Rebirth seems apropos for the seventh film in the Jurassic Park/World series. Jurassic World Rebirth is working to start fresh. It has new characters. It has vaguely unfamiliar surroundings. It is also one of the worst movies of the year.
Soldier of fortune Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) has been hired by Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) for a special ops mission. Krebs is an executive with the pharmaceutical company ParkerGenix and they need someone of skill and discretion. Zora is to penetrate the forbidden island of Ile Saint-Hubert, one of the last places to have dinosaurs.
Also coming, more reluctantly, is scientist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). They need his expertise to retrieve blood samples from three living, massive dinosaurs. Mosasaurus is the seagoing creature. Titanosaurus is the land-based creature. Quetzalcoatlus is our avian creature. The blood from Animal, Vegetable and Mineral will be invaluable to find treatments, potentially cures, for human heart disease. Off the coast of Suriname, Krebs and Loomis join Zora's elite team. There is ship Captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali). There is security/marksman Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein). There are at least two other crewmen, but they aren't important.
At the same time that the special ops team is sailing towards Ile Saint-Hubert, the Delgado family is sailing in essentially forbidden waters. Patriarch Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is there with his daughters Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella or Bella (Audriana Miranda). Also joining them is Teresa's boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono), whom Reuben does not like for his arrogance and laziness. They are attacked by the Mosasaurus and are barely clinging on to their yacht. Over Krebs' objections, the crew responds to the Mariposa's SOS. They are together briefly, for the Mosasaurus hunt causes chaos, death and Krebs letting Teresa fall overboard rather than send a second SOS.
Now, the two groups are separated on the mysterious island. The crew continues the hunt for the other two creatures. The Delgados keep pushing towards a village they were told about for a rescue. Eventually, after flipping back and forth between the crew and the Delgados, they reunite, only to face off against the greatest threat imaginable. Ile Saint-Hubert, seventeen years ago, was the secret lab of mad Jurassic Park scientists. Here, they created freakish dinosaurs in an effort to appeal to a new generation of customers. Who will live and who will die in their efforts to escape the island?
I do not know if people have commented on how disjointed the whole thing is. After close to half an hour, we then get what I dubbed "the Latinos" (while they were the Delgados, I do not remember if the surname was ever used). Seven minutes of set-up (loving but disapproving father, pleasant but slightly rebellious older daughter, obnoxious boyfriend, adorable younger daughter) and the Mosasaurus attack and then we are back to the expedition.
At this point, Rebirth jumps from one group to another with sometimes unhinged abandon. Sometimes we would spend maybe a minute with one group before going back to the other. I started keeping track of the time between "Crew" and "Latinos". I was shocked that sometimes Rebirth would go from Latinos to Crew within a minute, spend four minutes with Crew, then go back to Latinos. The longest that I think Rebirth spent with Latinos was eleven minutes. This long section was for an action sequence that had me all but shout, "EAT BELLA!", before we went back to Crew. After Crew and Latinos get separated, it takes almost an hour for them to reunite.
Rebirth could have focused on the Latinos. Rebirth could have focused on Crew. Rebirth could not focus on both. We got either a wild ping-pong manner to things, or such long stretches from one story that when we jump back to the other, we had pretty much forgotten about them.
I do not think that Rebirth cared about logic. Why were the Delgados in these dangerous waters? There is, to be fair, an effort to say why (Reuben said that millions of ships sail the waters). How exactly do dinosaur blood help research into heart disease? How are machines and vehicles operational seventeen years after Ile Saint-Hubert was abandoned in chaos and terror? The Quetzalcoatlus nests in what Zoe suggest is an ancient temple. Again, Dr. Loomis is not an archaeologist, so he wouldn't know anything about the who, what, when, why, where and how of this.
I still marvel that a car which the villain uses to try to escape on turned on so easily with no issues. At the convenience store that still managed to turn its lights on seventeen years after being abandoned, all I could think was how all those chips and sodas probably would be well past their expiration dates.
Rebirth gave the hopefully well-paid actors little to work with. Scarlett Johannson and Mahershala Ali attempted to use David Koepp's screenplay when Rebirth gave them a heart-to-heart about companions dead and gone. Try as both the film and the actors tried I could not care one bit. Their performances did not help sell the drama.
That applies to Jonathan Bailey. When he comes upon the Titanosaurus couple in the act of lovemaking, he seems overawed by the sight. At one point, he looks on the verge of tears. I too was on the verge of tears. Tears of laughter. I guess he did as well as he could. He just couldn't convince me to care.
Same goes for the Delgados. Xavier is so unlikable that no one would believe that Teresa found him boyfriend material, at least without any sex involved. After Xavier risks his life to save her, Reuben compliments him. "You jumped in after her. Respect for that", Reuben tells Xavier. The latter pretty much chuckles and replies, "Whatever, guapo". Do not ask the audience to either care or take things seriously if your characters refuse to do either or both.
I think that was done to provide what I figure Rebirth thought was a shocking twist from a villainous character. However, you would have to be a blithering idiot if you did not know who the evil villain would be.
Rebirth has no acting in it. Johannson and Ali, as stated earlier, made something of an effort. However, one could tell that they were trying too hard. For a brief moment, people were trying to convince themselves that Jonathan Bailey was not only a movie star, but the first openly gay movie star. That title still remains open. No one went to Jurassic Park Rebirth because the guy from Wicked was in it. Rupert Friend devoured the scenery the way that the dinosaurs devoured the people. To be fair, I think Manuel Garcia-Rulfo did best as Reuben. He appeared the most realistic character and the one who mostly had sense. David Iacono was just there to be shown either shirtless or with an open shirt. He was terrible no matter what he tried.
All the performances pale to the absolutely ghastly visual effects. I do not know how in the thirty-two years since the first Jurassic Park, the franchise's visual effects look worse. You can virtually see the actors in front of a blue screen. The dinosaurs would not pass muster in a theme park ride.
Jurassic Park Rebirth is terrible. I think, however, that both Gareth Roberts and David Koepp let their own feelings about both the film and the overall franchise slip through. Early in the film, we get deliberately overly dramatic music after Krebs tells Zoe, "He doesn't know it yet, but we're bringing a civilian". That moment is so cartoonishly over-the-top that you know Roberts and Koepp were playing it as parody. Yes, it's established that the music was part of an animated video at Loomis' exhibit, but it still looks silly.
"It's dinosaurs. They may be through with us, but we're not through with them", Krebs says early in the film. That seems very apropos to how the filmmakers refuse to let them go extinct. Later, Jonathan Bailey's Dr. Loomis says, "Nobody cares about the animals anymore".
Famous last words.
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