Culture
A Bungle in the Jungle: ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’ retreads and repeats the familiar beats of an aging franchise
By: Gordon Briggs
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You know all the ingredients of these movies: a mysterious island, a parade of man-eating dinosaurs, a group of scientists, and fortune hunters fighting for survival. All those components are on display in Jurassic World Rebirth. A movie all too eager to give us another version of something we’ve already seen six times before.
To kick off this sequel, we need a reason why these characters have to voluntarily travel to an island of mutant dinosaurs. So in Rebirth, hoping to obtain valuable genetic information, a team of skilled operatives (among them Mahershala Ali and Scarlett Johansson) sail to the most dangerous place on Earth, the island research facility for the original Jurassic Park.
I want to highlight some of the film’s qualities. I appreciate how they didn’t just repeat the same plot as the previous movies, with another eccentric billionaire or greedy corporation trying to foolishly create another dinosaur amusement park that quickly descends into chaos. Rather, Rebirth is a sort of ‘Lost World” adventure. Specifically, it resembles a kind of King Kong-style fantasy that involves the discovery of some sort of unknown civilization populated with prehistoric creatures. Plus, by setting most of the action in and around the sea, this movie has a few engaging moments that resemble films like Jaws, where the threat comes from below us under the surface of the water rather than from above. Unfortunately, those brief moments aren’t enough.
There’s an odd game being played when you watch these Jurassic movies. The filmmakers know we’ve seen these movies before, but they pretend like this is the first time we’ve seen dinosaurs run wild. Watching the first half of the film, many scenes feel like ‘filler’ because we’ve seen a version of them six times before. We know that the mission we spent the first act setting up is going to go wrong. It has to; otherwise, there is no movie. We know the youngest members of the cast will probably make it out alive. You know the greedy corporate shark is perhaps going to be served up for lunch. What’s frustrating is how the film pretends that we don’t already know all this.
The premise of an island populated with mutant dinosaurs has potential. However, after sitting through the six other Jurassic movies, I have come to the conclusion that just putting a large dinosaur in a weak scene doesn’t make that scene any better. Having your Tyrannosaurus Rex in a scene doesn’t make Scarlett Johansson an interesting character. Your slick-looking velociraptor doesn’t make your action feel any less derivative. Your Distortus rex can’t cover up that feeling of having been there, done that.