Hold onto your butts. Merely three years after we got Jurassic World Dominion, a movie billed as “the epic conclusion of the Jurassic era,” we’re getting a new sequel because Hollywood will never let an IP rest in peace. Jurassic World Rebirth serves as a reboot, following a new set of characters venturing into an island research facility for the original Jurassic Park to retrieve dinosaur DNA samples that can have life-saving benefits for humanity. But if you’ve seen a Jurassic movie, you’ll know that entering an island filled with dinosaurs is not the best idea if you want to avoid getting eaten and digested.
Jurassic World Rebirth is a perfectly acceptable entry into this franchise. It’s not exceptional, nor is it bad. It gets the Jurassic job done, with enormous set pieces and a strong visual look. This film is directed by Gareth Edwards, who previously directed films like Godzilla (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Creator. You can tell this is his style, particularly during the opening scene, which recycles his work in the Godzilla opening, where a character must keep a glass door closed, trapping a person on the other side to a certain death.
Edwards continues to push the envelope as a visual storyteller. He famously shot most of The Creator on the Sony FX3, an affordable cinema camera that many young filmmakers can buy. For Jurassic World Rebirth, he goes back to shooting on 35mm film, creating a look that harkens more to the original. The result is a film that feels like a throwback to the blockbusters of the late 20th century, namely Spielberg. One of the film’s early set pieces feels like a tribute to the “creature in the water” set pieces from Jaws. A sequence where two of our lead characters extract dinosaur DNA from eggs evokes the visual flair of the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
From the opening moments, you can see the love that Edwards has for this series in all the easter eggs he’s putting in. We get a brief “objects in mirror are closer than they appear” shot, a character drives past “Crichton Middle School,” a reference to Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton, and we even see the iconic “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” banner. We catch up with the state of this series since the end of Jurassic World Dominion. We learn that the dinosaurs have been slowly dying out due to how unfit they are in our current ecosystem riddled with climate change, and most surviving dinos live away from civilization in remote, tropical locales.
The “back to basics” approach of having the dinosaurs isolated on an island does feel like a step backward for the series. The most recent Jurassic World movies put the franchise in uncharted territory: a world where humans and dinosaurs must learn to coexist. Dominion had a few great visuals, but mostly didn’t deliver on that premise. While Rebirth is a better movie than Dominion, it feels like the world is smaller, and we never got the full potential of that powerful premise.
We meet our new characters. Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is our covert operation expert who agrees to go on this expedition initiated by pharmaceutical rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). They bring along paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), and the team is led by Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali). All of these actors are very talented, but it does sometimes feel like they could be bringing more, partially due to how underwritten many of the characters are.
Bailey’s performance as Henry has wonderful moments because you can tell how much awe and wonder dinosaurs inspire within him, and he agrees to go on this journey so that he can see dinosaurs up close. It is a bit strange that he never got to see dinosaurs up close throughout the events of any of the previous three movies, but he does capture that feeling that Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler had when they first saw the brachiosaurus in the original Jurassic Park.
Johansson is likable in this role, but Zora isn’t the most interesting protagonist. There isn’t a reason for Zora to be the protagonist. Nothing about her abilities, personality, or beliefs makes her distinguishable enough from anyone else. Her motivation for going onto the island is money. It’s been done before, and this movie should have had something more interesting. Zora and Duncan both have a bit of a backstory, but the film never does anything with those. The film attempts a character arc where she makes a noble choice at the end. But the issue is that she doesn’t feel that different at the end of the movie compared to the beginning. I could have easily imagined her making the same choice at the start of the film because the movie doesn’t give her enough room to make genuine progress. She doesn’t start low enough for the high she reaches at the end to feel worth it.
While this isn’t a terrible cast, it makes you appreciate how much Chris Pratt brought to this series and why he works as a leading man. While I’m happy that two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali has finally escaped Marvel’s eternal holding room (we’re never getting that Blade movie, are we?), this movie doesn’t make full use of his talent. The best way I can describe this is that every character feels like they could have been played by someone else, and the movie wouldn’t have been any different. Everyone is replaceable.
Most of the second act follows two storylines. One follows Zora, Duncan, Henry, and Martin on their quest to retrieve dinosaur DNA samples. The other follows a family that’s been marooned and is trying to survive. The narrative can feel a bit disjointed since neither storyline affects the other for a while, but there are some phenomenal sequences. Most notably, there’s a scene in Crichton’s original novel where the characters raft down a jungle river on an inflatable boat, narrowly avoiding dinosaurs along the way. The 1993 movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and written by David Koepp and Crichton, omitted this scene. But Koepp returns to this franchise, and he finally gets the chance to work this scene into the movie. It is by far the best set piece in the entire movie. I was on the edge of my seat. It’s fantastic.
It’s hard not to feel that excitement when a helicopter flies into the air and we get that classic John Williams theme blasting in the soundtrack. Alexandre Desplat turns in a serviceable score that works well for this movie. Narratively, Jurassic World Rebirth feels like a combination of the first and third Jurassic Park movies. Many of the other Jurassic movies are far more ambitious with their narratives, with big-game hunters, poachers, dinosaur auctions, and locusts being thrown into the mix. This movie takes on a simpler approach where we have characters in a dangerous environment trying to survive.
And that works pretty well. The final act has excellent moments of suspense, particularly during the gas station sequence. Some may hope for more narrative flair, but that’s not what these movies are focused on. That original Jurassic Park movie is an exciting blockbuster with a lot to say about creation, nature, and scientific ethics. Jurassic World Rebirth doesn’t have those ideas; it’s your standard creature feature with phenomenal sequences. It’s definitely smaller-scale than what we’ve seen from this franchise; some estimates have 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom at a $432 million production budget compared to this movie’s $180 million. This movie aims for simplicity, and it mostly works.
While the story and characters are thinner than I personally would have liked, I couldn’t help but have some fun with Jurassic World Rebirth. From a strong visual aesthetic to some jaw-dropping spectacle, Edwards does amazing work here. He’s always had this impeccable sense of scale, putting humans next to Godzilla or the Death Star and making them feel massive. He was the perfect pick to direct this dinosaur movie, and even if this is one of the franchise’s less ambitious outings, it serves as a love letter to what makes this series so appealing.
SCORE: 6/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 6 equates to “Decent.” It fails to reach its full potential and is a run-of-the-mill experience.