After the utter disappointment that was Jurassic World: Dominion, many fans of the franchise were quick to dismiss the idea of a 4th entry in the Jurassic World series. That dismissal turned into cautious optimism when it was announced that not only was a 4th movie in the works but that Gareth Edwards would be directing. With the man behind Godzilla 2014, Rogue One, and The Creator at the helm it seemed the movie was in good hands and had potential to deliver quality that would get the franchise back on track. The first trailer reinforced that, teasing a movie that would be going back to basics, see the return of some new and improved versions of fan-favorite dinos, and promise non-stop action from start to finish. So how does Jurassic World: Rebirth fair in comparison to what has recently come before it?
The plot keeps things simple and straightforward. Set 5 years after the events of Dominion, the dinosaur population is plummeting due to the animals’ inability to adapt to the modern world leaving only a remaining few in remote locations around the world where the environments closely mirror that of prehistoric times. Martin Kreb, a representative of pharmaceutical company, ParkerGenix, recruits paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis, and mercenaries Zora Bennett and Duncan Kincaid to embark on a mission to Ile Saint-Hubert, an island home to an abandoned laboratory used by InGen to create genetically mutated dinosaurs, in hopes of collecting DNA from three of the island’s largest specimens to create a revolutionary new medicine.
Also among the main entourage of characters is Reuben Delgado and his two daughters who are sailing across the Atlantic and inadvertently venture into the island’s surrounding waters. When their boat is capsized by a Mosasaurus, they are rescued by the mercenaries but are quickly put right back into the path of danger when the same Mosasaur (with the help of a pack of Spinosauruses) attacks again forcing their boat to run aground with the Delgado’s getting split up from the rest of the group in the process. Zora, Duncan, Loomis, and Kreb continue their mission to collect the DNA samples while making their way to the laboratory where Zora has planned for a helicopter to rescue them in the event something goes wrong. Elsewhere, the Delgados navigate a decaying pipeline system that leads to the same destination. With all the samples secured and the loss of a few expendable characters, everyone reunites at the abandoned facility but standing in their way are Mutadons, mutant pterosaur-raptor hybrids, and the Distortus Rex, a monstrous 6-limbed mutant Tyrannosaurus, making the group’s escape near impossible.
So there’s the plot, is it a step in the right direction for the Jurassic franchise? Yes, but that step is a very
shaky one. Returning to an island setting and shrinking the cast definitely was the right move and it’s nice to see a fresh group of characters, however, they’re as uninspired as summer blockbusters can make them with vague, generic backstories that are delivered in shoehorned scenes filled with the most typical run of the mill exposition. And while the movies story is well-paced and doesn’t overstay its welcome, it’s littered with predictability, lazy writing, and in some instances, tense moments that are resolved in disappointingly anticlimactic ways, draining the momentum and impact they strive to build.
Now that doesn’t mean this movie is totally lacking in quality because despite the flaws there are still elements of entertainment value present. For example, Gareth Edwards’ directing style and his ability to do scale. These dinosaurs are big, heavy, and loud, and all of it is translated fantastically to the big screen. The theater shook with every footstep, every roar, and every chomp of a carnivore’s jaws. All of which the previous movies really struggled with, where as there we just watched Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard interacting with CGI, here the adventure is immersive and it really puts you in the perspective of the characters looking up at these colossal creatures and feeling their weight. And the film wastes no time getting you there. The characters are all introduced in quick succession and before you know it, we’re already on the island seeing the dinosaurs in action.
Another nice return to form this movie delivers on is taking the movie monster element out of the dinos and making each one feel like just another animal in nature, even those that are specifically designed to be monsters are portrayed as predators having their territories encroached on. While I was left wishing more was done with the D-Rex, it was in a way satisfying that it wasn’t a constant threat pursuing the cast and was saved until the end, which is another one of Edwards’ tropes, save the main attraction of the movie for the finale. I’m not saying that strategy always works (cough cough Godzilla 2014), but here it served the movie fairly well.
As a whole, Rebirth is a movie that feels like it’s desperately trying to shake off the reputation that Fallen Kingdom and Dominion have left on the Jurassic brand and find its footing in the franchise’s roots. It succeeds at doing so to a certain extent with fantastic visuals and immersive set pieces, but at the expense of bland characters and a script that probably would’ve benefitted from another pass through the writer’s room. What was described as a “Love letter to the original Jurassic Park” feels more like a letter to JP3 with homages that come off as lousy remakes of scenes from the original. That, piled on top of a mountain of things to nitpick and you have a movie that IS worth your time, but mostly because it’s slightly better than the last two.
So that begs the question, where do we go from here? Well that’s kind of a hard question to answer
because we’ve seen that stories off islands don’t really work so do they just keep repeating the same idea with a slightly different plot and a new roster of dinosaurs? Make faithful adaptations of the Michael Crichton books? Or do they make the infamous Jurassic Park 4? If 10 years of hybrids and mutants have been any indication, it sure feels like someone at Universal is itching to make the latter happen. If you
ask me, it might not be a bad idea for the franchise to take another hiatus or dare I say it, end. But lets be
realistic, we’d have a better chance of dinosaurs actually coming back than modern Hollywood letting that happen.
