some of them. Others escape. Cue the song.

Is this preferable to whatever loud, locust-centric nonsense was happening in Dominion? Maybe! But even Koepp’s attempts to get back to basics — including a T-Rex attack on a river-rafting party lifted straight from Michael Crichton’s original novel — read all the worse because they’re presented with such obvious dispassion. That T-Rex is in one scene. A dilophosaurus bounces in just long enough to open its little neck fans for the trailer. Our only look at classic, pack-hunting velociraptors — and I need your undivided attention here — is obscured by a character taking a piss on a tree. But wait, you ask, why are these familiar faces even on the island? Isn’t Saint-Hubert supposed to be full of mutant freaks like the pachy-raptor hybrids that attack our heroes in the underground tunnels or the big Cloverfield monster — named, I shit you not, “Distortus Rex” — that acts as the film’s end boss? That’s true! But Jurassic World Rebirth doesn’t have the attention span for these kinds of logical details. Or any details! Aside from “gather three blood samples,” there’s no plot! No revelation! No discoveries! I cannot stress enough how little happens in this movie!

Every actor is overqualified. Every character is undercooked. Most of the conflicts get bored and trail off into the long grass before they’re resolved (Don’t ask if the Mesosaurus that trapped the party’s boat on the island is still in the water when they leave on a different boat). After thirty years of industrial espionage, scientific malfeasance, and ethical affronts before the face of god, the Jurassic franchise has seen fit to present us with an empty, soft-boiled nothing of a movie, a unit of content that, while undoubtedly less smug and cynical than anything in the previous sequels, is appallingly content to coast on our childhood devotion to its iconography. Even Edwards’ best movements are Spielberg homages: An attack in an abandoned convenience store is framed identically to the original Jurassic’s kitchen hunt, while a thrilling maritime pursuit borrows its pacing wholesale from the barrel chase in Jaws. Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but what it adds up to in Rebirth isn’t worth the effort to dig this decaying franchise out of the ground.

Jurassic World Rebirth hits U.S. theaters this Wednesday, July 2nd.