How do you keep a franchise fresh? The summer popcorn movie sequels, prequels, and reboots provide a steady stream of opportunities to revisit familiar characters and relive those movie memories. Jurassic Park, released in 1993 with two sequels, and followed by Jurassic World in 2015, which also had two sequels, has maintained a grip on the summer box office for more than 30 years, and for some moviegoers, forged a lifelong connection to nostalgia for dinosaurs.
Jurassic World Rebirth, directed by Gareth Edwards, attempts to reinvigorate the long-told story of dinosaurs run amok with a new storyline set many years in the future, featuring characters not connected to past franchises, and now, mutant dinosaur hybrids from a secret island. Drawing influences from Jurassic Park with its atmosphere and suspense, and even paying direct homage to the 1993 classic in a few scenes, Jurassic World Rebirth may not reinvent the long-running franchise as much as it simply reinterprets moments from many of the past films.
Written by David Koepp, the writer of the first Jurassic Park based on the novel by Michael Crichton, Jurassic World Rebirth takes place five years after the events of Jurassic World: Dominion. Earth hasn't been a hospitable environment for the dinosaurs, leaving them with only one place to thrive: near the equator. Humanity has also become disenfranchised with the once awe-inspiring animals; now they are just a nuisance, creating traffic jams and overturning sailboats.
A pharmaceutical bigwig, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), however, realizes that a life-saving drug can be produced from the extracted DNA of the most enormous dinosaurs on land, sea, and air. Because the DNA must come from a dinosaur that is still alive, a covert special ops team led by Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is offered a once-in-a-lifetime salary to venture into the forbidden zone to find the dinosaurs and collect a blood sample from each of them. Zora enlists the help of an old friend, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), a boat captain with a team ready for a payday. Krebs and Zora also enlist the help of Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), a paleontologist eager to see dinosaurs outside of captivity.
These mercenaries don't get very far into their mission before responding to a distress call from family, whose boat is overturned by an enormous Mosasaurus. But, before they can restart the mission, a group of hunting Spinosaurus confronts them. Ambushed, the Mosasaurus returns to finish the job on Kincaid's boat, leaving the team stranded without supplies or weapons on the island with both giant and experimental dinosaurs.
Director Gareth Edwards, who is no stranger to large-scale epic adventures, having directed the 2014 Godzilla and the 2016 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, understands the objective of these films and crafts an environment that is epic in scope, yet also an atmosphere that feels genuinely threatening. It's the closest in tone to the original Jurassic Park, but that, in part, can be attributed to how much it emulates some of the best set pieces from the first film. A gas station chase down with some mutated flying creatures feels very much like the raptor scene in the kitchen from the first film. A Tyrannosaurus Rex pursues a floating raft in the same way it pursued a high-speed Jeep way back in the early 90s. It's a testament to the effectiveness of "Jurassic Park" that these scenes could be retooled and still work in such a thrilling fashion. It's also high praise for director Gareth Edwards, who understands the franchise and adds a nice touch of composing the dinosaurs as giants and using creature feature characteristics to create thrills and chills.
The cast is also wholly capable; there is no doubt that they are all having fun and adding as much as they can to the material. Unfortunately, these characters have too much to compete against and aren't provided much to do when not being chased by dinosaurs. Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali excel in these roles, and they are given emotional depth connected to their shared traumas. However, even with these extra character-building blocks, they are still pushed aside in many ways for the giant spectacle of new dinosaurs or for time spent with other characters who aren’t as interesting. A subplot featuring a rescued family who begrudgingly join the mission for dinosaur DNA is lost in the mix of all the different events.
Jurassic World Rebirth suffers from too many storylines, which don't leave much room for character development when competing against the set pieces of swimming dinosaurs, flying dinosaurs, and the one big, mutated, scary one that appears way too late in the final act. Still, Gareth Edwards is talented and keeps the pacing quick, tailoring the action with interesting kinds of dinosaur danger. The raft scene, featuring a curious T-Rex chasing the stranded family through the river rapids, is better than any of the action scenes in all three Jurassic World films. Alternatively, the finale of Jurassic World Rebirth falls the flattest of all the movies in the franchise with the arrival of the D-Rex, a gargantuan dinosaur that resembles something from the Alien franchise, which is underutilized and does nothing more than cause a minor inconvenience for the team.
Jurassic World Rebirth is one of the better films of the Jurassic Park franchise. While it may not excel in storytelling, director Gareth Edwards understands the world and utilizes the set pieces and many of the dinosaurs in creative ways that keep the adventure exciting.
Monte's Score: 3/5
Monte is an independent filmmaker from Arizona and a film reviewer for a North Phoenix publication. He has spent most of his life watching, re-watching, analyzing, and examining film of all genres, though his film fondness remains loyally with horror, science fiction, and film classics.
When he isn’t keeping up with his first passion, his lovely wife and young child, you can find him working on film projects or searching for rare and out-of-print films for his ever-growing collection. He is actively involved in the Arizona film community, offering support to independent venues, local filmmakers, and film festivals.
Monte is an independent filmmaker from Arizona and a film reviewer for a North Phoenix publication. He has spent most of his life watching, re-watching, analyzing, and examining film of all genres, though his film fondness remains loyally with horror, science fiction, and film classics.
When he isn’t keeping up with his first passion, his lovely wife and young child, you can find him working on film projects or searching for rare and out-of-print films for his ever-growing collection. He is actively involved in the Arizona film community, offering support to independent venues, local filmmakers, and film festivals.
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