The Movie: Jurassic World: Rebirth
The Director: Gareth Edwards
The Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda, Philippine Velge, Bechir Sylvain, Ed Skrein
The Story: People who think they're really cool go to an island filled with dinosaurs. People are immediately humbled by all the dinosaurs. People try to escape from the island filled with dinosaurs.
The Rating: 5 / 10
The Review:
Gareth Edwards has a pretty impressive track record as a director with Monsters, Godzilla, Rogue One, and The Creator under his belt before now taking on the latest installment of the Jurassic franchise. While I was hoping that he might be able to unlock the formula for unleashing a fresh take on a series of films that has, for the most part, been rehashes and retreads of the ones that have come before it, my hopes were unfortunately dashed as this movie follows the established formula pretty much to a tee. There's nothing new here except maybe a few hints at some backstory or some sort of mythology that might be explored down the road.
The story from start to finish is very basic and is pretty much on par with almost every other installment in the franchise and it feels like the cast knows this so they also coast through every scene like it's nothing new and just something to get through before moving on to the next project. I feel like it's always going to be difficult for any Jurassic Park/World movie to have real success because the original is so iconic and so well made, most of it holds up even to today's standards.
For me, the main thing that's missing in this movie is that authentic sense of wonder that Stephen Spielberg so masterfully embedded into all of his movies as well as a real sense of danger or any real tension. This is where the story is very predictable and feels most like the creators were following a very specific road map or using a paint by numbers method of putting the movie together. The whole thing felt like it was trying to be a Jurassic Park movie and not just existing as one, if that makes sense.
I do also want to mention the special effects for this movie and yes, I know they can be an easy target in this day and age and yet this is another area that fell short in my opinion. I always felt like I was looking at CGI so I was never fully engaged with what should be amazingly lush and immersive environments. I also never felt that any of the characters were in any sort of real danger because my eyes weren't registering the dinosaurs as real, tactile creatures. This was especially disappointing because I know how much attention to detail Gareth Edwards normally puts into this type of thing based on both Rogue One and The Creator.
It really feels like this movie was controlled more by studio heads and spreadsheets than by the creative people who should really be the ones entrusted with bringing this type of movie to life. Unfortunately, this movie will be nothing more than disposable junk food cinema when what we deserved was a full course meal of bronto ribs and pterodactyl wings. I'm sure a lot of really talented people worked very hard and did the best they could on this project but from a big picture perspective, if you're not going to go all out, at least make it look like you tried. The Jurassic franchise and it's fanbase both deserve better.
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