(MAJOR SPOILERS) Jurassic Park and World both have their triumphs and flaws, the latter trilogy receiving the most criticism for bringing the dinosaurs into civilisation and as others have pointed out, forced this entire franchise into a corner with little room to develop. From the outset, Rebirth is exactly that. Negating all that has come before and summing up the current situation in a few short paragraphs to set the scene. The scene is set, dinosaurs are dying, those alive are thriving in one specific area, again and have been left there, again, to their own devices. There was hope that maybe the franchise will turn an intriguing corner.
The Jurassic franchise does seem to back peddle at every turn. When in doubt, claim there was yet another island where nefarious things were happening. Need a bad guy? Who does society as a whole despise? Pharmaceutical companies, perfect. What’s the bizarre reason for travelling into the danger zone? Some dinosaurs could be key to curing a life-threatening disease (but not cancer), great, so we just need some samples. This entire set up is near perfect, if formulaic, but would have provided enough entertainment as well as the usual peril that comes with dinosaurs. We may have even got more information on what exactly was happening on the island and more than just that one off speech about how humans are terrible and we’re killing the planet. But unfortunately, for some ridiculous reason, the studio (I’m sure) decided we HAVE to have kids appear in the film. Enter the biggest problem, aside from the design of the D-Rex, the family on the boat.
There were two films going on here, one was the film we all wanted and expected, the other was a pointless family survival story where you didn’t care about the characters or what happened to them. The Delgado family were a distraction and rather ruined the flow of the entire film. The raft scene in the river was excited BUT this easily could have been with the other characters of the film. The team trying get the samples could have been bigger and not just consisted of characters you expected to be killed off one by one so that the three named actors would live. But we only needed one team – as we have with previous films – except Dominion of course, as that cast was huge.
Its such a shame that Rebirth couldn’t deliver a on such an open premise. There was so much opportunity to avoid doing what was done before but unfortunately the need to homage absolutely everything was too much, not to mention the whole other movie shoehorned into the film. Story problems aside, although we got to have a few classic dinosaur moments, the second the D-Rex comes into view looking like the spawn of the Cloverfield monster and the Rancor from Star Wars, the disappointment levels hit the roof. It didn’t look like a dinosaur. Was it meant to? Was the entire purpose that they weren’t creating dinosaurs but just, monsters instead? Who knows!
For love of dinosaurs, Rebirth might just be ok, but if you’re hoping the story will hold, it doesn’t. The characters are also nothing to hold on to, with very one note back stories and in all honestly, Scarlett Johansson, barely making an impression on screen. The heavy character lifting is left to Mahershala Ali and Jonathan Bailey who just about manage to keep the film going. I won’t mention the family as they did not make an impression, they should have been in a different film altogether.
As someone who loves Jurassic Park (and sequels) and Jurassic World, and will even defend Fallen Kingdom and Dominion if I have to, I was sorely disappointed. With a supposedly great cast, great director, great set up, the film falls flat.