Remember Nedry, the fat guy played by Wayne Night in Jurassic Park?  Rebirth hopes that you do, because its opening scene is a weird callback to his character.  Seventeen years ago, before the events in Jurassic World took place, the scientists at InGen were just starting to experiment with dinosaur DNA.  One scientist curiously tries to eat a candy bar just before entering a controlled environment.  The guy is a slob and carelessly drops the wrapper just before he enters a sealed chamber with a dinosaur in it.  The wrapper gets sucked into the door’s ventilation and shorts it out.  Uh oh.  In the rush to lock everything down, the candy bar guy is left staring face-to-face with a very nasty dinosaur.  The lesson here is to not be a slob, because the repercussions are fatal.

In the present day, dinosaurs are dropping dead all over the world.  Turns out that they’re susceptible to disease and the changing climate.  The disease angle I can understand, but the world has been getting hotter for years.  Wouldn’t that make the planet even more hospitable for dinosaurs?  One thing that became clear as this movie trudged along, is that Rebirth doesn’t care about logic.  It just wants to get to the dino action as quickly as possible.

Since the dinosaurs are no longer a viable entertainment product, the only value they have is in  pharmaceutical research.  This is where pharma bro executive Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) comes in.  (He’s not modeled after Martin Shkreli, although he should have been.)  Krebs’  company is close to a cure for heart disease, but they can’t synthesize the DNA that makes it work.  They need samples extracted from living dinosaurs in order to complete the formula.  Not only that, they need samples from the biggest dinosaurs who live on land, the sea and in the air.  Why DNA from all three?  Because the search for one dinosaur would have resulted in a short feature.  (Krebs does some hand-waving over this little detail.)

To acquire the DNA, Krebs needs to go where dinosaurs roam, which is the Earth’s equator.  Since doing this is both illegal and very unsafe, he recruits Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), an ex-military type who does things for money.  Next on Krebs’ list is paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), whose name kept reminding me of Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) from Halloween.  It would have been hilarious if this movie’s Dr. Loomis mentioned that his grandfather was a psychiatrist from Illinois, but Rebirth doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

Zora’s team of mercenaries includes Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), a gregarious type who has done dirty deeds with Zora before.  Their team includes several other characters who serve as hors-d’oeuvres, so I won’t bother mentioning their names here.  Before setting sail, Zora and Duncan head below deck to discuss their difficult lives as mercs.  It’s a nice scene where both actors get to do some actual acting, and it happens to be the only one of its kind in the entire movie.

As Zora and crew head for the equator, the movie introduces a Latino family sailing through the exact same area.  Why would Ruben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) willingly take his daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise), Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) through such a dangerous route?  As Ruben explains later, he’s done it several times before and sailors rarely encounter dinosaurs.  Note that he didn’t say “never”.

The Delgado family outing hits rough waters in the form of a herd of Mosasaurus, which capsize their boat.  Duncan hears the family’s distress signal and diverts the ship to rescue the Delgados, much to the annoyance of Krebs.  Once the family is on board, the mercs do their best to not explain what they are doing out there, and are relieved when the Mosasaurus’ appear on radar.

In one of Rebirth’s rare moments of creativity, Duncan’s boat is attacked by two kinds of dinosaurs working together.  Although Zora succeeds in extracting a DNA sample from a Mosasaurus, a merc becomes a mid-morning snack and the Delgado family winds up overboard.  Duncan steers the boat into the shallows of a nearby island, where things are even more treacherous.  Another merc promptly becomes lunch, while the Delgado’s wind up on the other side of the island.

But it’s no ordinary island:  it is where this movie began.  Turns out that all of the failed experiments are still roaming around.  Krebs explains that InGen didn’t terminate their unusable products because it was better from an accounting perspective to keep the failed experiments alive and record them under research-and-development.  Does the tax code have a spot for dino depreciation?

The remainder of the movie has Zora, Duncan and Loomis doing their job while the Delgados make their way towards the InGen complex.  The Delgados somehow survive a T-Rex encounter, leading me to believe that the beast has lost his touch.  Meanwhile, Xavier reveals his love of weed and being lazy, leading Ruben to advise him to not internalize the prejudices gringos have towards Latinos.  (Insert your favorite Cheech and Chong reference here.)  When both parties eventually meet up, the fun isn’t over because the worst of the failed experiments arrives for the big finale, and it’s the stuff of nightmares.

Recommendation

Of all the franchises I watch, Jurassic World (formerly Jurassic Park) is the one I expect the least from.  This is because the sequels have mainly competed over which one will set the bar lower.  Despite my pessimism, I approach each new entry with an open mind, hoping to be surprised.  Jurassic World: Dominion, for all of its problems, did that.  Even though it’s just as goofy as the previous two films, it took chances that I thought worked in its favor.

Jurassic World: Rebirth is the antithesis of the preceding Jurassic World trilogy.  It takes no chances, instead relying upon an extremely simplistic plot to move things forward.  It contains no interesting characters, dialog or developments.  Although the story is technically a heist, it is an excuse to get characters into the close proximity of dinosaurs as often as possible.  While this has been an element of the Jurassic films from the beginning, Rebirth takes it to a new level of incredulity.  The characters in this movie plod along, doing what they’re set out to do because they have no minds of their own.  They have no choice, no capability for rational thought and exist only to either be eaten or narrowly escape dinosaurs.

As the lead of the movie, Scarlett Johansson’s performance is forgettable.  This isn’t Johansson’s fault, because she’s been good in action movies before (see Lucy, The Avengers, Ghost in the Shell).  Other than one dramatic scene and a handful of quips, she’s a video game character with no personality or self-awareness.  Two-time Academy Award winning actor Mahershala Ali smiles and laughs, but is basically a man in a beret.  Jonathan Bailey brings some energy to his role, a stand-in for Sam Neill’s Alan Grant, but never says anything relevant about the dinosaurs all around him.  Rupert Friend appears willing to be more than an ethically challenged corporate bad guy, but the script gives him nothing to work with.  The rest of the mercenaries are basically Star Trek “red shirts” who exist only to die horribly.

The Latino family is a glaringly clumsy element of the plot.  Despite their overwhelming incompetence, the family is incredibly dinosaur-proof, always emerging unscathed.  As the boyfriend of the sexually active older daughter, David Iacono garners some laughs as a goofy stoner.  The younger daughter befriends a tiny dinosaur that will wind up being a popular Christmas toy.  All four characters could have been cut and the movie would have been exactly the same.

There are a few things that Rebirth does right.  The CGI dinosaurs look terrific and are scary, particularly the mutant ones.  Director Gareth Edwards stages the action capably.  There’s a breathtaking scene with a herd of Titanosaurus that outdoes the original.  The movie looks good, thanks to cinematographer John Mathieson.  And John Williams’ score returns for all of the big emotional scenes.  But these positives only make the movie tolerable, not enjoyable.

Jurassic World: Rebirth is a perfunctory sequel that swaps the silliness of the previous trilogy for a dull grimness.  Aside from the dinosaur mayhem, the movie is a frustrating bore that takes no chances and offers no surprises.  Not Recommended.

Analysis

My expectations for dinosaur movies have been low ever since a young girl escaped a Velociraptor by doing her parallel bars routine in The Lost World.  That said, I liked 65 and enjoyed Jurassic World: Dominion enough to recommend it.  All I ask of these kinds of movies is to meet my very basic requirements:

1. The hero has a definable personality and exhibits competence.
2. The supporting characters play a role in the plot beyond being dino-fodder.
3. All of the characters are fully cognizant of the dangerous scenarios they find themselves in.
4. Nobody does anything stupid that would invite mortal peril.
5. The story takes a few modest chances with the formula.
6. The dinosaurs are scary.
7. John Williams’ score is utilized.

To my amazement, Rebirth only accomplishes the last two.  The film’s unwillingness to tackle the others led to my restlessness while watching it, as I mostly waited for either the bad stuff to pass or something noteworthy to happen.

Holding out for a hero

A solid performance by the actor playing the hero makes up for a lot of sins.  It’s why the franchise has kept bringing Sam Neill back.  I thought Chris Pratt was fine in the prior Jurassic World films, but the movies watered down his personality too much for him to be any more than effective.

As I mentioned above, I was disappointed at how little Rebirth gives Johansson to do.  She’s shown that she can play an engaging action movie hero many times, so she has nothing to prove with this movie.  (Cultural issues aside, her performance in Ghost in the Shell is interesting and unlike anything she’s done before.)  Aside from looking terrific and going through her paces competently, Johansson’s Zora is so nondescript that it could have been played by anyone.  (This is true for the rest of the cast, but even more so for Johansson because she’s the lead.)

When the release date for Rebirth was announced, I remember people questioning on social media how the film could be completed with such limited turn-around time.  Based on the resulting film, my guess is that they took screenwriter David Koepp’s first draft and ran with it.  There are many instances in the movie where the dialog is perfunctory, as if it were placeholder dialog intended to be punched up later.  I doubt Koepp ever got the opportunity, though.

In the beginning of the movie, when Krebs recruits Zora, they both acknowledge her shady past, consisting of dangerous and illegal jobs for money.  What does Zora actually do?  What is she specifically good at?  How has she been successful for so long?  The movie refuses to give us any details.  Later, when Zora and Duncan trade sorrows on his boat, Zora mentions how a friend died a slow, painful death from a car bomb.  What was she and her friend doing in Yemen?  What was their mission?  Who were they working for?  Again, no specifics provided.

The only skill Zora has is that she’s a good shot, although she initially misses the Mosasaurus.  (Yes, it was choppy water and the boat was under attack, but that’s why she’s being paid $20m, right?)  My guess is that Zora’s “skillset” consists of getting into and out of dangerous situations alive.  Considering the premise of the movie, I understand why Krebs would recruit her.  However, how do her skills translate to the mission at hand?

The same goes for Duncan and the rest of his merry band of “red shirts”.  They seem especially unprepared for going up against large and lethal dinosaurs.  Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein) is pulled off the boat by a Spinosaurus.  Then Nina (Philippine Velge) is snatched by another Spinosaurus while struggling with a large bundle of supplies on the beachfront.  Finally, the odd man out LeClerc (Bechir Sylvain) gets eaten by a Quetzalcoatlus.

Which leads to one of my other requirements:  the hero must show some basic competence.  Since Zora has no understanding of the situation she’s gotten herself and her fellow mercenaries into, she’s unable to save them when they’re in trouble.  The three I mentioned above all wind up being eaten because Zora’s is only prepared to shoot dinosaurs with a dart gun.  Although she’s the leader of a dangerous operation, she has no comprehension of what awaits her.  

Rebirth should have allowed for a training session, or at least an overview, so that everyone would know what to do when trouble arose.  This is rule one for spies and black ops people:  know your enemy.  Know their weaknesses, know how to defend yourself from them, know how to kill them.  Instead, the movie just pushes the characters in front of dinosaurs and we wait for carnage to ensue.

Don’t call me stupid.

Another requirement of mine is for the characters to not do anything stupid that would put their lives at risk.  This goes out the window in the opening scene, when the doctor loses track of a candy bar wrapper.  Why would anyone who’s worked in a clean environment that houses dangerous animals do something so careless that could directly endanger their lives?

That scene is topped when the Delgado family sends Teresa to fetch a boat on the other side of the river.  Father Reuben can’t do it, because he has a bum ankle.  I can’t remember why Xavier doesn’t volunteer.  Maybe he was still looking for his lost bag of weed.  Regardless, Teresa’s actions while a T-Rex is napping within several yards away are incredibly stupid.  When she spots the T-Rex, why doesn’t she simply go back to the other side and wait for the dinosaur to wake up and move on?  Her family’s comical gestures seem to be telling her as such, but she soldiers on, making noise by dragging the raft across the dock until she accidentally opens it.  

This scene is obviously structured so that Teresa’s nonsensical actions will put herself and her family in danger.  My issue is that the action didn’t need to be so comical, since the island is crawling with dinosaurs.  The chances of them running into one or more by walking around (or peeing, as is the case with Xavier), were so overwhelming that it was completely unnecessary to have Teresa act like her brain fell out of her head.

The movie then has Krebs die because of similarly ridiculous behavior.  He manages to get a jeep working, but it flashes and emits very loud car-alarm noises.  After seeing what happened to his team earlier that day, Krebs would have to know that his mode of transport would attract dinosaurs.  Yes, he needs to get to the helicopter pad in time.  But driving that noisy vehicle is just not smart.

A hero’s sacrifice, wasted.

I didn’t list this as a requirement above, but when you have a character like Duncan sacrifice himself to save others, the movie must make his sacrifice meaningful.  The reasoning given for his actions is that he wants to redeem himself for being a bad dad, which is fine.  But the movie commits a huge sin when it fools us into believing Duncan was eaten by the mutant dinosaur, only to reveal that he’s still alive moments later.  I actually laughed when he fired up another flare, because it should have brought the mutant-o-saurus right back and put himself and his friends back in danger.

What happened to my good friend so-and-so?

Speaking of friends, I realize that it’s necessary for the main characters in monster movies to have a short memory.  However, it bothered me that Zora was so easily swayed by Loomis’ altruistic argument to give the DNA samples to “the world”.  She had just seen three of her close friends being eaten by dinosaurs in a matter of hours.  Like them, Zora had gone on the mission strictly for the money.  Perhaps the movie made me cynical, but for her to not get the big prize at the end made the deaths of Bobby, Nina and LeClerc meaningless.

Take a chance on me

Rebirth would have benefited tremendously by taking some chances with the Jurassic Park/World formula.  (Sorry, putting Johansson in the leading role doesn’t count.)  Some things the movie could have done to distinguish itself from previous entries:

• have a child die, even off-screen.  Despite children always finding themselves in danger, only adults have died in these movies so far.  It’s possible for children to die even in PG-13 rated films.
• have the bad guy survive.  There’s no reason for Krebs to die other than to draw parallels to previous corporate baddies.
• have the heroes exploit a dinosaur’s vulnerability.  The only instance of this we’ve seen is when Dr. Grant used his knowledge of how the T-Rex’s vision is based on movement.