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Jurassic World: Rebirth -- a review

Released 32 years after the original Jurassic Park, and ten years after the first reboot, Jurassic World, the latest film, Jurassic World: Rebirth, is the seventh entry in the long-running cinematic series and, judging from its strong box office take, it won’t be the last. Scarlett Johansson, who was nine years old when the first JP film was released, is now the lead of Rebirth, starring as Zora Bennett, a mercenary who gets hired for a special mission in the jungles on the equator. And she convincingly plays the part with casual ease. The dinosaurs that had been returned to the modern day through science have not been doing too well in the intervening years, with their numbers dwindling to the point to where they now only thrive in areas along the equator, which is designated off limits to humans.

Zora is hired to take a team of her fellow mercenaries to one of these forbidden locations that plays host to the dinosaurs because a pharmaceutical company wants them to extract blood from several species. The dino blood will lead to the creation of a drug that will fight heart disease, and it will be worth billions. Seeing dollar signs floating around her head, Zora is more than happy to lead a team to dinoland. But, this being a Jurassic World movie, nothing ever goes right.

From the very first scene of Rebirth, which shows everything going horribly wrong in a dinosaur lab--all thanks to a mere candy wrapper--chaos is once again an integral element in the storytelling of a Jurassic World film. Rebirth is a good blend of science fiction and horror, with the chaos factor affecting even the dinosaurs themselves, whose big build up to taking over the Earth from humans in the previous trilogy has now sputtered out. This only makes sense, story wise, because if dinos were still proliferating all over, then there would be no need to send Zora and her team off into the exotic jungles along the equator, a location that gives Rebirth a nice ‘Skull Island’ vibe.

While Rebirth is a fun adventure that moves at a nice, brisk pace, it still knows when to slow down, like in the scene where Zora and her team extract blood from a herd of massive Titanosaurus. This winds up being a very touching scene, especially with the John Williams Jurassic Park theme playing in the background, it effectively recaptures the sheer wonder from the first JP film of seeing these gentle behemoths in person. Another call back to the original JP is the scene where Ruben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his family desperately try to paddle away while in a raft from a T-Rex. This is lifted from a scene in the original Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton.

The only area where Rebirth stumbles is the end, when the “evil” D-Rex is finally fully revealed to us, and its design is really found to be lacking. The D-Rex looks like the love child of King Kong and the alien Queen from Aliens. Set up to be the “big bad” of this film, the D-Rex falls flat on its face in that regard, with its odd chimera design looking like it needs another pass at the drawing board because it’s not quite finished. Another disappointment is the scene at the end (*spoilers*) where Duncan (Mahershala Ali) bravely risks his life to lead the D-Rex away from Zora and the others, only to somehow survive his confrontation, which takes place entirely off-screen. How did he make it against such a ‘horrific’ titan like the D-Rex? The filmmakers do not deign to let us know. The upshot is that at least Duncan will be back for the sequel. But despite JW: Rebirth’s flaws, I still enjoyed my trip back with the dinosaurs, and am looking forward to the next cinematic excursion. --SF

Jurassic World: Rebirth is available on streaming and on physical media.
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