Jurassic World Rebirth, out now in theaters, returns to the tried-and-true formula of the older Jurassic Park movies while almost completely ignoring the events of the last trilogy. Rebirth grabs a group of people and tosses them, some unwillingly, onto a jungle island filled with dangerous dinosaurs. And about half of this new movie works pretty well. The other half feels like a live-action adaptation of a SNES Jurassic Park game.
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In case you don’t remember, the last three Jurassic World movies revolved around a successful park failing after a badass hybrid dino got out and caused chaos. That led to dinosaurs being brought to the mainland, off their island habitat, and eventually spreading around the world. It was a cool idea that Jurassic World Dominion, the last film in the franchise, never did much with. Dinosaurs spreading around the world is a bonkers idea that could provide you with endless storylines, scenarios, and moments to build movies and TV shows around. That could power 20 years of storytelling.
Rebooting Jurassic Park
Sadly, Rebirth tosses that all out the window, reminding viewers four separate times in the opening half hour that dinosaurs can’t survive on modern Earth and most of them are now dead. The survivors can be found on some islands dotted around the equator, but that’s it.
We do get one scene very early into Rebirth that features a big brontosaurus stuck in New York City, covered in graffiti and trash and causing a traffic jam. The movie then swiftly moves on, but not before reminding you one more time that they are all dead and this big dinosaur is probably the last one in North America.
So, after essentially retconning the end of the Jurassic World trilogy, what does Rebirth do? It fires up a plot that has nothing to do with the rest of the world and takes place on an island. So why the retcon? Your guess is as good as mine!
Anyway, Rebirth’s plot involves mercenaries (led by Scarlett Johansson) heading to a top-secret island where dinosaur experiments happened, so they can grab some prehistoric blood samples from massive beasts for a rich pharmaceutical company that wants to make a new heart disease medication that will bring in trillions of dollars.
Prehistoric questing
This half of the movie is where a lot of the dinosaur action happens, and director Gareth Edwards knows how to put together intense, action-packed prehistoric setpieces. One sequence involving large flying dinosaurs and a giant rock cliff is a standout moment. But whenever there aren’t dinos on screen, the mercs’ plotline feels like a boring video game fetch quest.
Get three DNA samples from these big creatures, each in a different biome, and bring them back to get your reward. Most of them are killed off before you can care, and the one death that does leave an impact is undone to provide a nice, happy ending, though fans of corporate assholes getting their comeuppance will be satisfied by one late kill in the movie.
The other half of Jurassic World Rebirth involves a small family: A dad, his young daughter, his older daughter who leaves for college soon, and her lazy boyfriend. It’s here that Rebirth really shines, as the family members actually have character arcs and change as the movie goes on. The film’s script, while filled with some dumb moments, does a great job of fleshing the family out and making you care about them. When they were in danger, I was sitting upright and hoping they’d all make it out alive.
A mutated, hybrid narrative
These two halves of the movie barely interact with each other. The family and mercs crash into each other at the start, but then spend 60 percent of the runtime separated, their paths only merging in the last 25 minutes or so.
This is when Rebirth’s mutant hybrid dinosaurs become a big threat to the family and the mercenaries. Sadly, because they are featured in the film so briefly, neither the raptor-like Mutadon nor the massive mutated T-Rex, known as a D-Rex, makes much of an impact. Their designs are strange and disturbing, but unlike Jurassic World’s now-iconic Indominus Rex, which played a huge part in that film, neither of these mutants is going on my list of favorite movie monsters.
As Rebirth wrapped up, and the familiar Jurassic Park music played over the survivors leaving dino island, I felt conflicted. I’m always down for dinosaurs, and the CG beasts in Rebirth are the best-looking in the franchise. And damn scary, too. But Rebirth’s two plotlines don’t come together well, and so I ended up hating one half of the movie for getting in the way of the other.
The end result is, ironically, a strange, mutated hybrid of a movie that is mostly enjoyable if you don’t think too hard about what’s happening on screen. In other words, it’s another Jurassic Park sequel. Better than some, worse than others, and nowhere near as good as Spielberg’s original classic.
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