Juras­sic World: Rebirth review – strug­gles to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for its existence

Rather than a tri­umphant replay of the old hits, Juras­sic World: Rebirth is a bit more like Mal­ibu Sta­cy with a new hat. It’s a repack­aged prod­uct with a cou­ple of super­fi­cial bells and whis­tles that its mak­ers believe audi­ences will want to see pure­ly to remain in the loop with all the dino-based shenanigans. 

Its numer­ous flagged/un­der­scored/ex­cla­ma­tion-point­ed call-backs to the ​’90s orig­i­nals work dou­ble duty as balmy-eyed nos­tal­gia and a trag­ic reminder that this is a fran­chise that hasn’t been able to whisk up an orig­i­nal thought since the cred­its rolled on the Steven Spielberg’s OG mega hit over three decades ago. And you know things are bad when you’re watch­ing a sum­mer block­buster that’s part of the vaunt­ed Juras­sic Park IP and think­ing, ​“Ho hum… I won­der what’s going on over at Skull Island right now…”.

Vet­er­an screen­writer David Koepp, who penned the first sequel, Juras­sic Park: The Lost World, in 1997, returns to the DNA-splic­ing fray, and this new film feels every bit the reject­ed pro­pos­al from those sal­ad days, a script whose dog-eared pages have been sal­vaged from the fil­ing cabinet/​waste bin of his old office. Often brac­ing­ly gener­ic in its char­ac­ter­i­sa­tions, its deploy­ment of expo­si­tion and the occa­sion­al slow beat where some­one will idly rem­i­nisce about the past, it’s baf­fling that some­one who has worked on all vari­eties of film and at every lev­el in the indus­try could deliv­er some­thing so utter­ly devoid of inter­est or originality.

Aside from its shod­dy con­ceit, it’s a script that does the dirty on its cast, in par­tic­u­lar Maher­sha­la Ali as the mer­ce­nary-for-hire Dun­can who is giv­en the remit to be reck­less­ly impul­sive when it’s revealed that he’s suf­fer­ing from deep fam­i­ly-based trau­ma. Scar­lett Johans­son, mean­while, has a nice line in cocky smirk­ing as covert opps mae­stro Zora. She’s giv­en the absolute non-dillem­ma of whether she’ll toe the cor­po­rate line as strict­ly set out by linen-suit­ed weasel Krebs (Rupert Friend*), or score the win­ning goal for glob­al moral­i­ty and heed the wis­dom of dash­ing palaeon­tol­o­gist Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey).

The plan here is that Krebs has offered Zora sil­ly mon­ey to cap­ture blood and tis­sue sam­ples from three live dinosaurs employ­ing tech­nol­o­gy cre­at­ed by Loomis. The snag is that their tar­gets – rep­re­sent­ing land, sea and air – all now thrive in a trop­i­cal micro­cli­mate along the equa­tor that also hap­pens to be the island that was used as a test­ing ground for dinosaur cross-breed­ing. We all know it’s not going to be the quick ​“pop in, pop out” escapade that they all think it will be, and our gang also have to deal with the might­i­ly naffed off ​“D‑Rex”, which is exact­ly like if a T‑Rex had been smashed in the face with the world’s largest fry­ing pan.

The film strug­gles to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for its exis­tence, and we’re told that the world has grown weary of the spec­ta­cle of dinosaurs. Which in itself is a com­plete­ly cyn­i­cal assump­tion in line with say­ing, say, that human­i­ty will one day grow tired and yearn for the extinc­tion of pan­thers. Krebs and his deep-pock­et­ed pay­mas­ters believe that this flash­point of col­lec­tive apa­thy is the time to make their play and do a lit­tle bit of under-the-radar dinosaur vivi­sec­tion in order to pro­duce a cure for heart dis­ease, which they can charge a small for­tune for once they have the patent. 

The ​“human inter­est” ele­ment to the sto­ry is bolt­ed on in the form of super­dad Reuben (Manuel Gar­cia-Rul­fo) and his two daugh­ters (Aud­ri­na Miran­da as pre-teen Isabel­la and Luna Blaise as late-teen Tere­sa) and Teresa’s charm­ing slack­er boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) as they heed­less­ly attempt to sail through dino infest­ed waters in the name of fam­i­ly adven­ture. And this is two min­utes after being told repeat­ed­ly that this area is a human no-go zone as death will like­ly be immi­nent. So sym­pa­thy lev­els are a tad hard to come by, even if the lev­el of per­for­mance and char­ac­ter depth is a lit­tle bit higher/​deeper on this side of the play­ing field.

What saves the film from the sum­mer dol­drums is the typ­i­cal­ly stel­lar work by direc­tor Gareth Edwards, who, despite the qual­i­ty of the mate­ri­als he’s been giv­en to work with, proves once more that he’s one of the most inter­est­ing and orig­i­nal artists in Hol­ly­wood when it comes to cre­at­ing CG set pieces. There’s one sequence at the film’s mid-point that push­es the tech­nol­o­gy to sat­is­fy­ing extremes by hav­ing dig­i­tal dinosaurs inter­sect­ing with human char­ac­ters while being flung down some riv­er rapids.

Edwards’s involve­ment was the one thing keep­ing the can­dle aflame in terms of our hopes that this mori­bund, nev­er-end­ing fran­chise might have turned a cor­ner. Yet even work­ing at full pelt, there’s just too much that’s wrong and sil­ly and deriv­a­tive about this tired, tired run-out. The actors are com­pe­tent; there are a few tasty zingers; the effects are seam­less. But the whole enter­prise just feels like the same thing we’ve seen over and over again, and that the addi­tion of a ​“new hat” has been deemed more of an irri­tant than a gift to cre­ate some­thing fresh.


*I’d like to make read­ers aware of a per­ti­nent com­ment that was made on the LWLies pri­vate group chat by my esteemed col­league Han­nah Strong, who not­ed that, ​“He was v much Rupert Foe in JW”. It felt right to include the obser­va­tion in this, our offi­cial review of the film. Thanks.