3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Jurassic World Rebirth

2025, Gareth Edwards (Monsters) -- download

Huh. Its a Gareth Edwards movie. Didn't expect that. And it just came and went without so much as a T-rex subsonic rumble. And, I guess the Jurassic World "series" of movies were not done, with the release of Dominion? New trilogy in the sub-franchise? Stand-alone? No matter what they had in mind, this movie is not going to inspire anything further. I hope, at least, that Edwards went away with a big paycheck to fund whatever passion project he had in mind next.

You would figure that Gareth Edwards would be the perfect choice for making a movie about giant, awe inspiring monsters, considering his success with Godzilla and ... well, Monsters. But from my view point, this movie struck me as least-effort, not bothering to exceed the expectations of the Purple Suits who decided the movie had to be made, and directed every second of it. Instead of a proper Edwards movie, we get a pastiche of previous Jurassic movies, as well as his own, but it all ends up feeling more like a mood board of a movie, rather than a creator's vision.

Connected with Kent while this post was in draft, and I mentioned I was surprised we didn't even talk about going to see it. He mentioned how Edwards was brought in late in the movie, not even being the first or second choice director. I get that Hollywood is a machine, that movies are often constructed, but this isn't his vehicle let alone his "passion project" and that is apparent. He's just the guy assigned to the activity.

And yet it still started off strong, to my perception. As this movie is abandoning the cast and story of the other three, but still retaining the continuity, this is a world where dinosaurs got released from the parks, made their way in the world, but.... are now dying off. So much for "life finds a way". Anywayz, the novel way this one sets itself up is to focus on the mercenary team hired to bring someone illegally to the island where the dinosaurs they want to exploit are. The mains are initially presented as this entirely economically driven group.

These movies have always had a "mercenary team" but they have usually been relegated as background fodder, almost nameless, ready to be "joyfully" munched upon by the dinosaurs. You had Ludlow's team sent to capture dinosaurs, under the eye of big game hunter Roland Tembo (The Lost World) and the backup team hired by the wealthy Kirbys in Jurassic Park III. And of course, Vincent Donofrio's Hoskins security head who has his own ideas. They are all less than sympathetic characters playing a dangerous game for money and maybe some thrills. And then they die.

This movie brings us a much more sympathetic Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson, Asteroid City), who is the main character, and the main face draw to the movie. She's entirely in it for the money, offered more than enough cash to hire a team to take the latest Corporate Buffoon (Rupert Friend, Asteroid City) to yet another island where the/a corporation was experimenting with newer, flashier, more dangerous versions of the dinosaurs that were going out of fashion in the rest of the world. And they bring Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, Bridgerton) an actual dinosaur enthusiast, as a SME, and unappreciated moral compass. Finally, the movie adds in the sympathetic family, a spinoff of the little girl who got bit in The Lost World. The Delgados are on a family sailing adventure, across the Atlantic, when they are capsized by the whale-sized dinosaur our main team is hunting. They are picked up by the main team, but inevitably they all end up marooned on the island where the big nasty experimental dinos are.

Oh, the toss away reason for all of this is that heart-blood from three really really big dinosaurs can create a wonder drug that will save millions of lives, and Corporate Buffoon tags along so he can twirl his moustache. The SME, while accepting the paycheck, would rather the drug become open-sourced, but he is a dinosaur enthusiast, not a Big Pharm scientist, so I am not sure what he thinks he can do with a couple of vials of blood; but shrug whatever, unappreciated moral compass.

Continuing with the pastiche, there are elements that make this almost a family movie as the tight knit Delgados are focused on as much the mercenaries who get munched on and die, sans other named-face Mahershala Ali (Green Book). We even get the frightened-little-girl-gets-cute-baby-dino distraction. If I wasn't so fond of Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven), who plays Daddy Delgado, I would have found the whole idea annoying AF. Of note, the mercenaries were not the Bad Guys, so each death is supposed to carry a pang of regret, instead of the "yeah, the raptor got em!" of previous movies. It somewhat successful at that, but I am unusually subject to collateral death.

Then we move onto the horror movie, when the two groups finally connect at "the village", or the central compound where the originating scientific research group were based -- basically we get the research station, fuel pipes, helicopter landing pad, and a convenience store / gas station. Oh, and most importantly, to give us some Alien vibes, we get "sewer tunnels" below the whole research station. As Marmy pointed out, the Big Bad, a monstrously mutated very large dino was channeling the human-xeno hybrid (what was with the big bulbous gelatinous forehead? sort of a "shoot here" formation)  from Alien:Resurrection. But none of it is very compelling nor exciting, more just merely by the books. Set design was great though.

As for the presence of Edwards, we get little flourishes and that's pretty much it. You get the lighting reveals of scale from Godzilla once the D-Rex (Distortus Rex) appears, and some of the grand landscape scenes reminded me of the background establishing shots in The Creator. If the ooo and awwww of the dino herd was his, I couldn't tell. And one thing definitely not his, was the terrible terrible CG. Primarily it was composited into the scenes really badly, and usually terribly lit. 

If this movie was meant to be the "rebirth" of the whole franchise, it has failed on every level. ScarJo's presence served nothing for the movie -- she's there, she competent, she has the hint of being an interesting character, but... we get little. There is nothing left in the plot that could lead to more, and nothing distinct about this one that would inspire the re-use of the characters. I really hope this doesn't hurt Edwards career, and just gives him some bank for whatever he would really like to be doing.