Notable Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali,
Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono,
Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Ed Skrein
Truthfully, I could go on for ages about how fascinatingly
bizarre and laden with misfires the Jurassic World series has been. The entire Jurassic
Park franchise, now with seven entries, has been a roller coaster, with ups
and downs that have been both thrilling and perplexing. It’s one of the reasons
why I love franchises. Yet, I’m pretty sure all the best and worst choices
around Jurassic World can be dissected by looking at how Universal
approached Jurassic World: Rebirth, the latest entry into the dinosaur
mayhem franchise.
The previous film, Jurassic World: Dominion, was
bloated, filled with too many ideas, too many characters, too much nostalgia,
and a wild approach that felt like it was simply trying to be both a legacy
sequel and take the series into a new era. It didn’t work. Like, at all. Thus, Jurassic
World: Rebirth aims to reignite the franchise by continuing the series as a
sequel while moving away from the issues that have plagued Dominion and Fallen
Kingdom. It also doesn’t work. Like, at all.
The film opens by introducing a group of mercenaries hired
by a pharmaceutical company to travel to an island where dinosaurs still exist.
Cause I guess most of the dinosaurs that populated the Earth during Dominion
are now dead (?), and people don’t seem to care about dinosaurs anymore (?!?!).
The lead characters, hired by a standard operating corporate dickhead, played
with gleeful sneering villain tendencies by Rupert Friend, are your standard
group of very lite anti-heroes led by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali.
Truthfully, I can get down with this. Do y’all remember the video game Dino
Crisis? Mercenaries fighting dinosaurs while an evil pharmaceutical company
tries to manipulate the entire situation? Hell yes. Let’s get back to making
dinosaurs scary and limit the scope of the film. One mission. One island. Lots
of teeth. Lots of guns. Recipe for success. Make it smaller and more intense
while deviating from the bloat of Dominion.
Yet, in what feels like one of the most annoying studio
notes of all time, Rebirth doesn’t feel like its audience will fully
side with mercenaries. So it decides to add a secondary plotline featuring a
family who are shipwrecked and picked up by the mercenaries on their way to the
island. Despite some fun moments with the family, that plotline could have been
cut without really affecting the movie. The main dynamic of its themes comes
from the mercenaries, the corporate watcher, and the scientist - played by
Jonathan Bailey- as they continue to discuss the validity of a dinosaur’s life
and the morality of man and nature. The family feels like fluff and is
completely unnecessary.
This means the film only really finds its groove in its
second act. When the goals are clear (find giant dinosaurs, collect DNA, move
to the next mission) the film moves. The second act feels almost like three
short films. There’s the Mosasaurus/Spinosaurus attack sequence on the boat,
the majestic unveiling of the Titanosaurus, and the white-knuckle thrills of
cliff climbing with jet-sized Quetzalcoatlus. Director Gareth Edwards knows how
to do massive visual spectacle that feels massive (see his films Rogue One,
Godzilla, and The Creator for great examples), and most of his
style is felt in these sequences. He loves to showcase the size differences
between these people and the dinosaurs, and each sequence felt like how Rebirth
should have felt all the way through.
Unfortunately, Rebirth is also a sequel to a new era of the series, which, for better or worse, centers on genetically modified dinosaurs. Thus, this film HAS to have those too. Despite some fun in the opening that introduces a new dinosaur monster, the film bogs itself down with sluggish exposition, and it becomes apparent that Edwards and his team are not all that interested in the generic manipulation piece. Its final act, which finds our rag-tag group of survivors heading to an abandoned helipad for extraction, is focused on these genetic (and cinematic) atrocities. They introduce flying raptors, which are basically used just as raptors, and the Distortus Rex (which looks more like a Rancor than a T. rex). And they offer nothing all that special. If anything, it would have been so much more fun had they dug up some other cooler - and REAL - dinosaurs for their ending instead of continuing this thread of genetic monsters which feel tagged on here.
On one hand, I appreciate that Rebirth is trying to
reset the series in some ways. It attempts to move away from the bloat of its
recurring characters, go back to a smaller story, and focus on dinosaur action.
On the other hand, this film still suffers from a thin script and even thinner
characters, and it pulls its punches by going too dark, adding unnecessary
subplots about families and romances. Not to mention the DNA-spliced dinos feel
like they are added just for the sake of trying to be part of the Jurassic
World series.
Jurassic World: Rebirth could have truly been a rebirth for
the series, but it ends up feeling more like a side-quel where the producers
were like, “We don’t need a real script, we have dinosaurs.” Its potential is
massive, and it never reaches it. There are moments, but they mostly serve as
reminders of what this film could have been with greater dedication to its
ideas.
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