Remember when we used to wait longer than three years to reboot a franchise? OK, so maybe reboot is a bit much, but even in these cynical times of fluctuating box office and cinematic upheaval, restarting the Jurassic World franchise so soon after the frankly dire Dominion seems more like an act of desperation than a measured act of blockbuster crafting. However, if the Rebirth of Jurassic World is going to come so soon, then at least the power that be have taken a cue from John Hammond and spared no expense when it comes to populating the movie on both sides of the camera.
Not only do we have the starry likes of Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali sprinting from all sorts of predatory dental work, but calling the shots is none other than Gareth Edwards who obviously hasn’t had his fill yet of wrangling giant sized lizards after his Godzilla movie kicked off the Monsterverse. But can dinosaurs still hack it on the big screen or has all the oohs and ahhs and the running and screaming finally devolved into apathy?
Five years have passed since the events of Dominion and the fortunes of the dinosaur species that had thrived in the world gave decidedly changed. Disease and environmental issues has cause the majority of the various breeds of thunder lizard to die out and the only place where the saurians seem to be able to survive are in remote, tropical environments that closely resemble their original habitats. While it’s hardly surprising that a giant fucking lizard would find it hard to settle in the Canadian wilderness or in Times Square, public interest that once saw the globe gripped in Jurassic World fever has now waned to the point where fascination for dinosaurs has curled up and died along with the formally proud animals.
However, this doesn’t stop ParkerGenix company man Martin Krebs from amassing a small team to embark on a crazy mission of mercy for the pharmaceutical company and after rounding up covert merc Zora Bennett, paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis and team leader Duncan Kincaid, they embark to Ile Saint-Hubert, an island housing one of InGen’s abandoned dinosaur research laboratories, in order to score blood and tissue samples from three of the biggest species that exist there. Of course, the sea dwelling Mosasaurus, the land based Titanosarus and the airborne Quetzalcoatlus aren’t exactly going to obediently just turn their heads and cough or whatever, so the danger levels for the mission is obscenely high despite all the zeros that Krebs has included in his payment.
However, as potentially lethal as this all is, two things make it infinitely worse. One is the presence of a family whose sailing trip goes titsosaurus up after they’re shipwrecked by the Mosasaurus, and the other.. ? Well, let’s just say that some of InGen’s more freakish results in genetic doodling are still kicking about on the island and are just as hungry as all the normal dinos.
Despite regularly being entertained by all of the Jurassic movies despite there being a lot of glaring flaws, even I was wondering why Universal was so eager to push on so soon after the critical lashing the second trilogy received. In fact, the script for Jurassic World: Rebirth is so self-aware of people’s complaints, they’ve even made it into the screenplay of returning scribe David Koepp who is back on writing duties after scribbling Steven Spielberg’s original two movies. People (like movie critics) are now sick of Dinosaurs and have moved onto the next thing as we find that most of the underutilised plot swings of the last movie have now been undone, which means that the series now has a chance to revert back to its roots to once again become an island based survival thriller filled with adventure-based set pieces and plenty of snapping jaws. But while the reset is actually kind of refreshing after seven years of trained Raptors and Chris Pratt holding his hands up, there’s nothing particularly new here that justifies this rather hurried Rebirth. We still get a random clutch of adventurers, most of whom clearly have “survivor” or “victim” stamped on their foreheads, we get a slimy company man who seems to have gone to the Carter Burke school of corporate backstabbing and we get the family aspect crudely hammered home by the random family thrust into the action despite feeling that they literally wandered in from a cancelled spec script that failed to get the green light. Weirdest of all, even though Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali are obviously getting a genuine kick out of rumbling in the jungle, there’s also the distinct feeling that anyone could be playing these roles and you simply wouldn’t notice the difference.
So far, so worrying – but the Jurassic Park/World franchise has bounced back from shifty writing before and helping matters a great deal is the fact that Rogue One and Godzilla director Gareth Edwards is plainly stoked to be playing in Spielberg’s sandbox after blatantly referencing him for years. While while his previous stuff has been nodding heavily toward Jurassic Park and Jaws (2014’s Godzilla in particular is positively crawling with them), here he gets to do it for real, spinning out some of the franchise’s consistently best set pieces for years. An extended sea hunt for the Mosasaurus turns into a blatant mini Jaws remake, a sequence that sees a T-Rex thrillingly stalk the family down a river comes right out of Michael Crichton’s original novel and a genuinely touching moment featuring a pair of affectionate Titanosarus invokes memories of Edward’s first feature, Monsters. However, faring a little less well are the mutant species of dinosaurs who prove to be rather forgettable compared to everything else. The Mutadons are merely tricked out Raptors with a slower reaction time and the much touted Distortus Rex certainly looks ferocious enough like the Monsterverse’s MUTOs got jiggy with a Rancor, but it doesn’t really do anything out of the ordinary the way the Indominus Rex did back in 2015. However, there’s always been something thrilling on a primal level about watching A-listers flee in terror from oversized predators and if you can forgive the frequent slow spots and strange survival instincts of some of the cast, this latest visit to a land ruled by unruly lizards still packs some of that original wonder when it needs to.
Whether Jurassic World thrives or ultimately faces extinction based on this newest venture is anyone’s guess, but despite some truly cool sequences, there is a feeling that Rebirth feels a little too inconsequential and predictable to fully swoop in like a pterodactyl and save the day. Still, Edwards seems to be a natural choice for the material and even after all these years, it’s still awesome to watch a Rex do it’s thing, but maybe the in-movie consensus isn’t entirely off base. Maybe the dinos truly have had their day.
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