‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ Review: More Dinosaurs, More Problems

Jurassic World Rebirth opens with a plea for sympathy. In the previous two Jurassic World movies, dinosaurs spread to every corner of the globe … and then promptly started to go extinct all over again. For their part, the public appears happy to see them gone. A paleontologist gripes that his museum closed its dinosaur exhibit after it sold just 12 tickets over the previous week. Five years earlier, he explains, there were lines out the door.

“Nobody cares about these animals anymore,” he says. “They deserve better!” Indeed. Won’t someone please think of the dinosaurs?!?

Are dinosaurs passé in 2025? If they are, Jurassic World has no one to blame but itself. The original Jurassic Park was a true generational cinematic event, not to mention a supremely satisfying sci-fi film. Rebirth is the fourth Jurassic World movie in 11 years, and the only reason it is the best of the bunch is because the others were even worse.

READ MORE: Who Is the Dumbest Human Character in Jurassic World?

At least this Jurassic World’s characters behave a little more sensibly than the heroes of the previous ones — although this new batch nonetheless continues this franchise’s long-standing tradition of brilliant scientists and capable soldiers walking into the most dangerous place on Earth and stating with absolute confidence everything will be fine about 15 seconds before characters start dying in horrible ways. It’s almost comical at this point how quickly any building with the word “InGen” stenciled on the walls descends into utter chaos in these movies. In Rebirth, it happens before the opening title card!

The leader of the latest crew of potential T-rex victims is Zora (Scarlett Johansson), a mercenary trained in situational security with — as she oh so casually describes it at one point — “a little PTSD” after a recent assignment ended in tragedy. Still, her personal trauma doesn’t stop her from gladly accepting a lucrative mission from a tech magnate named Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), who wears a gorgeous suit and smiles a lot and thus, within the rules established by this franchise for the last 30 years, is not to be trusted.

Krebs works for a company on the verge of a pharmaceutical breakthrough. To produce their new miracle drug they need to retrieve three DNA samples from three different dinosaurs that all live on an island that once housed the R&D facility for the original Jurassic Park. (That’s the place that went to hell before Rebirth’s opening credits.) Krebs wants Zora to lead an expedition to the island to acquire said DNA. What could go wrong? (Also: How fast could it go wrong? It would be great to cram an extra showtime per day in, if possible.)

In order to locate and identify the correct dino species, they also recruit that out-of-work paleontologist, Dr. Loomis (Wicked’s Jonathan Bailey). And to ferry them to and from this island, Zora summons an old war buddy named Duncan (Mahershala Ali) with a boat and a jaunty beret. Ah, but the aforementioned rules of Jurassic World dictate there must always be at least a couple children in peril, both to evoke some old-school Spielberg vibes and to ensure these films have a character their target demographic can identify with onscreen. To that end, a dad (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his two daughters (Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda), plus the eldest kid’s dim-witted boyfriend (David Iacono, who’s actually pretty funny) wind up on Duncan’s boat right as they arrive at this island of doom. When the dinosaur s— inevitably hits the fan, they have to fight for their lives too.

The producers of the Jurassic franchise coaxed original Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp to return for Rebirth, and while he provides some snappy banter for the canny Zora and the slimy Krebs, the movie tends to bog down anytime the characters sit around and talk about the feelings, which happens more than you might expect. That includes a lot of scenes with the waylaid family, who slow down the overarching DNA narrative with constant cutaways that add little tension outside of one effective sequence involving an uncooperative inflatable raft.

Things pick up when the film arrives on the island, and director Gareth Edwards can flex his affinity for big special effects. Edwards, who worked in VFX before his directing career and previously helmed the 2014 Godzilla, boasts plenty of experience working on this scale, and he does deliver a couple effective dinosaur scare sequences. The best involves several human heroes repelling down a cliff to a quetzalcoatlus nest in order to retrieve some of that all-important dino DNA — right as momma quetzalcoatlus returns home after a long day of flying and eating other carnivores.

Beyond a few flashes of visual ingenuity, though, there really isn’t much to recommend about this movie. Yes, it’s more plausible than Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and no, it doesn’t get sidetracked into a baffling subplot involving locusts like Jurassic World Dominion. But there isn’t a character or a set piece that can hold a candle to the ones in the very first Jurassic Park 30 years ago. Rebirth looks fine, but Jurassic Park still looks spectacular; if anything the almost entirely CGI approach used by the new movie looks less convincing than the mix of digital and practical dinosaurs employed by Spielberg decades earlier.

The notion Dr. Loomis suggests that people are bored with raptors and triceratops provides the explanation for Jurassic World Rebirth’s cast of mutated dinosaurs; in the interest of generating exciting new attractions for their theme park, InGen’s scientists spliced together different dinosaurs’ DNA to create disturbing creatures like the “Distortus Rex,” which boasts six limbs and a huge, bulbous cranium.

But even crossbred dinosaurs is an old idea for this series. That was the premise of the first Jurassic World, where the Indominus Rex was created for the same reason and with the same outcome. Am I not supposed to remember that? When Loomis complains that nobody cares about these animals anymore, he may be referring to more than the fictional characters in front of the camera.

Additional Thoughts:

-The film makes a big show of one hero hurting their leg early in the movie, which one assumes will hobble them throughout the rest of the story. Not so much! It only comes up when the plot demands another character do something very dangerous in order to instigate an action scene. Otherwise, said character gets along just fine, trekking through miles of hilly jungle and racing away from dinosaurs with fairly minimal little limping.

-Zora and her team are motivated to join this expedition because it comes with a massive paycheck. But over the course of the mission, as Loomis pleads with her to consider making the DNA available to the world so that everyone can benefit from this medical breakthrough, she begins to question her motives. Coming from Jurassic Park, perhaps the most merchandized franchise in Hollywood history — which used to brand its dinosaur toys with a special “JP” logo so kids would know they were “official” Jurassic Park raptors, and not cheap knockoffs — that’s quite a subplot.

RATING: 5/10