Boring Jurassic World: Rebirth Fails to Bring New Life to a Moribund Franchise
I love movies with dinosaurs, but after watching Jurassic World: Rebirth, I’m thinking this is one franchise that is in desperate need of going on hiatus. Almost 14 years separated Jurassic Park III from Jurassic World, and I think it would have been great had producers waited at least that long after the release of 2022’s awful Jurassic World: Dominion before bringing this latest installment to the big screen.
Granted, in today’s cinematic landscape, that was never going to happen. But the rush to get more dino-centered carnage into summertime theaters has brought about what is, to my mind, the most instantly forgettable entry in the Jurassic canon. While director Gareth Edwards and writer David Koepp — returning to the series for the first time since 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park — try to breathe a little grungy, retrograde B-movie life into the proceedings, at a ponderous 135 minutes, this sequel isn’t so much terrible as it is boringly pointless.
That’s unfortunate, because with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Creator, and 2014’s Godzilla under his belt, Edwards is no stranger to delivering effects-filled spectacles worth getting excited about. He has a noteworthy understanding of scope and size that helps make these crazy worlds of rampaging kaiju, selfless interstellar heroics, and futuristic rebellion have palpable weight and meaning. The director adds a human element to each story, and this gives all of the larger-than-life craziness an unexpected jolt of emotional resonance. I was excited to see what Edwards would bring to the Jurassic World universe.
Sadly, while Koepp’s scenario is decent enough (a group of mercenaries and a Jurassic-era biologist are hired by a pharmaceutical company to extract the DNA from the three largest dinosaur species still surviving near the Earth’s equator after the majority of the creatures began to die off five years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion), there’s precious little passion, urgency, or imagination as far as the execution is concerned. A couple of noteworthy set pieces aside, there’s not much about this seventh entry that’s worth any fuss.
There is a gnarly little genre concept hidden inside all of this that I do think would have made for a perfect Ray Harryhausen 1950s or ‘60s stop-motion endeavor. Koepp drops in a subplot about a loving father, Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), who terrifyingly finds himself shipwrecked with his two daughters Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa (Luna Blaise), along with the latter’s frequently shirtless boyfriend Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), on an isolated island that once housed a top-secret dinosaur research facility. It’s here where InGen, the company responsible for bringing the creatures back to life after their 65-million-year slumber, created their most dangerous mutations. It’s also here where one of those hybrids destroyed the facility with bloodthirsty fervor.
Whenever the focus was on this quartet trying to survive, my interest was piqued. The film’s best moment, unsurprisingly involving a rampaging Tyrannosaurus Rex, takes place here, Reuben and company escaping from the creature on an inflatable raft while traveling down some ferocious rapids. We’ve seen moments like this before, of course, most notably in the first two Jurassic Park adventures. But Edwards still delivers the goods. The horror of the situation is real, and the director’s stripped-down approach works beautifully, especially when a few of the characters end up underwater trying to avoid the Rex’s razor-sharp teeth, even as a powerful current pulls them right towards them.
But this isn’t the central plot. Instead, the one involving the mercenaries, the scientist, and the company executive takes center stage. Stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali, and Rupert Friend admittedly give it their best efforts, and I respect that none of them appear to be phoning things in. Yet this is far from enough to make what any of them are doing have any lasting staying power. Anytime the focus shifts exclusively to them (and they’re not facing down a rampaging dinosaur) things slow to a laborious crawl. I didn’t care an iota about the lot of them.
Then there is the sequel’s introduction of its new big-bad. Nicknamed the “Distortus Rex,” while Edwards treats the beast much the same way he did Godzilla — hiding it in darkened shadows and bursts of steam, bathing it in penetrating reds, making sure its ample size overwhelms the screen when it’s finally viewed in total — that frustratingly doesn’t make it scary. Save a brief segment during the prologue, the Distortus never comes across as quite the unstoppable threat that it is obviously intended to be. Also, the creature’s design is a strange mixture of the Rancor from Return of the Jedi and an Alien xenomorph. As interesting as that may sound in theory, my reaction to it once the animal was fully revealed was far more muted. I was underwhelmed.
I try to judge a motion picture for what it is and not for what I want it to be, but Jurassic World: Rebirth makes that annoyingly difficult. Garcia-Rulfo is excellent as the determined father willing to do whatever it takes to save his children. Youngster Miranda is equally strong as his youngest daughter, forced by unfathomable circumstances to face her deepest fears and find an inner strength she didn’t know was there. More to the point, had this been a stripped-down 90-minute affair, I feel like I’d be recommending audiences head out to the theater to give this latest installment a look with gleeful enthusiasm.
But that’s not what this sequel is. Not by a long shot. As much as I adore seeing these prehistoric creatures run amok, if this series continues on its currently bloated trajectory of taking few risks and playing it narratively safe, maybe it’s not a break this franchise needs. Maybe it’s time for it to go extinct.
Film Rating: 2 (out of 4)
