The Jurassic Park franchise is ready for a rebirth, but doesn't find one in Jurassic World: Rebirth.
After an iconic first entry in 1993, Jurassic Park movies have dined out on goodwill, throwbacks, and, well, dinosaurs. Six movies and more than three decades removed from an industry-changing debut, the series has never managed to recapture the awe it once instilled.
Jurassic World: Rebirth, like 2015’s Jurassic World, is a soft reboot, a new adventure with new characters set in the same world where John Hammond opened a doomed theme park.
As the series did with the first sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, the premise is that there’s yet another island packed with prehistoric creatures. This time, the corporation developing hybrid dinosaurs had an island where scientists experimented with the creation of new species.
In the opening moments, a hybrid experiment gone wrong does what dinosaurs inevitably do. It escapes, much to the disappointment of scientists who had hoped to continue living.
Following the events of Jurassic World: Dominion, society has grown tired of dinosaurs. Most have died off or migrated toward the equator, where we're told they can survive as climate change has made it difficult for them to survive elsewhere.
A pharmaceutical company needs DNA from the three largest dinosaurs on the planet to complete its work on a medicine that could end heart disease. They hire mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and her crew, along with paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), to illegally infiltrate the island in pursuit of the DNA that will make its shareholders profoundly wealthy.
Naturally, the crew becomes stranded on the island, as does a family who was boating too close its dinosaur-infested waters.
The plot is thin, even if it has the underpinnings of something more interesting — the corruption of pharmaceutical companies, the short attention span of culture, climate change.
A series of dino-centric close calls and mishaps ensue. The setpieces are frequently some of the best the series has seen since Jurassic World, if not earlier. Yet, they’re hollow, failing to meaningfully tie the themes to the scenes or dare to step beyond what has worked previously.
The story meanders, with all dinosaurs but the hybrid monster of the opening scene, the Distortus Rex, failing to mean much of anything. They appear once and disappear, never building any kind of personality or tension toward a showstopping climax. It rests on the certainty that the opening monstrosity will return at some point.
However, its worst sin is that of many in the series: The lack of a true villain. The dinosaurs are the peril, but they’re just doing what dinosaurs do. The pharmaceutical company representative, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), comes along, but is a run-of-the-mill lackey. He nearly kills a girl from the stranded family, but otherwise is simply a capitalist looking to make some money.
His presence is perfunctory, a plot point. The movie doesn’t lean into the villainy of the pharmaceutical company and its methods, but seems to presume knowingly that the audience understands that big pharma will do anything to make millions (“trillions” he says at one point).
The reality is that worse sins are seen daily by the millions whose health is left at the discretion of profit-driven pharmaceutical and insurance companies. Krebs doesn’t actually kill anyone or even do much more than vaguely threaten his companions. Yet, social media is filled with horror stories of medicine too expensive to afford or families going broke over denied medical claims.
A movie filled with monsters requires a monster-sized villain, and it’s not hard to find worse than Krebs by logging into X.
There are thrills and good performances, notably Mahershala Ali as one of the mercenary team and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as the father of the stranded family, but Jurassic World: Rebirth continues the tradition of reinventing scenes that worked and failing to provide a villain worthy of its showstopping attack scenes.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is more than sufficient as a summer blockbuster, but never makes good on the promise to be more than a series of dinosaur encounters, some awe-inspiring, some terrifying, all in the service of making millions, or, as Krebs might interject, billions.
How can Jurassic World: Rebirth help film programmers?
The seventh entry in the Jurassic Park franchise improves on some of the recent films and, in doing so, offers a movie that will draw an audience and offer thrills as a part of programming, particularly summer movie series or programs directed at a broad audience that benefit from having recognizable films and stars.
What can Jurassic World: Rebirth offer libraries?
As a major blockbuster, it’s the kind of movie that will undoubtedly appeal to a broad audience and get checked out repeatedly. With its focus on hybrids and perfunctory nods towards issues like climate science, it doesn’t offer much to support programming around science or other issues.
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