THB #722: Jurassic World: Rebirth
Before I get into a review, a simple question… Why is this movie called Jurassic World: Rebirth? And I’m not asking why the leading name is World vs Park… don’t care. But what in this movie is, in any way, a rebirth?
It’s kind of a rhetorical question… because there is NOTHING about the movie that suggests rebirth, aside from the idea that it’s a new cycle for the franchise. But if that is the point, they could have called it Jurassic Recast.
Okay… the movie…
I have no idea who deserves the blame for this highly familiar, very organized mess of a movie. How much was David Koepp, given room to run because he was the author of the first 2 Jurassic movies for Steven Spielberg? (No one bring up the last 2 deeply misguided Indiana Jones movies he wrote, please.) How much was built under the influence of Gareth Edwards, who directed a Godzilla movie some people liked, a Star Wars movie a lot of people liked, and The Creator, who most people tried really, really hard to like? Did The Studio or The Spielberg do a lot of guiding on this journey? I don’t think so.
There are things established in the very beginning of the film that I don’t consider spoilers… but I am going to just go ahead and call this a SPOILER review. Honestly, there is no way to spoil the movie. I can think of only one thing in the film - someone not getting killed - that I consider anything close to a surprise. But if you don’t want to know, stop here…
Okay… on with the show….
The core of this movie is the premise that dinosaurs are no longer a real threat to human life on earth. Outside of a well-defined strip of the planet at the equator, dinosaurs can no longer survive. There are years, which we haven’t seen in other Jurassic movies, in which dinos were part of normal human life, often in zoos, but more occasionally in a dangerous mix of wild dinosaurs finding populated areas. One of the most promising things in the film is in the post-prologue opening of the film when there is a massive traffic jam because a massive dinosaur is stuck and dying on busy Brooklyn streets. But never fear… this is just a head fake. It’s just a gag that is never included in the storyline in any way.
So the only way to engage dinosaurs, with few exceptions, is to travel to the equator dino zone, where humans are not supposed to go… unless they are breaking the law with intention or are really, really stupid. (Really, really stupid will be a big part of the film... be patient.)
Enter our movie leads… Scarlett Johansson is playing a mercenary… one of the great ones on the planet… the only one on the planet that the company that wants some dino-blood for a good cause want to hire. But because the prologue was taken up with a pro-forma “don’t experiment with giant dinos or eat Snickers bars at work” sequence that barely informs any other part of the film, we don’t get to see Zora (great name… oy!) show the audience how great she is. We just have to trust Rupert Friend’s Martin Krebs, who should be wearing a “Born To Be Eaten” t-shirt throughout the film.
Amongst the edible mercenaries to join in is Mahershala Ali’s Duncan Kincaid (seriously… who the fuck came up with these names and why didn’t they change them as they cast the roles???) who plays the much-skinnier version of young Yaphet Kotto, bordering on Geoffrey Holder… aka the bawdy, knowing, handsome captain of the boat that will go dino-hunting. And they need a smart guy, so they hire Fyero… except he doesn’t get to sing or dance or not try to hide his handsomeness behind a 3-day growth and nerd glasses. Jonathan Bailey plays Dr. Henry Loomis… and really, the only way he could have been less boring is if he made Henry lavishly gay while also being super smart. I don’t need him to be gay or anything else identifiable… but I needed his character to be more interesting than the wallpaper.
So, the journey to be undertaken for 10s of millions of dollars as a reward, is to get blood from 3 living dinosaurs. Why? Because these samples will, somehow, create a new medicine that will delay heart disease, the thing that kills most humans, for decades. Yadda Yadda. The explanation is so uninspired that it barely registers. And by the way… amazingly enough… the dinosaurs they need to prick just happen to be 1 if by land, 2 if by sea, 3 if by air.
I mean, this becomes a paint-by-numbers movie. Shockingly. So many talented people. And such a simplistic, obvious, uninspired central driving story.
But someone realized that no one would give a flying, swimming or running fuck about a bunch of mercenaries having their lives threatened by dinosaurs. So Koepp, who really is a great writer so much of the time, pulls in a family of non-pros. A father who has custody of the kids - 8-ish daughter, teen daughter in short shorts and a white t-shirt - for a summer month, has decided to take them in a small sailboat across the dino-filled equator zone where humans are not allowed to travel. He doesn’t even deny knowing that he was putting all their lives in danger… he kind of mumbles excuses as he tries to make up for his supreme stupidity. But the daughters were not enough as dino-bait… there is a 4th person on their little boat… an older maybe-teen asshole boyfriend, who apparently has sex with the elder daughter on the boat, which is ridiculous and insane. Of course, he will step up at some point. But the movie really needs to pretend that a divorced man hasn’t put his 8-year-old within feet - bunking downstairs in the boat - of his other daughter banging an idiot and hearing all the ensuing noises. Ewwww.
Obviously, the little sailboat - that only the father really knows how to sail - gets attacked by dinos and they are all close to being eaten or dying of exposure when the big boat of mercenaries picks them up… because, again, the movie needs some children to have in danger. Super transparent.
Of course, the show must go on. So there will be a big set pieces with the sea dino… another with the land dino… and never forget the flying dino. And if you are really in need of some classic “will they get eaten or not” schtick, you are going to get some. Is it particularly or uniquely clever? No. The dino designs are new, but the is not a single thing we haven’t really experienced before, aside from being in the water or in the air. zzzzzzzzzzzz…
I don’t want or need to tell you any more about this movie. If you enjoy the very familiar ride, blessings on you. I don’t need to rain on your parade any more.
But what is truly amazing to me about this movie is that it is not only not anything like a rebirth… or a re-set… or anything that takes the series to another place. It screams that it is the end of the entire franchise… which is unlikely, but I’m just telling you what’s in the movie.
We are told that dinosaurs cannot live where humans live… physically. Not a choice. Not an attempt to control nature. Just nature itself trying to kill them off again. So they are not, as they have in past films, threatening all of human life.
The only way to really engage dinos is to go where you know they are and you know they are incredibly dangerous because you…. uh… feel like it.
This movie sets up no future for the franchise.
Obviously, they can make up whatever they want and pretend that Bobby was having a dream, but this is a complete re-framing of the overall premise and it leads absolutely nowhere.
The idea of Jurassic Park was that mankind felt, in its arrogance, that it could control nature in the form of dinosaurs, so it brought them back to the world. Lost World and JPIII make some variations, but continue with the same basic themes.
The Jurassic World films continued with the arrogance of humans over nature, but now they were more hands-on. The lead character is a raptor trainer. The second film actually has the humans trying to protect the dinos from an extinction level event on the island. The third one adds Park players, rinses and repeats.
And now we have Rebirth, which has a whole new limitation on dinosaurs and human life that has figured out how to live with the animals, who are simply not able to live with humans safely… this time Mother Nature is on our side!
Where does it go? Is the next film Jurassic World: Vaccination, in which the scientists figure out an inoculation that allows service dinos to live amongst the humans… until they figure out how to take off their shock collars?
Jurassic World: Club Med, in which families frolic at a beach club and can see the dinosaurs who are kept away from the island… until the electricity goes out?
Jurassic World: The Cove, in which greedy bastards sale the equators looking for the dead skins of dinos and overreach by killing some for their hides until the Greenpeace ship goes to war with them and get the support of one very smart dinosaur?
Or maybe they continue with Scarlett and Mahershala, returning to the dino zone again to find the cure for plaque build-up, saving the world from cavities.
I don’t hate Jurassic World: Rebirth. There are some odds and ends that are pleasant. I like the cast well enough. But I certainly can’t recommend this film to anyone. There are 6 better versions of Jurassic… and 2 or 3 of them are actually really good!!!
I don’t like when people off-handedly reject films with familiar IP as a money grab or lazy. And I don’t think this was a money grab or lazy. It’s just bad. Really, really talented people who will make more things that are really, really worth the while made a really bad version of this franchise. I would be happy to go back to the next one if there is a filmmaker with a fresh idea, this cast or any other.
Two months into the summer, there are 3 sequels/remakes that are good in their context (in order of release): Final Destination: Bloodlines, How To Train Your Dragon, and 28 Years Later. 3 more are okay: Thunderbolts*, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and Ballerina. And 3 pretty much sucked.
Originals F1 and Materialists are pretty much the best movies of the summer… both Originals.
(Elio, Life of Chuck, and The Phoenician Scheme are in some other arbitrary category…)
Just sayin’…
Until tomorrow…