Extinct.
It shouldn’t be this hard to make these movies good.
Let’s cut to the chase: this is not a good film. The most frustrating thing is that in the seventh Jurassic film’s few flashes of originality and humour, when Gareth Edwards gets a tiny chance to do something that hasn’t been rigorously organised on a flashcard board for six months by a committee of test audience clipboard-holding film execs, it’s *very* good. But there’s no metaphorical amber here to defy the laws of narrative physics to preserve it, and suddenly it’s gone, red-lit smoke in the darkness, disappearing back into the forest.
And onto the next flash card.
Apparently Gareth Edwards came in and filmed the human scenes very late in the process, and most of the other stuff – you know, the film of the film – had been completed without him in pre-production. It’s hard to believe, until you actually see the film, then it becomes absolutely believable. There’s almost nothing of the grand sweeping vistas that Edwards has employed so beautifully throughout his filmography; none of the visionary sci-fi elements that he showed can make even Star Wars into a personal drama; zero of the breath-taking design work of The Creator that elevated that film to one of my favourites of that year. And of course, none of his now-trademark CG that seems to sit and exist in the world as real elements thanks to expert design and lighting.
This is film as paint-by-numbers, and about as cynical a franchise movie as it gets. A Big Pharma suits hires a criminally-wasted Scarlett Johansson to go with his pet scientist (Jonathan Bailey, who is always watchable) into the place where no-one else will go, to get the thing that will make him very, very rich (and her, by extension). And wouldn’t you know it, we’re off back to a tropical island stuffed to the gills with dinosaurs. Because, why not? The franchise totally chickened out at expanding the Jurassic out of the Park, into the World if you will, so let’s just circle back round to what we know, shall we?
Along the way they pick up the also criminally-wasted Mahershala Ali, the completely underused Ed Skrein, dino fodder crew members #1 and #2, and a lost family that could have been completely cut of the of the film with zero loss. Should have, even. The whole b-plot could have been left on the floor and this film would have been more focused, tighter, more compelling, more frightening. Imagine Predator, but ever other scene has three other people climbing over rocks and making friends with a CG Predator baby.
But the original Jurassic Park had a b-plot involving lost kids, and so must this: an open echo of that film, an attempt to squeeze the last of its endearing nostalgia out of the plastic bottle. Park‘s writer is back, that film’s director is now producing, and the marketing team gets to nod furiously at the prestige every second they can. The trouble is, there’s not really any dino-nostalgia at play in Rebirth; all recognisable types are there as side hurdles or played for subversion-of-expectation humour that relies on you having seen the things they’re referencing. The real threats are mutants, the shocking results of secret lab trials which could be interesting if they hadn’t done exactly this before. There’s a flock of angry turkeys and an honest-to-god Rancor in the mix, none of which fire the childhood neurons in our brains that look up at T-rex skeletons and go wow.
By the time the a and b-plot casts come together to make a final bid for escape, you’re so frustrated at how good this could have been that you just don’t care any more. A true Gareth Edwards monster movie, led by Johansson and Ali being perfect for this, could have been something. Why not steal from the great ideas that already exist, instead of openly grabbing elements from Aliens? Stop-motion dinos! Ray Harryhausen! Hire Laika! Weaponised mounts! Dino Crisis 3! Edwards should have been given carte blanche. Go on Gareth. Show us something with our franchise. Go crazy.
Unfortunately, the audience screening reports were written before he even got in the room, and what we’re left with is a bland, vacuous mess that will no doubt make enough money that we’ll get another one.
Jurassic World Rebirth is now in cinemas nationwide.
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