"Jurassic World Rebirth" Is More Like an Afterbirth
Even if you were stranded on a tropical island with just this movie, you shouldn't watch it
In “Jurassic World Rebirth,” the seventh of the franchise, characters make a big deal about how people don’t care about dinosaurs anymore.
They are talking about people in their world, but for viewers, they might as well be talking about ours. Their stated malaise sets up this entire wretched rehash of a movie.
Written by original “Jurassic Park” scriptwriter David Koepp, it appears that he might’ve taken the original script, put it in a copy machine, and made some light edits. As per usual in blockbuster films these days, this movie reheats previously-reheated leftovers from all the prior movies.
“See big dinosaur. *ROAR*. Scary teeth. Run!”
I’m all for a big dumb monster movie, yet please offer some thematic interest and enhanced characterization.
This movie has neither. It too, via Mr. Koepp’s writing, has decided to give one and only one major trait to its main characters — and then it may never even develop any of them.
This trend of dehumanization of all fictional types in modern mass-market entertainment is the zeitgeist anti-human way. Given that the entire literary tradition of humanity sits in judgment of it, big-money movies deserve all the losses they can accrue.
“Rebirth” does have one major message, perhaps the easiest to deliver because everyone can agree about it to an extent: “Big Pharma Bad!”
The major drug companies are the real modern T-Rex, willing to tempt you with money to Dinosaur Island, only to leave you there to die.
That’s more or less the plot. A major pharmaceutical representative creates a crack-team to invade a tropical island infested with dinosaurs from the old theme park. It’s illegal to go there, hence their operation is quiet and small. Their goal: get the blood serum from the three biggest dinosaurs, so that heart disease can be cured . . . somehow.0
Along the way, they pick up a quasi-nuclear family whose sailboat has been demolished by a big swimming dino. Both parties shipwreck on Dino Island, trying to survive until help arrives, while risking themselves to collect the serum.
A series of trolley-problem scenarios ensue, such as “would you save a teenage girl from death or get the blood serum”? Or “should drug companies make a profit on their products, or invest billions in research and then open-source their products and lose billions?” Mr. Koepp and Director Gareth Edwards think the latter.
Besides the movie’s predictability — sometimes a bug or feature of these big dumb blockbusters — its marketing entirely misleads. Stars Scarlet Johannsen and Mahershala Ali are in the film for perhaps 60% of the time, the rest going to the uncharismatic quartet of the shipwrecked family. You can take a bathroom break whenever they are on screen.
Casting Mr. Ali in this movie is like hiring Miles Davis to play in your high-school pep band.
Anyway, if you don’t take my advice and use the loo, you can go to the concession stand and get Altoids or M&Ms. This movie makes sure to show you that it’s sponsored by Mars-Wrigley, with incoherent moments where Altoids show up as a desirable munchie. In fact, a Snickers bar wrapper causes the initial chaos that wrecks Dino Island and allows genetically engineered freak dinosaurs to escape their pens.
If I’m counting things correctly, “Rebirth” despises Big Pharma but embraces Big Candy.
Given how highly addictive sugar is, it’s clear that some drugs are more equal than others!
Consider my last two paragraphs, and you’ll see how far we’ve fallen from the blockbuster original’s interest in bioethics, environmentalism, and eco-tourism. Even that movie didn’t care much about those ideas, but it did have the unique privilege of having characters stare at awe and wonder at CGI dinos for the first time.
When that happens in this movie, you know they’ve already done this six times before.
Thus the movie actually believes in the view of the people in its world, that nobody can or should care about CGI dinosaurs.