Film Review: ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ is More of the Same Dinosaur Action in a Slightly New Package

It’s interesting to me that the Jurassic Park / Jurassic World franchise is still looked at as such a crown jewel. Sure, they always make money, but the first one is the only one to meet with any major acclaim. To one degree or another, it has been diminishing returns. Now, part of that is Jurassic Park is one of Steven Spielberg‘s masterpieces. Another part is the concept was just done so well, everything else is just very different or a retread. The series has tried both, with varying degrees of success. Now, with Jurassic World Rebirth, the property is attempting to do a little bit of everything. As you might imagine, what works does work well. However, it still remains far from a patch on what we all initially fell in love with.

Jurassic World Rebirth is a follow up to Jurassic World: Dominion, while also trying to be, in spirit at least, what fans wanted from The Lost World: Jurassic Park (partly due to how different the book was). Sometimes, it does feel like they’ve hit on something, but most of the time, it’s just more of what you expect. For me? It’s moderately entertaining and works as temporary distraction. For others? You might be left wanting more.

Set five years after the events of the previous film (minus an opening sequence set further back, depicting an experiment gone awry), it again appears that dinosaurs are headed for extinction. The environment has proven largely inhospitable for them, except for a small band around the equator where many have been quarantined. Otherwise, the ones roaming cities like New York, while celebrity animals, are dying. It’s there that special forces veteran Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is recruit by pharmaceutical company ParkerGenix and representative Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). Martin wants Zora to lead a team into one tropical locale, where they can extract dinosaur DNA in order to finish a potentially lifesaving new medication. Zora is skeptical, but between having just lost her mother and the amount of money being offered, she eventually accepts. Martin pairs her with paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), while she brings aboard colleague Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) as team leader. Soon, they’re off for Ile Saint-Hubert, which InGen once used as a research facility while bringing the dinosaurs back to life.

The team needs to extract from the biggest air, land, and sea dinosaurs, so even arriving at the island begins with danger. While they’re landing, a family boat outing for Rueben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his children winds up shipwrecked on the island. In short order, the family runs afoul of a sleeping Tyrannosaurus rex. The team meets them early on, finding that all are stranded at least temporarily, and eventually band together to survive once all the samples are found. Eventually, that includes trying to avoid being eaten by mutant dinosaurs, failed experiments from the days of yore. One such beast? The Distortus rex, which has six limbs and a very bad attitude.

Scarlett Johansson gets to lead the way, while Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey round out the overqualified trio. Bailey and Johansson have a nice chemistry and are playing characters familiar to this franchise. Johansson especially gets to show off her considerable action hero chops. She fares the best here, probably due to familiarity with big budget CGI. She’s having fun and never looks out of place. Bailey is fine, if somewhat underused. However, Ali is totally wasted in a role that asks almost nothing of him. Rupert Friend is a generic suit, which leads to all of the expected plot developments, while Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is forgettable (the family subplot is largely grating). Supporting players include Luna Blaise, Niamh Finlay, David Iacono, Adam Loxley, Audrina Miranda, Bechir Sylvain, and more.

Director Gareth Edwards and writer David Koepp cherrypick what’s worked throughout the series before. To that end, there’s an effectiveness here that’s undeniable, but also kind of hollow. It’s the definition of junk food. It’s tasty enough, but forgettable and without nutrition. The score by Alexandre Desplat obviously homages John Williams, just without quite the same sense of wonder. The best element from Edwards and Koepp comes in the opening scenes, which, after the horror sequence, actually does the best job yet of depicting dinosaurs being a part of human beings’ everyday life. More of that would have been appreciated. The new element here is the mutant monster dinosaurs, which is fine, though not done enough with. The best sequence is taken from the original cut raft chase from Jurassic Park, which we should have seen years ago. There’s affection for the IP throughout, but aside from the mutant experiments, a lot of what we’re seeing is what we’ve seen done several times before.

Jurassic World Rebirth is fine. It doesn’t do enough different from what the franchise is known for to really be too much better or worse than anything else. How you feel about the mutants, including the Distortus rex, will probably color whether this is one of the better sequels in the series or not. I wouldn’t be shocked to see further installments going forward, though I’d be lying if I said there was newfound excitement. For better or worse, it’s more of the same.

SCORE: ★★★