'Jurassic World Rebirth' saves a nearly-extinct franchise
The dinosaurs are great, the humans are meh.
There’s a scene in “Jurassic World Rebirth” where the characters stumble into a field of tall grass, where a herd of brontosauruses graze. Mutant brontosauruses, actually – the behemoths have snake-like tails that undulate lazily across the grass. The humans are struck mute by their awesome majesty – thank goodness, given the quality of the dialogue - and stare up in wonder as John Williams’ original “Jurassic Park” score swells.
That’s all we wanted, Hollywood. We didn’t want theme parks or “dinosaur whisperers” or raptors chasing Chris Pratt on a motorcycle through Malta. We just wanted something that would approach the feeling we got when we saw the 1993 original in the theater for the first time.
And “Jurassic World Rebirth” comes pretty close to delivering that, certainly closer than the last three “Jurassic World” movies. After that increasingly convoluted trilogy, “Rebirth” goes back to basics as a stripped-down survival adventure movie built around some very suspenseful sequences. The dinosaur stuff in “Rebirth” is good.
The human stuff? Not so good. Director Gareth Edwards (“Rogue One,” “Godzilla”) has always been more comfortable working on the big canvas of a blockbuster than on the detail work of creating characters. And although original “Jurassic Park” screenwriter David Koepp gets sole credit on “Rebirth,” I’ll sooner believe dinosaurs walk the earth today than believe he wrote some of the dialogue in this movie.
Which makes the opening 20 minutes pretty rough going, as the film introduces us to its one-dimensional human characters. There’s the Billionaire (Rupert Friend), pharma tycoon Martin Krebs, who is assembling a team to go to yet another dinosaur island and extract DNA that could lead to major medical breakthroughs. There’s the Scientist (Jonathan Bailey), Dr. Henry Loomis, a dinosaur expert eager to see them in the wild rather than in zoos.
There’s the Mercenary (Scarlett Johannson), Zora Bennett, the tough-as-nails security expert with a secret heart of gold. And there’s the Captain (Mahershala Ali), Duncan Kincaid, the cynical skipper who . . . also has a secret heart of gold? The characters are hurriedly introduced in a flurry of tell-don’t-show exposition, and I laughed out loud when in one scene Duncan and Zora both quickly discuss their recent family traumas, as if they were reading aloud from their bio sheets.
Surrounded by some redshirts, the team heads off. Along the way, they pick up a family – father Manuel (Reuben Delgado), young daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda), teenage daughter Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) – whose sailboat is capsized by a mosasaurus.
They turn out to be a much more appealing group than the top-billed leads, giving the action some much-needed emotion and even humor. (“Rebirth” understands that the only thing worse than being stranded on an island full of killer dinosaurs is being stranded there with your daughter’s slacker boyfriend.)
The island turns out to be sort of a dumping ground for genetically-modified dinosaurs that ended up being rejected for the old theme park – an Island of Misfit Dinos. This leads to some interesting and original dinosaur designs although, let’s be frank, you’re never going to improve upon an actual raptor or a T-rex. (And it undercuts the essential appeal of the franchise that these creatures actually existed once upon a time.)
The action scenes are well-orchestrated, especially a sequence involving an inflatable raft that appeared in Michael Crichton’s original 1990 novel. And although the dinosaurs are all CGI, Edwards uses real-world locations in the jungles of Thailand to give the film a tactile splendor.
And it’s refreshing that, aside from a couple of references and in-jokes, there’s very little fan service in the self-contained “Jurassic World Rebirth,” including no returning characters from the previous movies. For all of its problems with the human characters, the movie understands that the only service that fans really want is dinosaurs, and lots of ‘em. And on that, it delivers.
“Jurassic World Rebirth” opens in theaters Wednesday. In Madison, it will play at Marcus Point, Marcus Palace, AMC Fitchburg 18 and Flix Brewhouse Madison.