Jurassic World Rebirth

Zora Bennett is leading an expedition to the most dangerous place on Earth, the secret, long-abandoned island research facility for the original Jurassic Park. Their mission is to secure genetic samples from a list of specific dinosaurs whose DNA may provide life-saving benefits to mankind. Unfortunately, the island’s many secrets turn out to be very deadly.

I’ll just say it upfront, this movie was… fine.

That’s it. It’s fine. A little fun, but not too much. A little dull, but not too much. A couple of surprises, but not too many. The effects were fun, but not nearly as great as would be needed to clear the bar this franchise’s legacy set. Plus, let’s be honest here, they’ve pretty much squeezed the stone dry on this particular storyline. The whole “Hey, look! Dinosaurs! …Oh shit, they got out!” plot has been done to death.

At this point, until they do either Dino-riders galloping into combat on their Velociraptor or Triceratops steeds, and/or dino-human hybrid soldiers, then I’m already kind of bored with these films before I even sit down. And that is especially true when the plot is once again “oh shit, dinosaurs! And on dinosaur island too! Who would’ve thought! Run!”

It’s just so rote and by-the-numbers.

But y’know, on the other hand, it’s also got Scarlett Johansson in it, who is now deep within her “former secret agent is now a PTA mom” era, and I am all about that short thiccness.

So...

In 2008, InGen, the company that has only ever fucked up when it comes to dealing with these dinosaurs, is operating a dinosaur research laboratory on Île Saint-Hubert in the Atlantic Ocean, a couple hundred miles east of French Guiana. This facility is a pretty typical black book kind of site, and InGen uses it mainly for sketchy genetic experiments, which includes the creation of transgenic and mutated dinosaurs.

But then… SPOILER… one of these hellish creations, perhaps even the most dangerous one of all, a deformed six-limbed Tyrannosaur Rex mutate they dubbed "Distortus Rex," manages to escape containment. This happens because one dumb asshole scientist irresponsibly drops a Snickers wrapper.

That all it takes is a single errant Snickers wrapper to begin a cascade of events that leads to multiple people being eaten by mutant dinosaurs, and eventually the total evacuation and abandonment of the island, what I can only assume is a loss of billions and billions of dollars, is not only pretty par for the course as far as InGen is concerned in these movies, but god damn, that is a ridiculous design flaw, totally a legacy of the "Thermal Exhaust Port" school of Engineering.

At least the guy responsible for dropping the wrapper ends up getting killed by the Distortus Rex. Enjoy your Snickers bar in hell, you dumbass.

Flash forward to 2025, and due to the climate crisis, most of the planet has now become inhospitable to the recently de-extinct dinosaurs. The remaining animals who now survive all do so in areas more near to the equator, which still resembles the Mesozoic climate. Because of this, mostly due to a high chance of being eaten by a dinosaur, but also because tourists are generally stupid and probably would have adamnatly refused to stop hanging out in these areas, despite a high chance of being eaten by a dinosaur, the various governments of the world have turned these areas into no-travel zones.

Île Saint-Hubert is smack dab in the middle of one such zone.

Martin Krebs is a snake-in-a-suit executive at a big pharmaceutical company known as ParkerGenix. He’s slick, and probably an untrustworthy slimeball, and he has a top secret mission that he needs the right people for. He wants to recruit a woman named Zora Bennett. Former spec-ops, and now a private contractor, Zora specializes in retrievals and extractions, and also situational security and reaction. She‘s an adjudicator for hire, with a reputation for procuring things and not asking questions, and remaining untroubled by any potential legal or ethical implications, at least, for the right price. Martin also recruits paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (not to be confused with Dr. Samuel Loomis from the Halloween franchise). Dr. Loomis is a nebbish academic, and one of the last dinosaur experts left on a planet that no longer has much interest in the subject. It’s a fair bet that Dr. Loomis will take off his glasses at some point in the story and turn out to be surprisingly hot, which will kindle a fiery desire deep within Zora' loins.

With his expedition leader and expert secured, Martin takes Zora and Dr. Loomis to South America. There, in a bar on the coast of Suriname, Zora recruits longtime friend Duncan Kincaid, as he has a fast boat he often uses for transporting cargo, probably illegally. He brings along his crew, the boat driver LeClerc, an additional crew member named Nina, and the funny guy/security chief Bobby Atwater.

The plan is to go to Île Saint-Hubert, and in a very video game level kind of plot, retrieve biological material samples from the three largest remaining prehistoric specimens on the islands… the massive crocodile-looking sea monster known as the Mosasaurus, the classic giant long-necked plant-eater Titanosaurus, and the monstrous flying nightmare known as Quetzalcoatlus, all of which may hold the key to a new heart disease treatment in their DNA.

Meanwhile, as the expedition sets out to Île Saint-Hubert, Reuben Delgado is sailing nearby with his daughters, Isabella and Teresa, taking one last family trip before Teresa leaves for college. Isabella is a wide-eyed elementary-age child who says cute things in cute ways and wrinkles her cute little button nose. There's no chance the film is going to let a dinosaur eat her, but hope springs eternal. Teresa, meanwhile, has also brought along her idiot boyfriend, Xavier Dobbs, because it’s heavily implied that she can’t get enough of X’s big D. Understandably, Reuben doesn’t like Xavier.

Like I said, tourists are generally stupid assholes, as evidenced by the fact that Rueben took his two young daughters, and the walking wang who’s giving it to his oldest daughter, for a sailing trip through dinosaur-infested waters. As a result, in the middle of a family argument, illustrating for the audience the various rifts that are fracturing this family unit following the death of Rueben’s wife and the girls’ mother, their boat is capsized by the very Mosasaurus that Zora’s expedition team is hunting. The expedition team ends up saving the family unit, and now the entire cast is assembled. Apparently it’s just too much to ask to have a Jurassic Park movie without a child or two in it, I guess.

Soon enough, they encounter the Mosasaurus again, but this time its brought its evil henchmen buddies, a gang of Spinosauruses, and they attack the ship, because a dinosaur’s natural enemy has always been medium sized seacraft. They manage to get the sample from the Mosasaurus, but Bobby is killed in a dumb way, turning the funny guy in life into a joke in death. Once it becomes clear they're in danger of being sunk by dinosaur attack, Teresa attempts to use the radio to call for help, but since this is an illegal, top secret mission in a no-travel zone, Martin has no choice but to shove the teenager overboard, fingers crossed she will be eaten or drown.

Xavier sees Teresa in the water, and immediately jumps in to rescue her. This makes sense, as his whole general look implies that he has had summer jobs as a lifeguard. Reuben and Isabella also jump in because… I have no idea why, I guess to just generally make things worse.

Now the family unit is separated from the expedition team on dinosaur island.

Meanwhile, Duncan’s ship is run aground by the angry Mosasaurus, probably because they stuck a needle in it, and it mistook this for a vaccination. It’s a well known fact that the real reason dinosaurs went extinct is due to their antivaxxer beliefs. Then, while the expedition team gathers supplies, Nina, the other crew member, is eaten by a Spinosaurus the size of a minivan, that somehow managed to sneak up on her.

Zora informs Martin, Dr. Loomis, Duncan, and LeClerc that she has scheduled a helicopter to circle the abandoned research facility on the other side of the island in 24 hours, in case something goes wrong, so all they have to do is make it to the facility and signal the helicopter for rescue. They decide to continue the mission, and head toward the research facility, hoping that the family unit does the same, but also, they don’t care. I mean, they do, but not really. At least, I assume that’s how they feel, because that’s how I feel.

The Titanosaurus sample turns out to be a very simple collection, because those big beasts were all about the love, and even use their tales to make a heart as they nuzzle each other. So romantic! Oh, the wonder and beauty of dinosaurs!

(John Williams' Jurassic Park Theme swells orchestrally)

Unfortunately, the Quetzalcoatlus is not so easy a collection. The expedition team must repel down a sheer cliff in order to take a sample from one of the eggs in the large carnivorous animal’s nest, located in an ancient temple that may have been dedicated to the ancient Aztec God after which the animal was named (which feels like a superfluous production design flair, honestly). This upsets the horrific beast.

LeClerc, the team’s last Redshirt, dies horribly as a result of their transgression. Luckily, (not for LeClerc obviously), Zora and Dr. Loomis manage to escape with the sample.

Elsewhere on the island, the family unit is bonding as they’re following a pipeline toward the Research Facility. Along the way, Reuben not only gives a fatherly nod to Teresa while she smiles happily up at him, he also tells Xavier that, after Xavier jumped into the water to rescue Teresa, he’s decided that he’s now cool with Xavier railing the absolute shit out of his eldest daughter. He didn’t use those exact words, obviously, but again... it’s heavily implied. Also, Isabella overcomes her fear of dinosaurs by adopting a preternaturally precocious Aquilops, which she names Delores and immediately starts to treat like a Purse Dog.

But then yet another dinosaur manages to sneak up on these fools. This one is a Mutadon, which is a mutated raptor/pterosaur hybrid, which basically means that it’s a flying Velociraptor, and the family unit barely escapes. Stumbling away, they find a raft… and unfortunately, a Tyrannosaurus Rex too, who really fucking hates them and their stupid raft, most likely because the life of a Tyrannosaurus Rex means having to suffer through no end of “funny guys” making Land of the Lost jokes at you, and after a while, you just can't take anymore.

Finally, at the Research Facility, the family unit reunites with the expedition team. Hugs all around, except for Teresa, who is understandably upset with Martin. But in staying consistent with the film’s video game style, Martin has managed to find an old pistol after deciding to search a crashed helicopter. Brandishing his god-given authority as a white American male, Martin then does what Pharmaceutical Executives do best… fucks everyone over. He takes the samples and runs for the helipad, all while a pack of Mutadons menace the others. Luckily, they are able to hide inside some inexplicably big air vents in the old facility.

The helicopter arrives, but in a long awaited callback to the opening scene, the Distortus Rex destroys it, and then devours Martin. The others, meanwhile, are trapped behind a locked gate that is only there to justify the inclusion of a small child in the film, who then squeezes though and unlocks it, proving that Whitney Houston was right after all, the children really are the future.

After that, it’s all about escaping the Distortus Rex, redeeming our heroes of their money-grubbing mercenary ways, and implying a possible sequel, depending on the Box Office take. And being that Jurassic World Rebirth is sitting comfortably in the Top Five Highest Grossing Films of the year, it’s probably going to happen.

With a plot that's basically “a bunch of old soldiers take a trip to Skull Island,” Jurassic World Rebirth is a celebration of the classic monster island story tropes, but with dinosaurs. Gareth Edwards does a good job as the director here. The Creator was good-looking but terrible, sure, but I'm a fan of Monsters, the 2014 Godzilla, and of course, Rogue One, so he’s a good fit. It helps that he’s working off a decent silly-fun script by David Koep too, who not only wrote the screenplay for the original Jurassic Park, as well as its sequel Lost World, but also such great films as I Come In Peace, Toy Soldiers, Death Becomes Her, The Shadow, the first Mission Impossible, the first Raimi Spider-man, Spielberg's War of the Worlds, Soderbergh’s fantastic Kimi, his even more fantastic Black Bag, and Premium Rush, the ridiculously underrated Joseph Gordon-Levitt bike messenger movie that I loved. Although to be fair, Koep not only also wrote Trigger Effect, Stir of Echoes, Snake Eyes, Secret Window, and Panic Room, but the last two Indiana Jones movies as well, which are hand’s down the worst ones. Perhaps worst of all, Koep also wrote the Tom Cruise version of The Mummy, a film that was so bad, it killed a major studio's entire Cinematic Shared Universe effort before it could even get off the ground.

So, with the combined track records of the director and writer, the end result of Jurassic World Rebirth kinda makes sense, y’know?

This film doesn't add anything new to the franchise, and mostly just recycles some of the franchise's greatest hits, but it was still pretty fun at times, so there's that. I did appreciate the meta theme of the world having grown bored with dinosaurs at this point, being that this was once a franchise that revolutionized the industry by seemingly bringing dinosaurs to life. That was a nice commentary on itself, even if the film didn’t capitalize on the chance to use it to say or do anything.

In the end, the whole thing is pretty basic. Yes, the family unit could’ve been completely cut and the film would’ve been better for it. Yes, the "capitalism is the real monster" message is an obviously half-assed afterthought. Yes, the only real surprise of the film comes from finding out what order the obvious Redshirts die in. But like I said, there are a few legitimately exciting sequences, so I guess how you respond to this film will probably depend on how much you’re legitimately expecting to get out of watching it.

It’s fine. See it cheap, if you can, but for free would be even better.