Jurassic World : Rebirth Review

The Jurassic franchise enters its 7th film and starts its third trilogy. After the disastrous Dominion, a semi-reboot seemed the best approach to breathe some new life into this franchise that should have been made extinct after its last outing. Yet here we are, three years later, with another Jurassic film. Notably, the last one grossed over a billion dollars at the box office, and kids and families continue to love the spectacle of dinosaurs on the big screen. Getting a new director with Gareth Edwards (The Creator, Star Wars : Rogue One) takes the reins, alongside screenwriter David Koepp (Indiana Jones & The Dial of Destiny & The Mummy 2017) to try and chart a new course forward for the series that pays homage to the past and do something different this time around. While this may have sounded good on paper, the result is a muddled story with unlikeable characters and warped dinosaurs that had me begging to watch Jurassic World Dominion again. Well, almost, it couldn’t be as bad as locusts, could it?

It’s been five years since the events of Dominion, and Earth has become inhospitable to dinosaurs in the wild due to modern diseases and climate change. The world has largely forgotten about the large creatures (except when they collapse in the middle of New York City, bringing traffic to a halt). All the dinosaurs have been kept on an island near the original park, and is completely off limits to everyone. A medical research company needs the fresh cells from three of the largest living dinosaurs on the island to find a cure for heart disease.

In comes special-ops Zora (Scarlett Johansson), who recruits paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathon Bailey) and weapons specialist Duncan (Mahershala Ali) to complete the mission. Together, they travel to the island and take on the mission. While there, they collide with the Delgado family, who are marooned on the island after being capsized by a swimming herd of Spinosaurus. The father and his two daughters, along with one of the daughters’ boyfriends, are purely here to make the T-rex river raft scene from the first book work (and to sell merch) with a cute new dinosaur, Dolores (the Temu version of Cera from The Land Before Time). The cast are perfectly fine, each of these main players are perfectly serviceable, doing the best with the limited material handed to them. Johansson feels wooden, Bailey gets stuck chewing down on mints as a comedic moment that fails everytime and Ali is the only one who escapes relatively unscathed (till the end!)

The main issue here is the script, the crossing over of the mercenaries video game plot of “head to dangerous island and collect three things while shooting and sneaking” would have been enough as its own story. Unfortunately, this leaves the family story of marooned survivors trying to escape while not having weapons a little weak. There are ridiculous moments in the movie involving a teenager peeing with velociraptors that are meant to be funny, unfortunately, in our theatre, it fell completely flat. A lot of the scenes are clearly attempting to replicate the first Jurassic Park film. Zora and Dr Henry find the Titanosaurus, who are clearly engaged in either a mating ritual in a grassy field or a wedding? (It’s more fun to imagine it as a wedding ceremony.) Another attempt to recreate the raptors in the fridge scene from the first film with a different type of dinosaur. It falls flat and pales in comparison. Edwards is a gifted director, and it was interesting seeing his take on this franchise.

Visually, the film works, the dinosaurs look spectacular, and the island setting with ancient temple ruins is the perfect setting for dino-sized shenanigans. It’s a shame they are weighed down by one of the worst scripts this long-gestating franchise has produced. Long-time fans of this franchise will no doubt love seeing their beloved CGI dinosaurs back on the screen, but the rest of us are left to wonder how long Universal will treat this franchise like the Fast & Furious, churning out uninspired material every few years. Potentially worst of all is the teased D-Rex at the start of the film that causes so much dread (alongside a Snickers bar wrapper!) when we do get a glimpse at the end, it’s a shocking creature that looks like a xenomorph-asaur that’s almost laughable.

Jurassic World Rebirth is proof that we need time to miss the dinos. Take a few years off, let us miss these stories and creatures before rushing through a script and film that feels half-baked. In the meantime, we will watch the billion-dollar box office roll in and pray for a meteor to take out this franchise once and for all.

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The Jurassic franchise enters its 7th film and starts its third trilogy. After the disastrous Dominion, a semi-reboot seemed the best approach to breathe some new life into this franchise that should have been made extinct after its last outing. Yet here we are,...Jurassic World : Rebirth Review