More of the same
Summary
Jurassic World: Rebirth has some entertaining set-pieces and Scarlett Johansson is appealing and I liked Mahershala Ali as well. It is just the usual running from dinosaurs, but that’s what we all came to see so in that respect it delivers exactly what you’d expect.
Plot: Zora Bennett leads a team of skilled operatives to the most dangerous place on Earth, an island research facility for the original Jurassic Park. Their mission is to secure genetic material from dinosaurs whose DNA can provide life-saving benefits to mankind. As the top-secret expedition becomes more and more risky, they soon make a sinister, shocking discovery that’s been hidden from the world for decades.
Review: I remember way back in 2022 when Jurassic World: Dominion said in the trailers it was the end of the Jurassic World era… until a whopping 3 years later when they wanted to make another billion dollars. I understand as this franchise is a cash cow so why stop it when it’s easy money?
I enjoy most of the Jurassic movies because mentally I’m 12 years old and love dinosaurs, but let’s face it, it’s just the same thing over and over again. People go to the island with dinosaurs. People get chased by dinosaurs. Some people get eaten by dinosaurs. Rinse and repeat.
The latest entry Jurassic World: Rebirth has Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali go to one of the islands where experiments were performed and all the most dangerous dinosaurs live. They are there to take samples so they can prevent various diseases, but guess what? The dangerous dinosaurs are hungry so our team get chased by them and spend the movie avoiding becoming lunch and trying to stay alive.
Along the way they pick up an annoying family who for some reason survive to the end credits; they could easily have all been killed just to give us some more stakes. If it were up to me maybe 1 person would be alive at the end, but these are horror movies for kids therefore there is very little actual horror. Instead we get a baby dinosaur called Delores; I think my inner child has packed up and gone to college as I just wasn’t feeling this at all.
When the cast was first announced I was excited to see if Rebirth was going to do something new, but it is just more of the same and doesn’t really do anything we haven’t seen before.
On the plus side the visual effects are spectacular and it has some impressive set-pieces with a favourite featuring the Mosasaurus and Spinosaurus attacks. It’s also cool to finally see the T-Rex river sequence which was deleted from the original Jurassic Park. I thought the mutant dinosaur at the end looked kind of like a crap Rancor monster and just felt like a generic creature.
I’ve never loved the idea of the hybrid dinosaurs as the real creatures should be scary enough; it’s hard to think what they could do to actually make a new film feel fresh in the series. Give the dinosaurs weapons and make it Dino Riders? I’m listening. Make it R-rated with some gory kills? Hell yeah! Aside from that the concept works because it’s straightforward, so I guess as long as families like watching people being chased by dinosaurs then they’ll keep making these movies. The audience seemed to really enjoy this movie (especially the idiot who kept clapping after anyone said a line of dialogue) and usually I get swept up in it, but I hated most of the characters especially Xavier who didn’t deserve to see the end credits.
It also takes a while to get going after the opening sequence; you could have cut several scenes to ramp up the pacing, but it really plods for the first half until they finally get to the island.
Overall, Jurassic World: Rebirth takes a while for things to get interesting and the entire annoying family survives when they should have all been eaten. Still, there are some fun set-pieces and this is definitely a kid friendly horror movie so families will lap it up. Also, how did Scarlett have so many different tank tops with her? She seemed to change outfits every few minutes…