Rebirth unfolds five years after Jurassic World Dominion, with Earth’s dinosaurs clinging to survival in isolated equatorial zones. Zora Bennett, a covert operative, spearheads a team featuring paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis and Duncan Kincaid on a high-stakes mission for pharmaceutical giant ParkerGenix. Their objective: harvest DNA from the largest land, sea, and air dinosaurs on Ile Saint-Hubert, a restricted island once controlled by InGen. ParkerGenix aims to utilize this DNA to develop a groundbreaking, life-extending miracle drug to cure heart disease.

Jurassic World: Rebirth Review

Jurassic Park was a heart-pounding man vs. nature thrill ride with a ton of heart that hooked audiences. Yet, over 30 years later, none of its sequels have recaptured that original magic.

Steven Spielberg set an impossibly high bar with the first film, and not even he could match it with The Lost World, which felt like a cash grab for both him and Michael Crichton. Crichton, initially reluctant to pen a sequel, likely pocketed $3 million in book sales post-film and over $20 million from the movie, while Spielberg raked in $150–250 million.

Universal’s been chasing that Jurassic spark ever since. They came close in 2015 with Jurassic World, leaning hard on Chris Pratt’s charm and nostalgia-soaked callbacks to the original, and pulling in over $1 billion. But the cracks showed fast—Fallen Kingdom’s messy plot and overblown action drew groans, yet still coasted to nearly $1.5 billion on leftover goodwill. Even the laughably bad Dominion hit a billion.

It’s clear Universal learned people will shell out for dinosaurs chomping folks, quality optional.

That brings us to today. A soft reboot of a soft reboot, Jurassic World: Rebirth introduces audiences to an entirely new cast of characters, dinosaurs, and a dinosaur island, along with a new evil corporation bent on exploiting the prehistoric giants for massive financial gain.

Clearly, Universal Studios hopes that slapping a new shade of paint on this now creatively barren wasteland of tired ideas will generate another multibillion-dollar trilogy. They’ll probably get their wish.

Cosmetic changes aside, everything from Jurassic World: Rebirth’s never-ending contrivances to its inconsistent internal logic is flaky and half-baked. Dinosaurs appear and disappear with the most convenient timing and behave as docile or as aggressively as each scene needs in order to get the cast from point A to point B. However, at this point, that’s all baked into each hundred-million-dollar production. So, it’s no surprise.

What was surprising was how safely everything was played. Billed as the island on which InGen used to experiment and create hybrid creatures, one would think that the adventure would have been built on that, giving us one crazy monster after the other.

Instead, there are precisely two hybrid species in the film, and, with the exception of a brief flash of one in the prologue, both are only utilized in its last minutes. There’s no buildup for the one, a raptor hybrid, and no special reason to care, or really even know that it is a hybrid. Audiences won’t find themselves any more frightened by it than by any other unnamed large predator. One even has to assume that it’s a raptor based on a single brief shot of a long curved claw on one of the creature’s feet, because you’re never told. The other hybrid is that of the Spaceballs xenomorph/Star Wars rancor mix hinted at in the previews. Admittedly, it looks much better on screen, but it remains a terrible design.

Rebirth also suffers from a bloated cast, with half of the core characters leading an unrelated, unnecessary, and boring subplot that feels tacked on to fill time and as a lukewarm attempt at manufacturing some heart. The other group centers around three nearly identical fetch quests, each of which is easily accomplished. With two virtually unrelated groups of emotionally vacant and narratively hollow characters dueling to be the least boring, each is given its own merchandising opportunities, but little more.

It’s never a good sign when a film’s star seems bored, but Scarlett Johansson phones in a performance for a role for which she couldn’t be more miscast. She’s a fine enough actress, but as a grizzled and battle-hardened mercenary and leader of men, she’s less believable than monster hybrid dinosaurs. But it hardly matters because the film doesn’t have a standout character or even one that is more than a two-dimensional sketch. Even the villain is the most milktoast of the franchise. Gun to my head, had you asked me immediately upon leaving the theater, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you the name of a single character.

Unfortunately, between this, its paper-thin and silly plot, and the over-relied upon CGI that isn’t quite good enough to justify having 90% of the dino encounters take place in the middle of the day under clear skies, there’s nothing to love and little to like about Jurassic World: Rebirth.

The action is abundant, but without anyone to care enough to root for or against, so what? It might be worth a rent or to stream once it hits one of the various apps, but do yourself a favor and save your money on this one and see F1™ The Movie instead.

WOKE REPORT

Yo Jo

• At forty years old, Scarlett Johansson remains an attractive woman who obviously takes care of herself, but she’s clearly not a health nut who hits the gym for an Olympic-level training session every day. The pinup model in the red dress at the 2006 Golden Globes is gone, and time has begun to catch up with her. She’s gotten a little thicker around the middle in her advancing years. Her arms are not flabby at all, but soft and feminine-looking (which is great). However, combine all of this with her imposing 5’3″ stature and pouty lips, and she was never going to make for a convincing experienced and grizzled mercenary. Let’s face it, it didn’t even work in the Avengers; she just happened to fill out the black leather catsuit perfectly.

  

  • As girl bosses go, there have been much much worse. Sure, her character never makes a mistake in Rebirth, at least not one that isn’t forced upon her by outside stimuli (Ex. missing a shot because she is pushed), and she has a couple of mildly snarky put downs for a male co-star or two, but she’s a good and charming enough actress to soften it all with a scincere and self-aware smile.
    • Also, most of the men are reasonably competent throughout. Scar Jo’s light barbs don’t come at the expense of that.

Chicks, Amiright?

• This one’s pretty nitpicky, but the entire disaster that closes the island down is caused by a white guy. Aside from the plot mechanism being among the dumbest in cinematic history, it wouldn’t have stood out as anything if his counterpart (who manages to get away) just so happened to be a woman.

Bros, Amiright?

• Not every man is significantly flawed in some way, but only men are flawed characters.
  • With the exception of one heroic moment and one self-aware one, the teenage boyfriend is a complete moron and loser.

White Meat

• The diversity is a touch on the high side.
  • Almost half of the white characters become Dino Chow long before anyone else.
    • One of them is the villain.
    • Actually, two-thirds of the white male characters are shown to be selfish and willing to let people die for a big payday, while the other is a nerd who never gets a single heroic moment.
  • I’ll grant that the nerdy scientist is treated better than most characters of his type in other films. Even though he’s never been in combat or anything, he’s rugged enough not to get in the way and brave enough to take some significant chances.

Climate Schmimate

• There’s a quick allusion to man-made climate change. However, in the same sentence, it’s acknowledged that the Earth can/will outlast the worst that we could possibly do to it.

PETA

• One of the most ridiculous story arcs to emerge from this franchise is the notion that dinosaurs have a moral right to coexist with humanity. Yet, the film’s token paleontologist sincerely says that killing dinosaurs is a sin.

No Mowe Buwwets

• For the most part, firearms are suspiciously absent from the film. It might be an innocent, if dumb, contrivance, except that the villain comes across one midway through the film.
  • In fairness, it quickly makes its way into Scar Jo’s hands and is used for good. So, I didn’t mark the Woke-O-Meter down for this. I only think it noteworthy.

Take My Daughter, Please

• The dad in the movie doesn’t like his teenage daughter’s boyfriend (for good reason), but says nothing about him joining his two daughters and him on a special father-daughter trip, doesn’t say anything about the fact that his teenage daughter and he are obviously having sex (this is strongly implied) ON the little boat, and doesn’t correct some truly aggregious behavior that puts them all at risk. In fact, in one instance, he looks at his daughter and says, “I didn’t say anything,” as though remaining silent in the face of all this is the right thing to do.

Socialized Healthcare

• I’m not here to defend Big Pharma. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that they don’t always (or maybe ever) have humanity’s best interest at heart. However, two things can be true at the same time. As flawed as our current system may be, modern medicine has developed some miraculous medicines that save, extend, and significantly improve lives. It is also one of the most expensive endeavors in modern times. Research and development for new pharmaceuticals can cost millions of dollars, and each attempt to create a new drug is a significant gamble that could end in financial ruin if a beneficial outcome isn’t achieved. Combine that with exorbitant manufacturing and marketing costs, and the fact that companies only have a handful of years to recoup their losses before other companies who have spent zero dollars on R&D and can coast on the name brand marketing are legally allowed to manufacture cheaper generic copies, and you begin to see why some medicines are so expensive.
  • The entire premise of this film is that a pharmaceutical company believes that it has figured out a miracle drug that can cure heart disease and extend lives by decades. Mind you that it’s all theoretical because they don’t yet possess the combination of MacGuffin dino DNA that they think they need to make the drug.
    • One quarter of the way through the film, the paleontologist randomly decides that he wants to break his contract with the company and release the theoretical formula that hasn’t been created, a formula that he has no way of knowing or accessing on the internet for anyone to use, rather than the soulless “big pharma” company who will “create a drug that 99% of people won’t be able to afford.”
      • This ignores metric tonnes of financial, scientific, and logistical issues in favor of one of the Left’s favorite talking points. Capitalism bad.