Too often I have been required to remind myself that as an adult human I should not be getting angry with dinosaur movies. I wasn’t a child in 1993 when Steven Spielberg showed me a T-Rex eating a man (a lawyer no less) who was sitting on a toilet. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I can’t imagine how much fun/terror that scene would evince in a thirteen-year-old. A bloody lot is my guess. Also, I didn’t grow up with the desire to be a palaeontologist/archeologist with a cool hat. Like most people, I loved Jurassic Park, but for me it wasn’t a key nostalgia trigger that could be used to entice me to run to the cinema for what is now six more movies in that universe. Yet, for some reason, perhaps charitably for others, I still crossed my fingers every time a new Jurassic title was announced hoping that it would be almost as exciting as the first. By the time Jurassic World: Dominion came out I’d stopped crossing my fingers and allowed my low expectations to sink at least six feet underground which was where the franchise should be buried (no map given to corporate executives or mouthy pre-teen treasure hunters).
And still, with my adult rationality mostly intact, I find myself angry with a dinosaur movie — and perhaps the angriest I’ve ever been with a dinosaur movie. So much so, that if I could get a reputable necromancer to revive Michael Crichton, I would ask him to see what he has wrought, and this is to the man who wrote Rising Sun and State of Fear. “So, Michael… were you ever expecting them to come up with a Muntasaurus?” I’d enquire, and then explain the Australian idiom, “munted.”
My friend and dinosaur enthusiast, Gabriel Bergmoser (whom I have spied wearing a dinosaur sweater) wrote an in article on the trailer for Gareth Edwards’ Jurassic World: Rebirth that the Jurassic Park/World series seemed incapable of doing anything new. Quoting from Gabriel’s piece:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a remote reserve full of genetically engineered dinosaurs descends into chaos when scientific hubris unleashes the creatures on visitors. You have, three times? Okay, then how about this; a ragtag group travels to an abandoned dinosaur reserve for an important mission only for everything to go catastrophically wrong. Three times as well? Then let’s go with a plot about scientists creating a hybrid dinosaur only for it to escape and wreak havoc. Twice?
I have to give it to Gabe, two out of three correct. Not that the predictions required a great deal of prognostication. He’s seen six of seven and did the math. What he couldn’t predict was how goofily his third (and absolutely correct) proposition comes about. Let’s just say that scientists in controlled environments should definitely take note of where their Snickers wrappers end up. Seventeen years ago, a third secret island run by the now bankrupt (fiscally not only ethically) InGen were doing more genetic experiments to make the dinosaurs more interesting to the hoi polloi. One such mutation was the Distortus-Rex (a name so ludicrous that I’m calling it the Xenomorphasaur — you’ll know why) a massive T-Rex chimera with six legs. Chaos ensues and Ile Saint-Hubert becomes a no-go zone where the dinosaurs and the mutants and muntasaurs are left to their own devices. Until… now.
David Koepp’s script informs the audience in intertitles that somehow humans became bored with dinosaurs in the thirty plus years since they were made de-extinct. The conditions on most of the planet are environmentally unsuitable for the creatures and, with the exception of a few sad examples still wandering here and there (a brontosaurus dying on a busy road isn’t a cause for empathy but annoyance) they have mostly been taken to a zone near the equator to thrive, survive, or die without human contact or interference.
I know we are a fickle species, but deciding we are bored of dinosaurs is a stretch. House cats have been with us for centuries and huge sections of the internet are devoted to them. JWR could have been the movie so many people were hoping for since the first Jurassic World entry — one which was teased in Colin Trevorrow’s short Battle at Big Rock. A world where ordinary humans live with dinosaurs and what that means. But, no, we are bored with them, and they all must live in restricted zones. Even if that movie is never going to be made, Koepp and Edwards had a semi-blank slate to work on. It was decided that it was best to keep to the formula of small party of people interact with dinosaurs and then fight to survive and get off an island. Ho and hum.
As you’ve already seen a version of JWR more than once it seems particularly redundant relating the wafer-thin plot. “Big pharma” represented by ParkerGenix bigwig Martin Klebs (Rupert Friend) do have a potential use for our unloved dinosaurs. There is something in their make up that can create a revolutionary drug for heat disease. Klebs engages black ops specialist Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and disappointed palaeontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to travel to the hot zone and secure blood/DNA samples from three specific large species. The water dwelling Mosasaurus, the land-dwelling Titanosaurus, and the winged (air-dwelling if you’re following the pattern) Quetzalcoatlus. To do so they will need to employ Zora’s specialist team including Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), LeClerc (Bechir Sylvian), defence specialist Atwater (Ed Skrien) and Nina (Philippine Velge). They also need a boat to collect the Mosasaurus sample and quietly arrive on the abandoned InGen island Ile Saint-Hubert.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Jurassic movie if we didn’t have some kids in danger (it could be, but it seemingly never is) which is where highly responsible father Reuben Delgardo comes in, taking his teen and pre-teen daughter on a small yacht trip across dinosaur infested equatorial waters. With the Delgardo family is the film’s comic relief, Teresa’s (Luna Blaise) Gen Z caricature boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono). The youngest daughter Isabella (Audrina Miranda) is innocence personified – and of course she will be in terrible straits. The yacht gets overturned by a Mosasaurus and Kincaid who is grieving the loss of his child and marriage makes the decision to save the shipwrecked family.
JWR has the requisite plot beats and visual wonders that we’ve experienced before. Dr. Henry Loomis gets to see a mating ritual between two Titanosauruses for his, “Oh my god! Actual dinosaurs!” Alan Grant moment. The team does some dangerous sample gathering and gets reduced along the way. The family gets separated and lost and have to deal with their own dinosaur related issues that are exacerbated by Reuben having an injured (when the film remembers) leg and no expert to get them across the island.
JWR limps through well-worn plotline to frankly uninteresting plotline hoping that the dinosaur spectacle will make up for it. It doesn’t. If that doesn’t impress, perhaps Zora’s gradual shift from mercenary for hire to a person with ethical concerns will be a hook? Not overly. There are a couple of good set-pieces; fans of the book will see the T-Rex river escape on screen, and the Xenomorphasaur is an ugly mean fellow with a temper issues who not only Alien Queens his way through the latter part of the film but also has a King Kong moment.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is unforgivable for forgetting the “Rebirth” part of its title. David Koepp, famously the original screenwriter of Jurassic Park has been doing some excellent work with Steven Soderbergh recently so there was some hope that his script would do something new. Gareth Edwards is known for making movies look big and impressive, but perhaps franchise filmmaking isn’t his forte. No rebirth occurs and the movie would be better titled “Jurassic World: Rehash”. It’s unlikely humans could get bored of dinosaurs, but they sure can get bored with seeing the same film with different faces ad nauseum. It’s time to make the Jurassic franchise extinct.
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali
Writer: David Koepp, (Based on characters created by Michael Crichton)
Producers: Patrick Crowley, Frank Marshall
Composer: Alexandre Desplat
Cinematographer: John Mathieson
Editor: Jabez Olssen
Screening or Streaming Availability:
