‘Jurassic World Rebirth:’ How many times are we going to do this?

L to R Bechir Sylvain Jonathan Bailey and Scarlett Johansson in Jurassic World Rebirth Photo by Jasin Boland Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment When Jurassic World Rebirth begins we see a bunch of scientists scurrying around a lab doing something they definitely shouldn t be doing with dinosaur DNA We re following one guy in particular our entry point into the movie but also a guy doing chosen remarkable product placement for Snickers but as we follow him around the lab you can hear chatter going on in the background If you listen really really closely you can hear someone say something that sounds like How countless times are we going to do this How plenty of times are we going to return to Jurassic Park Perhaps the answer should be Never again This quiet throw away line is the first of multiple moments in Jurassic World Rebirth the newest entry into the franchise directed by Gareth Edwards where the movie seems to hold up its hands in surrender and say Look we know the last sparse outings have been rough But you used to like these movies right Let s get back to that Jurassic World Rebirth aims to return to the spirit of s Jurassic Park far more explicitly than the Jurassic World movies that came before it and to its credit that attempt leads to more good moments than that trio of mean-spirited bad movies ever produced But it will take more than homage to capture the magic of the original Jurassic Park and bad CGI and a cobbled together story outweigh the good elements of Rebirth After the events of Jurassic World Dominion the dinosaurs who once lived among us have now fallen by the wayside They can t survive in our weather society interest is nowhere near what it once was and the meager dinosaurs who have survived live in isolated environments close to the equator But while the general populace might not care about dinosaurs anymore pharmaceutical companies do about their DNA at least Hired by one of these companies Zora Bennett Scarlet Johansson leads a squad of specialists including paleontologist Henry Loomis Jonathan Bailey and operative Duncan Kinkaid Mahershala Ali down to the tropics to gather that DNA The apology tour is right there in the set up When we first meet Henry Loomis he delivers a monologue about how just a limited years ago the line for the dinosaur exhibit at his museum was constantly around the block He talks about the number of tickets they use to sell sounding more like a wistful theater owner reminiscing about the good old days of s blockbusters than a paleontologist That s not to say that the Jurassic World movies weren t financially fruitful But culturally and critically those movies haven t had near the impact of the original dully generic and strangely cruel as they are So what better way to get people back into dinosaurs again than to recreate the feeling they felt at the theater in Remind them what exactly it is that they love about Jurassic Park It s not a subtle tactic The three films before Jurassic World Rebirth have a tendency to put dinosaurs in peril as if that s what everyone wants to see but in this film the first guy who even hints at hurting a dinosaur is offed right away There are also straight up copies of scenes from the original film such as the moment when Laura Dern and Sam Neill first see dinosaurs in the valley or the famous raptor kitchen stalking sequence Copy is the key word here For the valley moment in particular Bailey is the actor that Rebirth tasks with handling the emotion and he sells it as best he can he s a good actor But the moment fails to capture the spontaneous wonder of the original As everyone gapes at the majesty of these creatures you can feel the nostalgia gears crunching away and it doesn t help that more than years later the scene looks worse than almost anything in Jurassic Park Movie magic is hard to achieve when you have nothing new to say especially when it s muddled by poor CGI The look of the film isn t helped by the fact that David Koepp s script is uneven at best We spend half our time with Zora and the rest of the DNA-hunting crew and half with a civilian family who gets caught up in the adventure The civilian family a father Manuel Garcia-Rulfo his two daughters Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda and one daughter s boyfriend David Iacono the standout of the cast is a breath of fresh air These newer Jurassic movies focus so heavily on the military or mercenaries or rogue radical scientists The family storyline in Rebirth has a real arc with real relationships and real stakes But by that same token it s likely not great for your blockbuster if I m itching to get away from the plotline that features movie stars So Jurassic World Rebirth is the best of the new crop of Jurassic movies But if the best we can do is barely conjure a mere glimmer of the magic of the original maybe it s time to let this franchise definitively go extinct The post Jurassic World Rebirth How several times are we going to do this appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta