Images courtesy of Universal Pictures
JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH— 3 STARS
Jurassic World Rebirth arrives with a stature hindered by uncertainty. The “World”-branded series of reboots, started ten years ago with the massive success of Jurassic World, ran its course in three films after Jurassic World Dominion in 2022, even if the Universal Pictures powers-that-be didn’t see it that way or couldn’t help themselves from milking one of their principal cash cows. After that embarrassingly weak legacy sequel, featuring the return of original cast members teaming up with new ones, the question was the franchise’s possible direction after its coda-tying bow.
Asking more flatly, what is Jurassic World Rebirth even doing here? The title evokes reappearing and flourishing after a decline. Considering where they were last in 2022, that is a tall order. To pull a true rebirth off worthy of the definition, Universal Pictures and a crack screenwriter would have to script something drastically different and dazzle us. Their concocted result is quite a mixed medley.
Taking place several years after the fallout of Jurassic World Dominion, Jurassic World Rebirth outlines a present-day where the majority of the roaming, free-range dinosaurs living amongst society have either died out due to disease or inhospitable climate change or have migrated or been relocated to lands and islands in the tropical equatorial regions of the planet. And, for what’s left, public interest in dinosaurs has waned with a societal yawn and dwindling museum admission numbers. Guess that black market of underground cock fighting dried up so we can have more Power Slap leagues.
LESSON #1: WANING INTEREST LEADS TO HUBRIS— For David Koepp, the returning original screenwriter of Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, to write that notion of “waning interest” into the expositional introduction of Jurassic World Rebirth is telling and damning at the same time. Even if the movie thinks it’s meta for trying to say so and acknowledge the 2022 low point it is following, the admission still reeks of the stubborn in-movie and external filmmaking hubris that got the Jurassic World sequels in trouble every time. This establishing premise makes a conversation between Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing and Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady in 2015’s Jurassic World about needing “a new attraction every few years in order to reinvigorate the public’s interest” practically prophetic.
LESSON #2: OH NO, NOT THIS AGAIN— The flimsiness for Jurassic World Rebirth starts with the setting. Guess what? There’s another island that housed InGen operations. Guess what? It had an incident with casualties years ago that led to its abandonment and the dinosaurs runnin’ wild ever since. Ile-Saint Hubert off the coast of French Guyana is Unlucky Island #4. The original Isla Nublar was destroyed by a volcano during the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Site B’s Isla Sorna of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park III was pillaged of its dinosaur specimens by the rival corporation Biosyn before the events of Jurassic World Dominion, and the Mantah Corp Island of the animated and canonical Camp Cretaceous wing of the franchise.
At its peak, Ile-Saint Hubert housed InGen’s R&D division and lived up to Claire Dearing’s declaration of “Corporate felt genetic modification would up the wow factor.” The facility specialized in the exotic cross-breeding experiments with freakish results that led to Jurassic World’s attractions like the hybrid Indominus Rex. Naturally, there exists an urgent need to go there—the place completely forbidden from travel for clearly grievous reasons—which requires a motley crew of smart people and tough escorts. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.
Enter Martin Krebs, a ParkerGenix pharmaceutical representative with deep pockets, played by professional villain Rupert Friend of Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. His company’s research has seen potential in paleocoronary health, where compounds in dinosaur hemoglobin could be the lucrative answer to curing heart disease. Alas, it’s not as easy as pricking a finger or a claw for a drop or two. Oh no! The necessary samples must come from living specimens extracted from the largest goliath species of dinosaurs across land, sea, and air, namely the enormous herbivore Titanosaurus, the flying Quetzalcoatlus, and the oceanic alpha predator Mosasaurus. Automatically, you’ve got a movie that is going big before going home.
The expertise for this secret mission rests on paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis (Wicked and Bridgerton snack Jonathan Bailey), and the tactical muscle comes a special ops team assembled (pun intended) by Scarlet Johansson’s high-priced and morally flexible operative Zora Bennet, which includes her old spy buddy and boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali, classing up the Jurassic joint with his two Oscars) based in Suriname.
For those of you keeping score, out of all the creative possibilities, new territory, and diverse tangents under the sun in a world where dinosaurs roam the earth alongside humans in Jurassic World, we’re down to mutants, rejects, and another cockamamie corporate scheme for getting rich. This retread of hubris is tired, but David Koepp isn’t done yet.
LESSON #3: THERE ALWAYS HAS TO BE A KID IN PERIL— True to Claire Dearing’s cited “focus groups,” it wouldn’t be a Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movie without a senseless Mary Sue kid or two in peril. Zora and Duncan’s squad deviates from their clandestine mission for the maritime responsibility to answer a mayday distress call from a sailboat carrying a family crossing the Atlantic that was overturned by the mosasaurus they’re hunting. The rescued father (The Lincoln Lawyer’s Manuel García-Rulfo), two daughters (Luna Blaise of Manifest and newcomer Audrina Miranda), and tagalong boyfriend (David Iacono of Fear Street: Prom Queen) become the intersecting B-plot on the new island when the parties are separated.
This is, honestly, quite a mess, but there are two sources of saving grace in Jurassic World Rebirth. The first matches the spirit of rebirth used in the title, which is the noble attempt to bring back awe and thrills to a Jurassic film. This was the clear goal in bringing back David Koepp, a proven expert at plotting action suspense. Still, he rips off some of his own work with sequences that mirror—or flat-out ape—scenes from his two prior movies. On one hand, they worked then, and they admittedly still work now with a nostalgic aura lifted by Alexandre Desplat’s score amalgamating the classic cues with new danger music. On the other hand, the lack of new ideas to fill a double narrative hopscotching between two survival parties is plain to see and borderline detrimental.
The strongest redeeming quality of Jurassic World Rebirth is the hiring of director Gareth Edwards. While being a proven wizard for action and injecting all kinds of geothermal mist in this movie to mask the stalking threats, he has also become an expert at bringing forward human characters and extracting palpable emotions within spectacles of blockbuster and otherworldly proportions. Through his career spanning his Godzilla attempt in 2014, the outstanding Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and 2023’s underrated The Creator, Gareth is people-forward, and his patience and emphasis in that meaningful direction couple admirably with Koepp’s return to raising amazement back.
LESSON #4: DO SOMETHING GOOD WHILE THERE’S STILL TIME– Those redemptive qualities fostered by Edwards culminate in this lesson, which finally echoes Owen Grady’s perfect response from the aforementioned Jurassic World conversation of “They’re dinosaurs. Wow enough.” When Dr. Loomis’s medical breakthrough might work, there’s a possible change of heart of “science for all of us, not some of us” permeating the tough guys and gals around him. The swell stands as the closest thing to a rallying cry and moral victory in Jurassic World Rebirth, guided by enough enjoyment and grandeur to save the movie from complete disaster.
LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1318)
