Review: Jurassic World Rebirth Feels Like a Fossil
Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey can't save Jurassic World: Rebirth from its barrage of bad CGI and beastly nonsense.
In case you haven’t caught up — or you’ve given up — on where we are in the Jurassic World saga, boatloads of dinosaur species were transported from their theme park island to the mainland a couple of sequels ago in Fallen Kingdom.
Now, after a whole sequel, Dominion, to run rampant through cities and towns, and re-acclimate themselves to life on Earth, the dinosaur population in the latest money grab Jurassic World: Rebirth has taken a hit. Acclimating to the changed climate, environments, and co-existence with humans has proved to be more than most dinosaur species can handle.
The film, directed by monster-meister Gareth Edwards (2014’s Godzilla), illustrates the point with a gargantuan, dying brachiosaurus stopping traffic in Brooklyn. Still, around two dozen dino species have persisted, inhabiting a tropical band near the Equator considered “no-go” zones. So, guess where the movie is going.
“We’re putting together a team.” This time it’s pharma corp ParkerGenix, represented by suit-and-tie stooge Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend, appropriately smarmy), organizing an expedition to a no-go zone to “procure” dinosaur DNA for drug research.
But not just any dinosaur DNA, which is why Krebs is assembling not just any team. To track and sample the biggest and baddest, they’ll need the best of the best. Enter special ops contractor Zora, whom Krebs offers a whopping sum of money to lead the mission. She’s played by Scarlett Johansson, who, no doubt, accepted a whopping sum of money to lead this movie, going meta and Method in one swoop.
Zora helps persuade expert paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis to join the team. A paleontologist with perpetual movie star lighting and a wardrobe of chest-baring button-downs that he never buttons up, Loomis is portrayed by a charismatic Jonathan Bailey, who may not project the action-hero credibility of co-star Johansson, but at least sells the character’s constant sense of wonder at the sight of these beasts in the wild.
That’s saying something, because, as a plot point, human beings in this universe are mostly over their dinosaur fever. In the film, it’s been 32 years since Dr. Hammond’s Jurassic Park brought cloned dinosaurs roaring back to life, and, after all the deadly events covered in the past six movies, people are no longer staring up in awe. Rather, they’re fed up with being picked off by raptors and pterodactyls.
The magic has faded for a public formerly fascinated by these prehistoric beasts. As more meta-commentary, that might be too on the nose, but it fits. This franchise’s audience has seen every dinosaur, if not in a Jurassic movie, then on Discovery Channel, PBS, or National Geographic.
So, just like the theme park builders in the movies, all the filmmakers can do to please their thirsty audience is come up with bigger, beastlier, more astounding dinos, even if they have to invent creatures that never existed. And, in that harried effort, the movies keep introducing stranger hybrids and experimental mutations, like the hybrid “Mutadon” that waits somewhere in the no-go zone for our intrepid team.
Once they’re assembled — along with Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali as ship captain Duncan Kincaid, an expert at moving strange cargo — it’s off to Ile Saint-Hubert in the Caribbean in search of a sea-dwelling Mosasaurus, a great grazing Titanosaurus, and a Quetzacoatlus, the largest flying creature that ever flew the Earth.
The film’s trajectory from there is a straightforward video game, and just as repetitive: tracking down dinosaurs, being ambushed by dinosaurs, being chased and hunted by dinosaurs, and mourning the ones who don’t make it.
Quite a few don’t make it, so the mourning is frequent and the losses supposedly profoundly felt, at least by Zora and Kincaid, team leaders who feel especially responsible for the lives of their crew. Also, perhaps as a means of giving the awards-caliber talent some meaty drama to play, the movie grants significant time to Zora’s and Kincaid’s pain and regret over their barely introduced supporting players getting snapped off like twigs.
But the grief feels insincere in a film that really just wants to throw frightened mercenaries at the chomping jaws of CGI beasts. And therein lies this movie’s biggest problem: no matter how close those vicious chompers come to our team, the danger doesn’t feel real.
Somehow, three decades into our collective Jurassic experience, these movies have gotten worse at integrating their CGI-animated and animatronic creatures into the physical reality of the live actors. Jurassic World: Rebirth doesn’t even do a good job of integrating live actors into shots of computer-generated environments, leaving those green-screen halos around actors like something out of Land of the Lost.
Any excitement that might be generated by the appealing performances, booming sound design, and cartoonish visuals of towering beasts is so diminished by the patent unreality of what’s onscreen that we might as well be watching someone else play a game, leveling up to the final confrontation with what looks like a rejected H.R. Giger alien.
Now, if they want to throw one of those into a Jurassic World, that might reawaken our interest, but until then, consider us done with dinosaurs.
Jurassic World: Rebirth (★★☆☆☆) is rated PG-13 and is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
More from Metro Weekly:
Support Metro Weekly’s Journalism
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.