Rebirth’ Tries to Revive Something Best Left Dead. We Don’t Mean the Dinosaurs

You remember the original Jurassic Park, right? The blockbuster that crawled out of the primordial ooze of 1993, signaled that Steven “I Made Jaws” Spielberg could still turn a beach-read paperback into box-office gold, and gave the Tyrannosaurus Rex his biggest P.R. boost in 66,000,000 years?

Of course you do. Its particular blend of something old (dinosaurs), something new (bleeding-edge CGI), something borrowed (a very familiar plot), and something blue (Jeff Goldblum, Nerd Sex Symbol) quickly made the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel one of the most successful movies of all time, and the film continues to be a favorite of folks testing the levels on their home entertainment sound systems. The original begat a sequel, which begat a trilogy, which begat a second trilogy that concluded with two Jurassic crews teaming up. Had the series quietly gone extinct after 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion, even the most dedicated popcorn-cinema junkie might have gone, Well, like the dinos, it had a good run. But as both the first film and the history of Hollywood over the past five decades reminds us, nothing ever really dies. Especially if it’s a billion-dollar franchise.

So, welcome… to Jurassic World: Rebirth! The seventh entry hits theaters with a whole new cast of characters, an extremely optimistic subtitle, and a cleverly meta take on the cycles of mass pop culture phenomena. Once upon a time, the movie tells us, people flocked to see these giant creatures resurrected from old DNA. Then the novelty wore off, the public grew bored with all those nouveau brontos and triceratops, and thanks to indifference, competing “engineered entertainment” distractions and a few industry-shaking catastrophes, the whole notion of gasping in awe at revived beasties became extremely passé. Feel free to draw any parallels you care to.

Hence, in Rebirth‘s world of 2025, dinosaurs have once again gone the way of the, er, dinosaurs. Most have died out, though a handful continue to thrive in the oxygen-rich environments and tropical climates near the equator. Humans have been forbidden to travel to the island of Ile Saint Hubert, where many of the remaining dinos continue to live. That’s also where the company responsible for the amusement parks once conducted experiments and lab-tested potential new cross-bred species. And, as a preamble shows us, it’s where an accident once happened involving an errant candy-bar wrapper, an employee, and a Xenomorph-like monstrosity named Distortus Rex. [Quick side note: There’s a lot of product placement in the movie, even by studio summer-blockbuster standards. But given the way a state-of-the-art testing facility is almost singlehandedly brought down by a Snickers™, Mars Inc. may want to consider asking for their money back.]

Naturally, just because the area is completely off limits doesn’t mean that some profit-hungry douchebag won’t hire mercenaries to escort him there. Enter Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). He’s a representative for a pharmaceutical company who knows that the DNA of several different dinosaurs may hold the key to solving many major diseases that afflict us Homo sapiens. Whoever gets the DNA first will dominate the market, so Krebs is determined to beat the competition. He gets “situational security and reaction” expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to sign on for a steep price. They recruit Dr. Henry Loomis (Wicked‘s Jonathan Bailey) to join them, since they’ll need a paleontologist to identify the specific species. The chance to actually see one up close is too good for him to pass up. Plus he’ll function as the conscience-in-residence for this hunting party. “Is it a crime to kill a dinosaur?” Krebs sneers. “It’s a sin,” Loomis replies.

Add in Duncan (Mahershala Ali), a ship captain working out of a Caribbean port who Zora enlists to transports them to this lost world, and his crew — most of whom do have names, but may as well be called Future Snacks 1-7 — and you have the group that will face off against those hungry, angry dinos. Actually, make that one of the groups. We’re also introduced to the Delgados, a family on a sailing trip across the Atlantic. The father, Reuben (The Lincoln Lawyer‘s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), has decided to do one last voyage with his kids before the oldest, Teresa (Luna Blaise), goes away to college. She’s brought her less-than-helpful boyfriend (David Iacono) along as well, much to Pop’s chagrin. The youngest, Isabella (Audrina Miranda), rounds out the team. After an encounter with a whale-like dino, their sloop capsizes. Duncan picks up their distress signal and picks the Delgados up. Everyone heads to Ile Saint Hubert. The groups get separated. Guess what happens next?

Bechir Sylvain, Jonathan Bailey and Scarlett Johansson in ‘Jurassic World: Rebirth.’Jasin Boland/Universal Pictures

The divide-and-conquer idea is smart on paper, given that two different sets of explorers — one by choice, the other by chance — doubles both the narrative terrain that can be covered and the amount of possible fill-in-the-blank–osauruses the VFX artists can gin up for your blockbuster-viewing pleasure. Zora & Co. get to take on a protective mother pterodactyl, while the Delgados must keep a T. Rex from chomping on both a blow-up raft and themselves, etc. Veteran screenwriter and the scribe behind the original Jurassic Park, David Koepp, is an expert at juggling dueling plot lines, and he’s brought back a lot of the monster-movie vibe that made the first movie such an old-school adrenaline rush. But not even he can keep you from feeling that such ping-ponging back and forth ends up leeching the tension from both stories long before the groups inevitably join forces again. It doesn’t help that, despite the family-drama angle, the amateur survivalists aren’t nearly as interesting as the professional soldiers-for-hire, the nebbishy scientist and the mustache-twirling corporate villain. You understand the need for kids in peril, but you wish they’d just stuck with the adventurers.

And while director Gareth Edwards knows how to mount a production heavy with CGI spectacle and multi-character business (he’s responsible for the 2014 Godzilla reboot as well as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), there’s a sort of auto-pilot feel to the proceedings here. Jurassic World: Rebirth has a better-than-average filmmaker at the helm, a top-notch screenwriter, a bona fide movie star in action-hero mode, one of the best actors working today — both Johansson and Ali are doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and are serious troupers in terms of scared-reaction-shot duties — and the benefit of a reliable, time-tested intellectual property.

So why the hell does this feel so generic, so by-the-numbers, so instantly forgettable? The whole thing resembles the blockbuster version of a readymade, assembled from various, recognizable spare parts and elevated only by virtue of its name. Fans and completists may still get giddy over a ScarJo vs. Dinos showdown, and you should never underestimate the power of giant, toothy jaws chomping down on poor, hapless humans. But long before the big showstopping climax, you’ll start to understand why the movie’s jaded public became bored by what once seemed thrilling and unique. Subtitling this Rebirth seems to have been an act of extreme optimism.

From Rolling Stone US.