The equator has become overrun with dinosaurs after the collapse of an InGen research facility that let loose their genetic experiments on the world.  Modern climate, however, forced most of these prehistoric and modified beasts to the tropics where they lived mostly without any human interaction.  Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), an executive at the ParkerGenix pharmaceutical company, sees this abandoned wasteland as an opportunity for massive profit.  He hires Zora (Scarlett Johansson), a military operettist, and Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), a paleontologist, to join him on his chartered boat captained by Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) to the equatorial region to collect biometric samples from three dinosaurs that he feels will be able to be harnessed into a drug to fight heart disease. 

Gareth Edwards continues the Jurassic Park franchise with Jurassic World: Rebirth, a reboot of Colin Trevorrow’s sequel-trilogy capper Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), itself a legacy sequel to the 1993 classic.  For this latest installment, Universal Studios welcomes back original screenwriter David Koepp who delivers the script for the 133-minute film that tells two parallel stories and hosts various dinosaur encounters. 

The film cold opens with a tragic security breach at the “Distortus rex” enclosure, thanks to a fallen Snickers wrapper in some of the most egregious product placement in a series that seems to be more and more saddled with blatant brand pandering.  The containment breach which follows, complete with its red emergency lights filtered through a smoke screen is reminiscent of how Edwards opened his Godzilla (2014) in which a pair of married scientists – Joe (Bryan Cranston) and Sandra Brody (Juliette Binoche) – find themselves separated by a blast door, helpless but to look through the port window as an unfortunate half of the pair becomes monster fodder.  Returning to creature features after working for a decade in science fiction – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), The Creator (2023) – Edwards still proves to be more than capable at creating thrilling, large-scale set pieces with smartly integrated effects that fit well within the world of the film and the image in the frame.  Rebirth challenges the director and his VFX crew with plenty of daylight action scenes as well as a small troupe of different dinosaurs that roam about the various Equatorial terrains. 

The first dino, the aquatic Mosasaurus, is found before the crew even reaches the island and spends much of its struggle under the waves, safe for a few majestic leaps in a show of strength.  This encounter serves more for the audience to get a grasp of the various characters and what this as-of-yet only theorized plan of DNA harvesting will look like in reality.  In that sense, it is a bombastic conclusion to the heavy exposition of the first act and opens up the film proper with a thrilling chase on the open ocean. While Edwards was praised a decade prior for his restraint in not showing us too much of Godzilla too quickly, the Mosasaurus encounter leaves much to be desired as the action is conveyed more through the frantic movement of John Mathieson’s camera and in Jabez Olssen’s edit than what we actually see on screen. It is all movement with little suspense.

Edwards course corrects his pacing for the Titanosaurus encounter; massive terrestrial herbivores not dissimilar in appearance to the Brontosaurus.  While VFX have come a long way since Steven Spielberg and his team first resurrected these great beasts on film over thirty years ago, no amount of Bailey’s wide-eyed wonder can convince us that we are seeing anything special here.  To digress, however, for a moment and to give credit where it is due, Edwards’ and Koepp’s use of the Tyrannosaurus Rex playing out around the same narrative point but on the other side of the island is both a playful and a thrilling inversion of how this franchise staple beast is typically employed. It also proves that there is still excitement to be wrung out of this basic premise of dinosaurs walking the modern world, even after all of this time.  Returning to the plot at hand, the Titanosaurus extraction is quickly handled while two of the creatures court each other at the outer fringes of their much larger herd, shot in a way that alludes to spectacle, but that same wonder and awe never quite breaches the screen to envelope the audience.  In the same way that Trevarrow alluded to the Ur text, so too does Edwards, and to much of the same limp effect, but thankfully with more reverence and respect.  While far more docile creatures than the Mosasaurus, this encounter will still feel like a massive showdown compared to the upcoming extraction performed on the egg of the winged Quetzalcoatlus. 

Much of this main action is sidelined in favor of a second main plot the follows Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an amateur sea captain on vacation with his two daughters, Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda), along with Teresa’s boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono), that latter of whom is the sneaky standout of the entire film.  Sailing foolishly into the Mosasaurus’ territory, their mayday is responded to by Duncan just in time to be shipwrecked again, but at least this time on dry land.  Their inclusion is a reprieve for audiences who may be uninspired by the medical scavenger hunt, and it does harken back to a simpler formula that arguably has much better emotional stakes than Zora balancing her morals against the whims of a massive drug corporation looking to rake in gargantuan profits at the exploit of both dinosaurs and patients alike.  The problem arises in that Koepp’s attention is spread too thin across these competing narratives so that character motivations change scene to scene, especially in the youngest, Isabella, who thankfully is not used just to get the character into trouble, but her emotional arc nevertheless is a short one as she is still used more for narrative convenience than inhabiting an actual character. 

Jurassic World: Rebirth is a frustrating film as it has too many decent ideas that never get explored as deeply as they deserve to be.  Any single story – though, Reuben and his family’s plight is the far more interesting and easy-to-invest-in plot – could support the runtime, but as presented, the film feels overlong with half-baked ventures.  The film is further exasperating in that it is largely bloodless.  While we do not come to Jurassic Park for violence and gore, Edwards – or perhaps the studio – seems almost opposed to any blood spewing action, safe for a few quick kills early on at the beach.  It can only be assumed that they are eyeing a sequel and do not want to handicap their call sheet too early on, but the result is a narrative that takes place on a dangerous island full of dinosaurs with absolutely zero stakes.  The most damning example of this cowardice is the reversal of Duncan’s sacrifice that ends the film.  With that simple choice, compounded by the waving away of the “Distortus rex,” the film has mockingly asked its already weary audience to question the point of the whole endeavor.  When that same audience does not show up for the sure-to-be sequel, it is not that the world has moved on from a fascination with dinosaurs; it is that we have moved on from this franchise’s ever-cheapening storytelling.