By Mark Fields
I Think We’ve Seen This Movie Before…Six Times Now
If none of the six prior movies in the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise existed, dating back to the Steven Spielberg original in 1993, then the newest installment, Jurassic World Rebirth would be worth getting excited about. The film is full of the ingredients that make for a successful summer blockbuster: a smattering of movie stars accompanied by some adorable, imperiled kids, all getting banged around and dirty; terrifying, large-scale monsters brought to roaring life with dynamic special effects; a made-to-order corporate human villain to cheer against; and a soaring musical score to further amp up the already high level of tension.
But there’s a problem…those six prior movies do exist, and sadly, Jurassic World Rebirth is just a beat-for-beat rehash of the same essential story as all the others. So much so any avid moviegoer can call out the plot steps minutes before they happen, some before the movie even starts. The utter predictability of the plot, such as it is, dampens the awe and frisson of the concept of living dinosaurs.
This time around, if it makes any difference, a group of intrepid adventurers need to return to the R&D facility of the Jurassic World theme park to capture DNA that might be able to be used to develop new wonder drugs. Although there is some resonance in having Big Pharma as the corporate enemy here, this merely repeats the Jurassic trope of corporate greed and malfeasance. Interestingly, in this rendition, our heroes are also motivated largely by financial reward, a decision that lessens the dramatic tension between the good guys and the bad guys.
But all of this is really beside the point. It’s all just a set-up for putting human beings in peril with big, scary dinosaurs. And they are big and scary. Apparently, this R&D lab was cross-breeding saurian species and dumping the rejects into the wild, a plot detail that frees the CGI monster-makers from sticking to now-familiar dinos, instead creating never-before-seen and ever-bigger scaries (that, nevertheless, still seem like retread creatures from Star Wars or Godzilla or whatever). However, we also get a few throw-back cameos from original Jurassic Park creatures to remind us of our nostalgic fondness for the franchise.
Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali have the acting chops to give some heft to their heroic mercenary characters. Jonathan Bailey, as the requisite scientific innocent, is also appealing. Most of the rest of the cast play such paper-thin characters that we realize most will only serve as dino fodder.
Overall, the creature effects and the jungle set pieces are thrilling enough to entertain most audiences. But I find it more than a little sad that a franchise that started with such wonder and grandeur seems stuck in an endless cycle of reruns that pale by comparison.
Official Trailer
