Jurassic World Rebirth review: Better Off Extinct

Despite the addition of Marvel alum Scarlett Johansson, there’s no prehistoric magic to be captured in this limp cash grab.

Jurassic World Rebirth

Directed by Gareth Edwards
Starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo

Runtime: 2 hours, 14 mins

Synopsis

Hired to collect the DNA of 3 massive dinosaur species for a drug manufacturer, mercenaries Zora Bennett (Johansson) and Duncan Kincaid (Ali), along with Dr. Loomis (Bailey), lead an expedition to an abandoned Jurassic World island that produced many of the hybrid dinosaurs (as seen in previous entries). However, when they unexpectedly come across a shipwrecked family as well as far more dangerous dinosaurs than expected, their expedition quickly becomes one of survival over profit.

Spared Some Expense

Plot-wise, Rebirth is fairly simple: get some dinosaur samples, wrestle with the extremes of rampant, unethical capitalism, save a small family from almost certain dino death.

The script seemed interested in exploring those ideas: giving appropriate time with the mercenaries to debate their past moral failures, showing Zora and Duncan’s friendship, the budding conflict over helping a billionaire get richer with a much-needed global drug, etc.

However, the energy put together by this cast of actors is eerily bad. So many lines fail to deliver or make you connect with these characters, which becomes extremely problematic later as the body count starts to rack up from “less significant” deaths (characters who got barely any screen time) and strings you along with the ones we’re supposed to care about.

What’s painful is that our first lead, Johansson, fresh off a decade of playing a morally gray character in Black Widow, doesn’t seem to tap into those set of emotions at all. We could play clips of any Marvel movie where her conversations with Hawkeye (played by Jeremy Renner) display more emotional depth and range than anything constructed with Rebirth. And do you realize how asinine it is to use the MCU as the barometer for emotional depth / range for a Jurassic film?! A series that literally terrified kids and adults while making them fall in love with dinosaurs again? How did we get here?!

I’m sure some folks will zero in on a few character decisions that are laughably bad (like the completely unnecessary boat crash or the sloooooow river chase), but that misses the overall lack of chemistry between these characters. There’s a severe lack of interplay when the plot creates plenty of potential sources for conflict. Example: instead of having the mercenaries push back against pharmaceutical CEO Kreb (Friend), they spend most of their time having small side conversations about their morally gray past, which grows old after two hours. It stands in stark contrast to, say, the original Jurassic Park (1993) when the insurance lawyer Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) is there for half the screen time, providing another lens for Hammond’s corporate greed, which the characters constantly react to. His death may be partially played up for laughs, but his presence leading up to that point gave us greater insight into the surviving members.

Another conflict that goes nowhere: the survival of the shipwrecked family vs. our merry gang of mercenaries. As soon as the movie puts these two groups together, they are immediately separated…but imagine if they had been split into two mixed groups, with family members in each group to serve as the thorn in Zora or Duncan’s side as they tried to collect samples. It would have put a real human face to the selfishness they were displaying by staying on the island rather than helping the family get rescued. Instead, the movie plants this thread about 30 minutes in, and doesn’t do anything with it until it’s time to wrap up this dumpster fire.

Gareth Edwards is undoubtedly one of my favorite directors, especially after he resurrected the US version of Godzilla in 2014, gave me my favorite Star Wars film in Rogue One (2016), and most recently, I loved his solo sci-fi project The Creator (2023). I know some Star Wars fans will nitpick about Rogue One and how much writer / director Tony Gilroy’s influence / takeover was near the end of that project. However, there’s still plenty of decisions across these 3 films that have Edward’s footprints on them, particularly his eye for CGI and cinematography. This culminates nicely in The Creator, as he creates an alternate, futuristic Earth on a tight budget, and his cinematographer team in Greig Fraser and Oren Soffer push the Sony FX3 camera to its limits, with great effect.

So…it’s frankly mind-boggling that we don’t get that same level of craft here. That doesn’t mean that Edwards isn’t trying there; there are a few key moments, like the Titanosaurus reveal, that feel reminiscent of his hallmarks and combine well with shots you’d come to expect in a Jurassic film. But the impact everywhere else seems so rushed, bland, and by the numbers that you’d be forgiven for thinking Edwards had anything to do with this film.

Conclusion / Recommendation

Gareth Edwards has showcased a knack in recent outings for bringing lush CGI environments and characters to life, but none of that experience can save a limp script, reheated ideas, or a cast that seems bored to be there. What could have been a nice, isolated adventure from the mainline Jurassic World movies unfortunately devolved into a rather simple and forgettable romp. Audiences can forgive a Jurassic film for a few plot contrivances or silly callbacks, but being boring or lifeless is worth a scolding from John Hammond himself.

I can’t in good conscience recommend this to anyone except for the dinosaur masochists out there keeping this franchise alive. But who am I kidding, you all went and supported Jurassic World Dominion (2022) to the tune of *checks notes* $1.1 billion dollars, so this advice will likely fall as flat as this cast.

Score: 5.3 out of 10

• 5- Characters Flattened By A Stegosaurus
  • Despite the potential character drama that could have been stellar, most of the interesting storylines are sidelined until the very end, when it’s too late for the audience to care.
• 7- Prehistoric Cinematography
  • Some of Edward’s trademark decisions and stylings can be found here, but not in enough quantities to truly elevate the proceedings.
• 4- Mediocrity Finds A Way
  • Rebirth poorly remixes concepts that previous Jurassic Park / World films have tackled, doing the bare minimum exploration and development to justify this side story.

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