Jurassic World Rebirth uses Jonathan Bailey and Scarlett Johansson to try reinvigorating our dinosaur awe

Australia Broadcast Center

13 hours ago

It's become surprisingly easy to take dinosaurs for granted. After the past decade of overstuffed Jurassic World movies, the thrill of beholding the prehistoric beasts on screen — once considered a revolutionary feat of VFX artistry in the original Jurassic Park — no longer holds the same allure.
What: A team of mercenaries travel to an abandoned dinosaur research facility to track down several legendary beasts.
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali
Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Where: In cinemas now
Likely to make you feel: Like we could've waited longer to revive this franchise
When we meet Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, Wicked) — the latest sexy scientist of the Jurassic Park universe — he's in the middle of closing up his dinosaur exhibit in a New York museum. Ever since dinosaurs were unleashed onto the earth's unsuspecting civilian population in Jurassic World Dominion, the general public has tired of their presence, and his expertise has gone unappreciated. Outside, the presence of a sleeping dino is a mere commuting headache.
If the box office success of the Jurassic World trilogy is any indicator, the real world has yet to succumb to dino-fatigue, even as the films' critical reception reached disastrous new lows for the franchise.
Dinosaurs roamed the earth for 167 million years, as Dr Loomis is eager to remind us; they've endured worse than bad reviews.
Still, fending off extinction is no easy task. Jurassic World Rebirth now faces the task of instilling audiences with a fresh sense of awe after its predecessor maxed out the franchise's high-concept potential.
Like the surprise introduction of The New Avengers in Thunderbolts, this rebooted entry is populated by a less-than-reputable cast of B-grade thugs, including Zora (Scarlett Johansson), an ex-Blackwater mercenary looking for a fresh start, and her go-to bootlegger Duncan (Mahershala Ali, Moonlight).
Along with Dr Loomis, the crew is enlisted to extract DNA from three legendary dinosaur species (on sea, air and land), whose unique biological makeup may hold the key to curing heart disease — and an unbeatable payday for the unscrupulous Big Pharma exec (Rupert Friend, Companion) who tags along for the ride.
(The anti-greed ethos of these films is more than a little amusing, considering just how thoroughly Michael Crichton's source material has been regurgitated over seven instalments.)
On the boat ride to its primary destination — an abandoned research facility for the original Jurassic Park, teeming with rejected genetic experiments — the team picks up a family stranded in the middle of the ocean, whose members (a father, two daughters, and a pampered boyfriend) offer up some semblance of humanity in comparison to the glib, generically traumatised operatives of the main team.
Screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original Jurassic Park screenplay (and this year's excellent Black Bag), litters Rebirth's dialogue with listless quips that embarrass an otherwise capable cast.
Johansson comes off as surprisingly wooden, possibly exhausted; presumably there are only so many more times one can volley crisp retorts with a nonchalant affect after spending a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
With so much of pop culture now dedicated to imitating Spielberg (and/or stretching his greatest hits well past their sell-by date), it's hard not to yearn for the real thing, especially as Rebirth is seemingly configured more as a love letter to his greatest hits than to Jurassic Park itself.
The protracted ocean voyage charts the treacherous waters of Jaws, but with less ingenuity than recent aquatic scenes in Avatar 2 and Godzilla Minus One. A stand-out set-piece in the vein of Indiana Jones sees the crack team scale a precipitous cliff face to infiltrate an ancient temple, with winged dinosaurs circling nearby.
If you thought Temple of Doom stretched the limits of what an inflatable dinghy could do, just wait until you see how it fares against the teeth of a T. rex.
Director Gareth Edwards (The Creator) at least manages to outstrip most other imitators with his keenness for stripped-back suspense, occasionally harking back to the time when the ripples in a glass of water were just as terrifying as coming face-to-face with a Velociraptor.
Jurassic World Rebirth may not evoke the glassy-eyed wonder of its forebears, but it modestly succeeds as a thrill ride through less-than-inspired terrain.
It's a shame that more of Edwards' own style doesn't come through. The tactility, momentous scale and severe tone of his previous work (a highlight being his 2014 Godzilla reboot, which finally made the beloved kaiju stick with American audiences) has been glossed over for a generic, crowd-pleasing tone.
Credit where it's due, the film still looks appreciably better than the prior Jurassic World films, trading queasy digital excess for a more restrained, analogue approach that flourishes in the forbidding expanse of its tropical locale.
Apart from their obsessive recycling of ideas (how many more dilapidated labs must we visit?) the core problem with these movies is that they are far too expensive, and far too respectable.
Jurassic World Rebirth teases mutant dinosaur freaks, but its primary deviant — a T. rex hybrid with a couple of extra limbs and a xenomorph-inspired skull — still lacks the enduring fear factor of a pack of beady-eyed raptors. An A-grade schlock director like Larry Cohen would never let this kind of opportunity go to waste.
Though it suggests a new beginning, the film itself shares too much of its genetic code with the original Jurassic Park. If that's all this series can offer, then maybe it should let these poor creatures rest — but another meteor will strike before that happens.
Jurassic World Rebirth is now showing in cinemas.