Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ed Skrein
Screenplay: David Koepp
134 mins. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language and a drug reference.

When a franchise is seven films deep, it’s important to try some new things and explore how to keep a series of films continually viable and entertaining. With the Jurassic Park franchise, there’s frequently been attempts at finding new wrinkles to the story, but many of them have fallen prey to the comfortable “bunch of people on a dinosaur island” plot beat that has been the mainstay. The newest film, Jurassic World Rebirth, has an incredible opening horror sequence, a number of fantastic ideas and set pieces, and a fun twist on the formula…for about half the movie.

Covert operations expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson, Avengers: Endgame) has been tasked with assembling a team, including paleontologist Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, Wicked) and Captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali, Moonlight) to travel to the equator, where most of the recently-freed dinosaurs of Jurassic World have migrated to, now living in a world that doesn’t equate to the one of their time. Their job is to collect blood samples from the three largest species for a pharmaceutical company that believes they can cure heart disease. Once there, they find themselves stranded on a island that served as InGen’s testing facility with a number of surprising and dangerous inhabitants.

Going back to the original Jurassic Park, these films have always been monster movies. We watched cloned creatures that resemble the dinosaurs we all grew up curious about. As the series went on, particularly in the Jurassic World films, we’ve seen the franchise dip more and more into that monster territory with genetic hybrids and the like, and Rebirth is the first film that seemingly heads straight into that territory. A large number of the dinosaurs here are actually genetic failures and hybrid-spliced horrors that resemble less and less the dinosaurs that we’ve come to know. Director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One) leans heavier on the traditional dinosaurs when possible, and I think he knows how to handle the set pieces well, and there’s even a sequence taken from Michael Crichton’s original novel that might be the last piece of that book that hadn’t yet been mined for one of these films. While the angle that he and screenwriter David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) are going for works pretty well and giving something new, they have inadvertantly Jumped the Shark, or in this case, Dinosaur, for the franchise as a whole. It works here, but it’s not something I want to see more of going forward.

If you’re here for the dinosaur and monster action, you’ll be satisfied, but Rebirth completely fumbles its fascinating premise and characters. The inciting idea of hunting down these dinosaurs for an important scientific cause is terrific, and it makes the first hour of the film strong and exciting, particularly a sequence where their boat is tracking a Mosasaurus in the open ocean. The problem is that, about halfway through, the narrative evolves into a bunch of people on a dinosaur island, which encapsulates most of the franchise at this point. Koepp’s screenplay then proceeds to a number of scenes that feel vaguely reminiscent of the other films in what feels like a “greatest hits” collection by a cover band, even including homage to other non-Jurassic Park Spielberg films like Indiana Jones or Jaws.

The characters are paper-thin here, many of them written without much to define them. Many characters were so inconsequential that I didn’t even hear a name mentioned, and I knew they were basically there to get eaten, while a number of the principal cast have a heavy amount of plot armor. Early on in the film, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali share a scene where they reconnect, and most of the dialogue serves to add background information in an extremely clunky way. Kincaid, played by Ali, references the loss of his son in a strange bit of wording that is meant more for the audience than the scene. Later, he looks upon a photograph of his son in a way that accomplishes everything that the earlier dialogue had attempted, but the visual storytelling works better.

But, if you’re here for the dinosaurs, Edwards delivers. While the central plot becomes more traditional, Edwards has a number of set pieces that made for a compelling, nail-biting experience in the theater, especially the absolute banger of an opening horror sequence. Edwards is able to make the most of his screenplay, and while I remain mixed on the end product, it’s winning where it needs to.

Jurassic World Rebirth is a mixed bag. It has some great individual sequences, but the screenplay gives up on its most impressive ideas about halfway through. We’re two films removed from Fallen Kingdom, and we’ve yet to really come through on that film’s promising ending. Koepp’s screenplay would have worked better focused on Dr. Loomis, played with charm by Jonathan Bailey, and I wish it had strayed further away from the franchise mainstays. That being said, it makes for a great theater experience this Independence Day.

2.5/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

• For my review of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, click here.
• For my review of Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World, click here.
• For my review of J.A. Bayona’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, click here.
• For my review of Gareth Edwards’s Monsters, click here.
• For my review of Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla, click here.