‘Jurassic World Rebirth’: This franchise needs to evolve — or go extinct

This probably isn’t much of a hot take, but here we go anyway: the only good Jurassic movies are the first two, the ones directed by Steven Spielberg.

I get that Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World: Dominion have their fans and I’m sure that if you were a kid when one of those movies came out, it was an imagination-shaping game-changer. I was 13 when Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and seeing that movie in the theater was the first time I can remember really experiencing how much transportive magic film can have. I was Dr. Alan Grant, awestruck and stunned, looking at a dinosaur for the first time.

While The Lost World: Jurassic Park didn’t quite have that same level of magic, it still feels like a masterpiece compared to the cartoonish Jurassic Park III. Maybe that’s the problem: I keep getting older and the Jurassic franchise keeps selling itself to 13-year-olds. If I learned anything from the initial Jurassic World trilogy, it’s that I need characters to care about to make the dinosaur mayhem matter and, (hot take No. 2?) Chris Pratt has a ceiling on his abilities as a dramatic actor and is nearing that same ceiling as a comedic one. Three movies in a row of a character whose personality never breaks out of cartoonishly smug masculinity is tiring at best.

As entertaining as some of the sequences are in that trilogy (the rampaging dinosaurs in a mansion from Fallen Kingdom were ridiculously stupid in a fun way), none of the movies captured any of the wonder or excitement that should be the bread and butter of this franchise. Even bringing back Sam Neil, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum wasn’t enough to keep Jurassic World: Dominion from being the absolute nadir of the series.

Yet somehow, I was still looking forward to Jurassic World Rebirth and the franchise’s relaunch. Yes, I am I sweet summer child, but I still thought with Gareth Edwards in the director’s chair, it would at least be interesting to look at. His entire career has been built around putting fantastical things in beautiful, real-world locations and his work with large-scale destruction in 2014’s Godzilla and 2016’s Rogue One made me think he would give a tactile breath of life to the series. Plus, David Koepp, the writer of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, was returning and a cast featuring charismatic actors with range like Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey was also a pretty positive sign.

That might be the saddest thing about the entire Jurassic franchise at this point: Rebirth is probably the best film in the series since The Lost World, but that doesn’t remotely make it a good movie. It’s probably the most disappointing one in a while since all the ingredients are there for a quality blockbuster, but it just sits there flat onscreen, generating no tension, no excitement, and certainly no wonder.

Which is actually the best idea in the entire film: the average person is annoyed and bored with dinosaurs. No one cares anymore. So InGen (the evil company playing God) has been mad science-ing dino-DNA on an island in the Atlantic to try and create something that makes dinosaurs lucrative again. This goes poorly. People die and some time later a mercenary (Johansson), a paleontologist (Bailey), a skipper/badass (Ali), a pharmaceutical rep (Rupert Friend), and some redshirts all go to the island to harvest some of that sweet, sweet, biomaterial.

It’s intermittently fun to watch these good actors trying to make something out of Koepp’s lazy script and Edward’s lifeless direction, but that only lasts for a few minutes. The rest of the time was left to ponder random plot holes, wonder how much money this would make, and imagine a world where a filmmaker manages to capture just the slightest bit of magic again inherent in the original film… and that’s when it hit me.

Maybe it’s impossible to recapture that magic. Spielberg is a once-in-a-generation populist filmmaker and, just as he did with Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T., he held lightning in a bottle with Jurassic Park. I know it’s possible to grow up and still feel the wonder of cinema because it was there as recently as seeing Sinners for the first time. But maybe, just like the everyday people in the world of Jurassic World Rebirth, maybe I just don’t give a shit about dinosaurs anymore.

Even if it doesn’t give me that same sense of wonder like I felt as a kid, I still think it’s possible to make an exciting dinosaur movie. Here are a few ideas:

1) Stop setting them on tropical islands. We’ve seen it. Let’s put Raptors in Brooklyn or Pterodactyls in Detroit.

2) Build interesting characters that aren’t just generic mercenaries or scientists (or terrified children).

3) These movies have no tension anymore. Remember the kids vs. raptors in the kitchen in Jurassic Park or Julianne Moore vs. gravity in The Lost World? Both were insanely intense sequences. Create situations where characters we care about are in ever-escalating danger and audiences will care.

4) Have a script with people speaking like human beings instead of expository machines.

5) Find scary ways to use the classic dinosaurs again instead of constantly inventing new ones that look hilarious. There’s a new one in Rebirth called the Distortus Rex that looks like if a xenomorph from Alien, a rancor from Star Wars, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters had a hydrocephalic love child. Or just stop making these movies until someone has a clear vision, an original idea, and a decent script.

I don’t want to be so hard on this, but Rebirth really defeated me. I was abnormally excited for this since I respect Edwards as a filmmaker and know he could do something original with this franchise. Instead, it smothered my inner 13-year-old in his sleep and then asked if I was having fun yet.

There can still be magic and wonder in this series because dinosaurs are awe-inspiring creatures that ignite the imaginations of kids and their parents alike. It just takes a strong vision of an inspired filmmaker to reignite that spark inside.

If enough people skip this movie, maybe Hollywood will try and do better next time. Kidding, I’m not that naive. That level of optimism is the only real dinosaur I see.

Grade: D-