I tapped out on the Jurassic Park franchise after 2015's Jurassic World. While I did not think it all that bad of a movie, it also was not all that good of a movie, either. There was a hollowness to it that left me unsatisfied. So I wound up skipping both Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Dominion (2022).
Which is both sad and odd, considering my love of giant monster movies and creature features. How is it I can still get giddy about seeing a new Godzilla or King Kong movie, but the thought of a new Jurassic World movie has me disinterested and cold?
Two things, I guess. First there is the lingering memory of that unsatisfying hollowness at the center of the first Jurassic World entry. Second might be the bland sameness to the proceedings. Despite all the lip service promises of dinosaurs escaping and integrating into the world, each movie seems content to just keep recycling endless variations of iconic set-pieces from the first Jurassic Park (1993) and its source material.
Gripes about sameness aside, though, I must and will give The Lost World: Jurassic Park props for its San Diego sequence. That was fun.
Yet there was a thing or two about Rebirth that managed to pierce my cocoon of disinterested lethargy regarding the franchise and intrigue me enough to go and give this entry a shot.
First is that Gareth Edwards had directed the film. I have been a fan of Edwards since Monsters (2010) and thought he did a fine job with Godzilla (2014), a wonderful job on Rogue One (2016), and a superlative job with The Creator (2023). Here was someone I thought well-suited to coax something new and interesting out of this timeworn and threadbare franchise.
Second, and something that connected with the core of my inner monster kid heart, was this film having an actual mutant dinosaur (i.e. an honest-to-goodness giant monster element). I could not pass on that...
Well, shame on me, kind of. While competently directed, with a sense of both scale and fun to the proceedings, Edwards was unable to really bring anything new or all that interesting to this entry. While it starts off strong enough, with a nifty and almost terror inducing introduction to the 'D-Rex' mutant in a cold open, everything that follows is just more of the same perfunctory and repetitive stuff.
David Koepp's script is both overstuffed and underdeveloped, offering a collection of character sketches in dire need of some fleshing out and coloring. This is also one of those movies where it is quite easy to suss out who will live and who will be dinosaur chow.
What Rebirth needed was a serious trim. Either cut the stranded family out of the script - which would allow space for the 'characters' played by Scarlett Johannson, Mahershala Ali, Johnathan Bailey, et al, to develop some much needed interesting textures and interpersonal dynamics - or cut down on the mercenary and scientists stuff and make the stranded family the primary characters and play it as a frightening and dangerous fish-out-of-water style adventure.
Either approach might have worked better than the lifeless and disinteresting mishmash of cliches I wound up sitting through. So it goes.
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