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.