Ah, leftovers. But Jurassic World Rebirth isn’t like leftover Pizza. Or leftovers from that great Michelin starred place you tried yesterday. No, Rebirth is the 4th consecutive day of Market Day Lasagna, at this point plastic and dangerously flirting with food poisoning. Hope you’re hungry movie fans, cause this is as good as we’re gonna get I guess. Rawr.
After a hilarious Jurassic resetting via two word slides, we meet Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson). A mercenary, she’s being recruited by pharma rep Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) to help extract DNA from the biggest dinosaurs left near the Equator. Zora and Martin put together the rest of the team, including dinosaur expert Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), and Zora’s fellow mercenary friend Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali). While Zora’s trying to extract dino blood samples, Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his family send a distress call over the radio, sending the crew to “help” the scared hunted family who just lost their ship.
The decision was made by the time Jurassic World came out that the dinosaurs were the attractions, not the humans. As such, the OG 1993 writer David Koepp gives us the one character trait he wants each of us to understand: “adorable child”, “loving father,” “excited scientist,” “evil profiteer,” “expendable side character” etc. Do we need more? Not really, since director Gareth Edwards has just been reheating the once lovely Michael Crichton/Steven Spielberg stuff in the back of the freezer for us. The best sequence of the movie, involving a raft, river rapids, and a T-Rex, is lifted right out of the Jurassic Park novel. The big soaring musical happy cues are moved from the beginning of the movie to the middle, so we have a happy moment before we are in peril again, but with zero resonance except Jonathan Bailey’s wild character choices. Edwards’s other big moves here are the equivalent of wrestling entrances for the dinosaurs. The last one for the big bad looks very menacing. But tricks like that are only the extra butter/cheese on the dish, which can’t cover up the soggy Spielberg/Crichton remix we’re being served at $25 a plate, er, ticket.
Even the opening not only rips off the 1993 opening, but adds in a little mediocre Final Destination flair. Frankly, I wish Jurassic World Rebirth had the balls to treat ScarJo and 2 time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali like Final Destination characters: willing sacrifices in favor of a more silly, over the top dinosaur horror movie. But it’s Johansson and Ali, so they have to get their hero moments, and tortured past, so we can root for them. We’re force fed crap, knowing how good it tasted the first time, told it tastes exactly the same as it did before. Rebirth by the end will make you resent that you even liked Jurassic Park in the first place, because of how brazenly and poorly its referenced to try to get your hard earned money.
I guess a lot can happen in 25 years of movie based food puns and arcs. While Jurassic Park has slowly descended into overpriced Rainforest Cafe levels of gimmicks and animatronics/CGI, Final Destination has somehow blossomed into a beautiful nihilistic Rube Goldberg delight, equally gross and delicious, like a beautiful Chicago Style Hot Dog. For the love of god, Jurassic moviemakers, please mix it up next time! Retcon again, putting dinosaurs and humans coexisting together, really building a new type of world to make things even a little more interesting, like Giant’s heated brownie dessert that’s pure delicious magic. Chicago dining for the win!