First Take: Jurassic World Rebirth: worth it only to see ONE trailer

SYNOPSIS: Five years post-Jurassic World: Dominion, an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.

And after 13 hours in a cinema, the final film on a marathon review day was this one. Eagerly anticipated by many (and not because of the film itself - we’ll get to that teaser for The Odyssey once it’s out online), the Jurassic franchise has had hits, and a few misses, with that 2022 entry being one of the biggest disappointments in the franchise’s history to wrap up the first Jurassic World trilogy (cheers Covid reshoots!). This one falls squarely in the latter category once again.

This time it is Godzilla’s handler, and master of ridiculously good low budget filmmaking (look at The Creator for an example of what he can do without producers breathing down his back) in Gareth Edwards tasked with directing a semi reboot of sorts. Edwards had a rough time handling this beast, coming in at 2 hours 14 minutes, suffering with clear pacing, plot, plus some serious cases of ‘what even is this film’- a lot of it is due to David Koepp’s script. As much as he co-wrote the original film and penned The Lost World, this one is an absolute mess. Some elements are pure family drama, with a family mysteriously absent in marketing, others are just typical Hollywood dinosaur epic… and don’t get me started on a blatant product placement that starts the WHOLE narrative. Turns out you really aren’t you when you’re hungry, especially in a dino containment facility - it’s a properly dumb plot, and with the producers having more control, it’s a film where I feel like I have to cue the rant music. Saying that, it is shot relatively well by John Mathieson using 35mm stock, optimised for IMAX despite not actually getting an IMAX release, but Alexandre Desplat’s score just feels like a mish mash of ideas, especially during some sequences.

Performance wise, it’s a bit of a shambles. While Scarlett Johannson is a box office draw, and flanked by Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey (who Universal allegedly insisted got cast due to his work in Wicked’s two instalments), Ed Skrein and Rupert Friend, there’s nothing special to report here beyond Audrina Miranda and her animatronic dino friend Delores. Nobody in this film knows what they’re doing, which says a LOT about how quickly they wanted this to be turned around, and beyond the callbacks to the older films, if you take away all the Jurassic IP it actually feels better as a movie when it is viewed as just a standalone piece. How Universal thought it was a good idea to push on for another sequel is beyond me, because while audiences may lap up fancy CG dinosaurs, the concept feels stuck in the 1990s at this point. Genuinely the best bit of this film wasn’t the film… it was a 1 minute 18 second trailer that played before it. That’s the only reason the film opened as big as it has.

THE VERDICT

Jurassic World Rebirth is a shocker. Somehow it’s on its way to a billion dollars, which says a lot about how teflon the Jurassic name is - you can stick it on anything and people will watch it. Sometimes you just need to let a franchise die to make it worthwhile - or watch it having done 13 hours of other films prior.

RATING: 2.5/5