Overview
Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, covert operations expert Zora Bennett is contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure genetic material from the world's three most massive dinosaurs. When Zora's operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized, they all find themselves stranded on an island where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that's been hidden from the world for decades.
The latest entry in the Jurassic series of films has arrived, bringing a kind of soft-reboot approach to reinvigorate the franchise that apparently stumbled, even whilst each of the previous 3 films made over a billion. Bringing back screenwriter David Koepp, who had co-written the first and second films in the original Park trilogy, the hope was to get the franchise back on track (and never delve into giant bugs again, hopefully). Gareth Edwards was brought on as director, bringing his visual style for bringing monstrous beasts to screen in the past with Godzilla, and the idea was to bring the film back to the roots of the series once again.
The film starts with a flashback to events before the theme park of World opened, and a secret lab on a remote island in the Atlantic where InGen conducted genetics experiments for potential park exhibits. However, an accident leads to a deformed six limbed tyrannosaur, dubbed the Distortus Rex, escaping and forcing the facility to be abandoned. The film then cuts to 2027, with holding slides rapidly updating us as to events since the previous film in a manner to basically dismiss all we’ve seen before and pretend it never happened (probably for the best to be honest), where some dinosaurs are still in populated areas as exhibits, but mostly they are located in zones close to the equator – the only areas the climate allows them to survive and thrive – which are marked as no-travel zones.
Enter Rupert Friend as Martin Krebs, a pharmaceutical representative who wishes to obtain three samples of dino-blood from the no-travel zone to use in a revolutionary new medicine. He recruits a group of mercenaries led by Scarlett Johanssen’s Zora, and a paleontologist named Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), and they set sail to hunt dinosaurs near the equator.
Generally this is all quite familiar, and indeed similarities with Jurassic Park III are abundant, but that’s kind of the point – this is an attempt to ditch the nonsense of the last few films and get back to the roots of the series, and what is more ‘roots’ than island set laboratory? There are no real surprises within the film, but what we do get are some glorious set-pieces, skillfully directed by Edwards, that showcase the dinosaurs beautifully – be they the factual ones or the genetic anomalies the lab grew, they all look spectacular on screen. One particular set piece involves a chase to obtain blood from an ocean dwelling species, and offers something a little different to what we’ve seen previously.
But, and here’s the main problem here, the human characters are a little flat and disposable in general, with only Bailey and Ali standing out. Johannsen holds her own, but is too generic a template of a character to make any impact. Also, and here’s the big problem I had with the film, there is the whole inclusion of the Delgado family unit (father, daughters, and older daughter’s boyfriend) that feels shoehorned in to get the tropish “kid in peril” moment within, but they don’t offer anything of note to an already full cast. After their rescue at sea (which was caused by their own stupidity, immediately making me not care for them), they are swiftly separated from the main group once they reach the island, and only reunite right at the end. Thus each time the film cuts to them it moves away from the core story just to put them in peril, whilst trying to convince us to care about them, which failed as I just wanted them to be mauled by raptors (especially the boyfriend who goes down as the worst character this franchise has delivered across all the films). Yes, they are part of a standout sequence which is lifted from the original novel, but that moment, again, has no impact on the story. The film, like the last few, also makes the mistake of forgetting that dinosaurs are terrifying enough that you don’t need to genetically create a new one to use for the main peril.
Jurassic World Rebirth ranks around the same as the flawed, but visually superb JP3, and is certainly a damn sight better than the last three ‘World’ films, and it will no doubt bring the money in. But as for the reputation of the franchise, it hasn’t really done much to mend it, or give any real growth to the concept. Big screen spectacle, but dumb to the core, it is okay, but barely a return to form.
