The latest installment in the “Jurassic” franchise was released on July 2, as “Jurassic World: Rebirth” reimagined the story for a third time and fought to find a good answer to one critical question: do we need more “Jurassic” movies?
The hook for this film is that public interest in dinosaurs has waned, meaning the only place they exist is on a remote island where people are prohibited from going. The characters of this film, naturally, go to the island to find them— for science.
Decreased public interest was the hook of the first ”Jurassic World” movie and it was a bit uninspired even then— nobody wants to see dinosaurs? Nobody?— so using it as motivation here feels lazy, especially when the movie suggests the opposite. The people in this film are obsessed with dinosaurs and it seems like the filmmakers just forgot that they weren’t cool anymore.
In an overlong sequence, we meet a family of secondary characters sailing on the ocean. They’ll become secondary characters for the remainder of the film, though their only purpose is to remind audiences that dinosaurs are scary— which they already know from earlier in the film, previous films and collective pop culture as a whole. Critically, though, “Jurassic” media has historically shown that dinosaurs are just animals, both scary and beautiful. This film, with the exception of one scene, doesn’t seem to be interested in exploring that second one.
In general, a lot of screen time is spent on mediocre action scenes where the characters run into dinosaurs who almost eat them. The constant fakeouts, though, mean that the successful kills lack the impact they could have. The film does a good job highlighting the terror of being around a dinosaur– the end of the opening scene is genuinely horrifying— but often wastes that tension.
The cast has a good chemistry, though none of the characters particularly stand out. Scarlett Johansson brings a familiar-from-every-other-movie mix of sarcasm and heart to her role as covert operations expert Zora Bennett, and Jonathan Bailey, playing Dr. Henry Loomis, takes a brief reprieve from playing charismatic and shallow in last year’s “Wicked” ahead of its sequel to play charismatic and smart in this movie.
The score is acceptable, but fails to meet the standard set by John Williams in the first movie. The cinematography, too, is well-crafted and better than the previous “Jurassic World” movie, but never outstanding. This film features a story similar to the oft-ridiculed “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” semi-abandoned island and all. It’s no coincidence that the movies are of similar quality. The first “Jurassic Park” was about the horrors and wonders that filled a soon-to-be-opened theme park. The first “Jurassic World” film followed chaos as it hit a highly populated park. This film spent half its runtime trying to find one specific dinosaur and the other half trying to get off an island. Not exactly gripping, especially with its maddeningly slow pace.
The film has its moments— but not enough to warrant this rebirth.
No, we do not need more “Jurassic” movies.
