‘Jurassic World Rebirth,’ and the case for no more ‘Jurassic Park’ movies
Once again, there just wasn’t a good enough idea to justify returning to this universe.
The latest Jurassic Park film, the seventh in the franchise, has some talented people involved with it. Steven Spielberg, who directed the original, is an executive producer, while Gareth Edwards, the director, has made some good movies. It’s got talented movie stars — Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey — and some up-and-comers. David Koepp, who wrote the original Jurassic Park and lots of other big films, wrote this as well, rather than the usual blockbuster schmozz of seven different writers.
The problem is, the film has trouble getting past a crucial problem: There just aren’t many good stories to tell in this universe. Just about everything interesting that happens here is a rehash of something that happened in a different Jurassic Park installment.
I’ve gone on the record in the past as stating that I’ve never really much liked any of the Jurassic Park/World movies other than the Spielberg-directed original in 1993. That film was not only a special-effects breakthrough, but it was about something truly special: The wonder of humans and dinosaurs sharing the world for the first time.
The 1997 sequel, The Lost World, had its moments, including the Godzilla-homage third act of T-Rexes attacking San Diego, but so many of the other sequels have been forgettable. There was practically nothing good in the “Jurassic World” trilogy, which always misused the talents of Chris Pratt, featured subpar action, and never felt very special.
The third film, Dominion, felt like crowding in all the characters from the old and new Jurassic movies, to the point where the dinosaurs were barely important at all. But they kept making money, and so they kept making more sequels.
Now, just three years after the last of that trilogy, we have another reboot, called Jurassic World: Rebirth. It’s got an all-new cast, led by Johansson, and next to no connection to any of the human characters from the previous films. We’re also told that, due to climate change, the dinosaurs are now only able to function in an area near the equator, where humans aren’t supposed to tread.
The film has a germ of a good idea, which is that — shades of gila monster venom leading to the discovery of Ozempic — a pharmaceutical company has discovered that fluid from the dinosaurs could lead to a cure for heart disease, potentially worth billions or trillions of dollars.
So Johansson’s professional mercenary sets off to get the dinosour venom, along with a scientist (Bailey, taking over a version of Jeff Goldblum role), a boat captain (Ali), and a crass shill for the pharmaceutical company (Rupert Friend.) They eventually interface with a father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters, and the older daughter’s slack boyfriend.
The film’s first half owes less to Jurassic Park than to Jaws, with the characters on the high seas fighting with monsters. But then the action shifts to yet another secret island, where the characters do battle with a series of genetically mutated dinosaurs.
This was a feature of the Pratt-era Jurassic films; they kept making new, fake dinosaurs, which were never quite as interesting as the T-rexes. We’re told the island is an abandoned testing facility for genetically mutated dinosaurs, but the new dinosaurs we meet aren’t all that interesting.
An even more troubling revelation is that there just aren’t any new ideas here. Once again, it’s all about how it’s wrong for humans to mess with nature, especially when those humans work for evil corporations.
Also, where the other movies had a hint of romantic chemistry among the characters, there’s nothing of the kind here; when we see two dinosaurs preparing to mate, that’s the only sexual chemistry of any kind.
The action, I grant, is much better-rendered than in the last few films; Gareth Edwards is at least capable of making a passable film, while Colin Trevorrow is not. There’s one great moment, featuring a wide shot of a group of dinosaurs slowly walking as John Williams’ classic score plays. But again, this is merely a homage to the first movie.
In the original version of the Nicole Kidman AMC movie intro, Kidman waxes about how movies “take us to a place we’ve never been before,” as we see the logo of the third or fourth Jurassic Park film, a place we’ve seen many times before. At this point, we’ve been there too many times.