When “Jurassic World Rebirth” begins, we see a bunch of scientists scurrying around a lab, doing something they definitely shouldn’t be doing with dinosaur DNA.
We’re following one guy in particular (our entry point into the movie, but also a guy doing some remarkable product placement for Snickers), but as we follow him around the lab, you can hear chatter going on in the background. If you listen really, really closely, you can hear someone say something that sounds like:
“How many times are we going to do this?”
How many times are we going to return to “Jurassic Park?” Perhaps the answer should be, “Never again.” This quiet, throw away line is the first of many moments in “Jurassic World Rebirth” – the newest entry into the franchise, directed by Gareth Edwards – where the movie seems to hold up its hands in surrender and say, “Look – we know the last few outings have been rough. But you used to like these movies, right? Let’s get back to that!”
“Jurassic World Rebirth” aims to return to the spirit of 1993’s “Jurassic Park” far more explicitly than the “Jurassic World” movies that came before it, and to its credit, that attempt leads to more good moments than that trio of mean-spirited, bad movies ever produced. But it will take more than homage to capture the magic of the original “Jurassic Park” – and bad CGI and a cobbled together story outweigh the good elements of “Rebirth.”
After the events of “Jurassic World: Dominion,” the dinosaurs who once lived among us have now fallen by the wayside. They can’t survive in our climate, public interest is nowhere near what it once was, and the few dinosaurs who have survived live in isolated environments close to the equator. But while the general populace might not care about dinosaurs anymore, pharmaceutical companies do – about their DNA, at least. Hired by one of these companies, Zora Bennett (Scarlet Johansson) leads a team of specialists – including paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) and operative Duncan Kinkaid (Mahershala Ali) – down to the tropics to gather that DNA.
The apology tour is right there in the set up. When we first meet Henry Loomis, he delivers a monologue about how just a few years ago, the line for the dinosaur exhibit at his museum was constantly around the block. He talks about the number of tickets they use to sell, sounding more like a wistful theater owner reminiscing about the good old days of 1990s blockbusters than a paleontologist.
That’s not to say that the “Jurassic World” movies weren’t financially successful. But culturally and critically, those movies haven’t had near the impact of the original, dully generic and strangely cruel as they are. So, what better way to get people back into dinosaurs again than to recreate the feeling they felt at the theater in 1993? Remind them what, exactly, it is that they love about “Jurassic Park?”
It’s not a subtle tactic. The three films before “Jurassic World Rebirth” have a tendency to put dinosaurs in peril (as if that’s what everyone wants to see), but in this film, the first guy who even hints at hurting a dinosaur is offed immediately. There are also straight up copies of scenes from the original film, such as the moment when Laura Dern and Sam Neill first see dinosaurs in the valley, or the famous raptor kitchen stalking sequence.
“Copy” is the key word here. For the valley moment in particular, Bailey is the actor that “Rebirth” tasks with handling the emotion, and he sells it as best he can – he’s a good actor! But the moment fails to capture the spontaneous wonder of the original. As everyone gapes at the majesty of these creatures, you can feel the nostalgia gears crunching away, and it doesn’t help that, more than 30 years later, the scene looks worse than almost anything in “Jurassic Park.” Movie magic is hard to achieve when you have nothing new to say, especially when it’s muddled by poor CGI.
The look of the film isn’t helped by the fact that David Koepp’s script is uneven at best. We spend half our time with Zora and the rest of the DNA-hunting crew, and half with a civilian family who gets caught up in the adventure. The civilian family – a father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters (Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda), and one daughter’s boyfriend (David Iacono, the standout of the cast) – is a breath of fresh air. These newer “Jurassic” movies focus so heavily on the military, or mercenaries, or rogue radical scientists. The family storyline in “Rebirth” has a real arc, with real relationships and real stakes. But by that same token, it’s probably not great for your blockbuster if I’m itching to get away from the plotline that features movie stars.
So, “Jurassic World Rebirth” is the best of the new crop of “Jurassic” movies. But if the best we can do is barely conjure a mere glimmer of the magic of the original, maybe it’s time to let this franchise finally go extinct.