Film Review: Jurassic World Rebirth
A New Era Is Born
INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film Jurassic World Rebirth. Please note that this is just one of the many movies I will have watched each year, and my initial grade for this film may change over time, for better or worse. To stay up to date on my thoughts about other movies and any potential changes in my opinion on this one, follow me on Letterboxd.
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PLOT
Via Letterboxd: 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.
REVIEW
Almost just like the live-action remakes of animated classics, Universal Studios’ three decades plus long obsession with continuing the Jurassic Park (now Jurassic World) franchise stirs up a whole lot of emotion from critics and hardcore cinephiles alike. The original 1993 film is widely considered a masterpiece, even by the most hardened and snobbish of critics. But everything after that? That’s where the opinions start to splinter. 2015’s Jurassic World got a relatively warm reception, but every sequel since has seen rockier reviews, and there are movie fans who even downright loathe the aforementioned Jurassic World itself.
As for me, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that this creature-feature lover actually enjoys the sequels a lot more than most people do. The Lost World and Jurassic World? Tons of fun. Jurassic Park III? It’s fine, even if it squanders its potential. As for Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, those are easily my least favorites of the entire series, but even though they flirt with it, even then I can’t bring myself to rank them as outright bad.
That said, I was pretty wary of where things had ended up after those last two Jurassic World entries. So when I first heard whispers of a soft reboot, one that would act as a legacy sequel continuing the timeline of the previous films but could still function as a standalone follow-up to the 1993 original, I got genuinely excited. The director? Gareth Edwards, who gave us one of my favorite movies of 2014 in Godzilla. The cast? A stacked ensemble with Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali. The writer? None other than David Koepp, the screenwriter of the original Jurassic Park and, coincidentally, the writer of my current favorite film of the year so far, Black Bag. And the plot? A return to survival-horror roots. Absolutely my cup of tea and the medium I think the franchise shines best.
But alas, the film wasn’t screened for press in my neck of the woods until just two days before its official release. There was a mystery screening held last week that I could’ve gone to, but word got out so fast and my local theaters sold out almost immediately. So now I kind of feel like the last person on Earth to finally see it. And by the time I did, I’d already watched the reviews roll in, just as divisive and critical as they’ve been for nearly every installment since 1993.
If you're measuring this new film against the last two entries in the franchise, then yes Jurassic World Rebirth is a course correction. That may be setting a low bar, considering that even the most forgiving fans tend to agree that Fallen Kingdom and Dominion are the weakest of the bunch. But I’ll give credit where it’s due, this is definitely a better movie than those two. It’s refreshing not to be bogged down by cloned teenagers, city-wide dinosaur chases, apocalyptic locusts, or an overdose of nostalgia bait (at least for the most part).
Here, the dinosaurs finally take center stage again, and as someone who unapologetically loves a good creature feature, I appreciated that. There are some genuinely great moments for dino lovers, particularly with the Titanosaurus and the T-Rex, both of whom get sequences that are among the visual and emotional highlights of the film. In fact, I’d go as far as saying this has the best visuals of any Jurassic film not directed by Steven Spielberg. Depending on how the rest of the year shakes out, I could easily see myself putting this on my personal ballot for visual effects recognition.
I also really appreciated the film’s shift back toward survival horror. Watching human characters actually terrified and fleeing, hiding, and reacting like they’re up against truly dangerous creatures felt like a much-needed return to form. No more raptors doing superhero team-ups with humans. No more corporate espionage as the main plot driver. The return to an island setting added to the thrill, and the adventure elements gave it an energy that the last couple films sorely lacked.
And yet, while I liked this movie enough to recommend it to my “normie” friends and family as a solid popcorn flick, I can’t say I loved it the way I was hoping to. And the reason boils down to the screenplay; specifically, the sense that the film is constantly undermining itself just when it starts gaining momentum.
The biggest offender is the late and jarring introduction of an entirely new group of characters more than thirty minutes into the film - a dad sailing with his two daughters and the eldest daughter’s boyfriend. Not only do they appear out of nowhere, but I found myself groaning every time the film cut to them. The dad is passable, but the daughters are textbook “get-into-trouble-for-no-reason” characters, designed purely to generate false tension. The boyfriend isn’t much better, he never becomes likable outside of the obligatory moments where he saves his girlfriend from danger. Every time the story pivoted to their subplot, I just wanted to go back to the main thread about hunting down dinosaur DNA. They do, admittedly, get looped into the standout T-Rex sequence, but even that couldn’t fully redeem their presence for me. Oh, and one of the daughters adopts a tiny, cutesy dinosaur she names “Delores,” who is clearly a blatant Baby Yoda-style merchandising ploy.
As much as I enjoyed the renewed focus on the dinosaurs, the film’s “big bad” is a total letdown. The genetically-engineered monstrosity known as the Distortions Rex, or “D-Rex”, gets a strong, ominous introduction early on, hyped as the terrifying consequence of humans playing God. But then the film shelves him for nearly the entire runtime, only trotting him out at the end for what amounts to it only showing up on screen for a cup of coffee. By the time he shows up, you already know which characters (too many of them by the way) are wearing the thickest plot armor, so his presence never feels like a genuine threat. It’s easily the weakest main dinosaur antagonist the franchise has ever given us.
So what you ultimately get here is a movie that plays things safe. It’s a decent, occasionally thrilling piece of blockbuster entertainment that will satisfy most audiences on a surface level. But like Jurassic Park III, it feels like a film that squanders its potential. There’s a much better movie lurking in the bones of this one, something sharper, scarier, more emotionally resonant. Instead, it settles for being just “fine.” This was one of my most anticipated films of the year, and while I walked in hoping to love it, I walked out just merely liking it.
For me, Jurassic World Rebirth lands at the lower end of the B-tier. A step in the right direction after the last two installments, but not quite the triumphant return it could’ve and should’ve been either. It’s no wonder reception has been so mixed.
GRADING
