I’ve been a Jurassic Park fan since I was able to understand English (I immigrated to Australia at 9 years old). The saturated footage of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum (and the dinosaurs, of course) stayed with me since watching it on an old, chunky television. The classic tug-of-war between a scientist who aims to preserve the integrity of science against the enterprising motivations of a capitalist who is looking to profit from science.
Jurassic World: Rebirth has maintained this formula but the characterisation and acting didn’t make me care about the story. The script is lazy because it expects the audience to understand the characters within 10 minutes of the movie. Take the mercenary characters Zora and Duncan – played by Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali respectively – their back stories were portrayed casually in conversation (and not even meaningful dialogue). Through that one conversation, the script expects the characters established and ready for development (which unsurprisingly, is also lacking).
Zora is portrayed as an effective gun-for-hire that is devastated and mourning her last mission (in Yemen, specifically…), not looking to jump back into action soon. Except she is easily persuaded by a large sum of money in the next 2 minutes. The film downplays her grief, a tragedy that has supposedly driven her to reconsider her occupation. But she’s good at her job and making money – so go liberal feminism, I guess.
Duncan is a (unsurprisingly surprising) soft-at-heart mercenary that cares about his crew – build your own family kinda deal – a modern masculine man. His competency is never at question, only his heart – because he is in mourning too. Ali’s character shows that men can care about their family and make emotional choices at his job. Go progressive masculinity!
The villain in the story, unsurprisingly the pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs, played by Ruper Friend, had less than 10 minutes of screentime. Interesting choice, maybe they were going literal with the banality of evil. Yawn.
Jonathan Bailey’s Dr. Henry Loomis – just because he studied under Dr. Alan Grant doesn’t make him the next Dr. Grant. He could have barely passed the class. Name-dropping is not a means of characterisation and nor is it a good easter egg.
There is a very forgettable and superfluous subplot in the movie that involves a dad sailing across the world as an attempt to bond with his daughters and gets caught up in the mission. The movie is attempting to do too much so it achieved nothing of substance.
Where are the dinosaurs? They’re portrayed to be a nuisance to humans so they’re not featured much. They’re just a means to an end in this story. A wide shot of dinosaurs in a vast landscape, the crescendo of the iconic tune for nostalgia and the role of the dinosaur is over. This is not a Jurassic story, it’s an unimaginative, tired plot that is being passed around by studios. You can easily replace the dinosaurs with anything else – King Kong, aliens, even uncontacted humans. I guess for a movie that is called Jurassic World, I expected dinosaurs to be the main story.
I would forgive it all if the sequel is written better. Let’s stay away from romance between Zora and Dr. Loomis.
Who should watch it: If you’re a Jurassic Park completionist or a masochist.
Who shouldn’t watch it: If you’re on a tight budget or like movies to have a good story and good characterisation.
Movie Name: Jurassic World: Rebirth
Director: Gareth Edwards
Cast: Scarlett Johansson; Mahershala Ali; Jonathan Bailey; Rupert Friend; Manuel Garcia-Rulfo; Ed Skrein
Outer Layer 