I’m a longtime believer in there being only one good Jurassic movie, and I don’t think I am the only one. The latest film in the franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth – from director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One and 2014’s Godzilla) – has done little to dissuade me from this belief.
With a cast including the remarkable talents of Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali, this is a clear departure from the recent Chris Pratt/Bryce Dallas Howard trilogy. The only reference to any characters from the previous films is one line mentioning Alan Grant, and I laughed out loud when the “Based on Characters Created by Michael Crichton” credit came up on screen.
I certainly wasn’t going to shed any tears at the film getting rid of the “memorable” characters of Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, but I was hoping that Johansson and Ali would have better material to work with. The characters in this film are dull and predictable. They come baked with a couple of tragic or emotional backstories that don’t go anywhere, and of course a family including a small child put in danger. We’ve seen it all before, in this franchise and elsewhere.
The plot concerns an illegal expedition run by a pharmaceutical company to gather samples from three living dinosaurs – a Mosasaurus, a Quetzalcoatlus, and a Titanosaurus (the latter of which is the only species that’s actually a dinosaur, though the paleontologist character in the film explicitly contradicts this fundamental tenant of paleobiology). These creatures are respectively the biggest animals at sea, in the air, and on land.
Dinosaurs are for the most part not living among people now, as they’re resigned to a few islands near the Equator, the only habitat that’s suitable for them. That’s perhaps the only realistic part of the movie.
Like all the other World films, this one deals with genetic hybrids, which always look uglier and less cool than the actual dinosaurs, and tend to overshadow the stars of the original films. Velociraptors have about fifteen seconds of screentime here, and the Dilophosaurus about the same. There is a T-Rex scene, though, and it’s pretty good.
A few of the dinosaur sequences are actually quite tense. This movie leans into the horror genre more so than perhaps ay movie since the original, with the T-Rex river scene and Mosasaurus/Spinosaurus scenes standing out, at least up to a point.
Of course, the climax features the hybrids – one being a Velociraptor/Pteranodon hybrid, and the other basically being a kaiju known as D-Rex, which more closely resembles the alien monster Orga from Godzilla 2000 than it does any dinosaur.
By the time the film reaches the climax, I was pretty checked out, though there was some fun along the way. The visual effects are the best in the series, and director Gareth Edwards manages a handful of interesting visual reveals.
For the most part, though, it’s very obvious which characters are going to live and die, with the two who are never properly introduced getting devoured by a Spinosaurus and Quetzalcoatlus. There’s one character who seems like he’d be a snack early on, but quickly redeems himself enough for screenwriter David Koepp (co-writer of the original, with the novel’s author Michael Crichton, though perhaps more damning, also the screenwriter of The Lost World: Jurassic Park) to spare him.
One of my favorite aspects of the movie – and one of the few things that’s truly original – is the little girl befriending a small herbivore dinosaur. Of course it’s silly, but I found it surprisingly endearing and cute.
I can’t say this is a new low for the franchise, because Jurassic Park III exists. It’s probably even a bit better than the last two Jurassic World films, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it. As a lifelong fan of dinosaurs, I’ll never forgive these films for abandoning real scientific creatures for science fiction monsters. And as a lifelong fan of the original film, I can’t say I forgive this film for relegating Velociraptors to cameo status. Most franchises might have an existential terror after a movie this half baked, but these things continue to make ludicrous amounts of money, so expect dinosaurs to stay on your movie screen for the foreseeable future. I wonder if they’re all rolling over in their graves.
