In the Flesh: Jurassic World: Rebirth

A thuddingly stupid conceit, underpinning ideas like “humans are tired of seeing dinosaurs” so transparently absurd they derail everything around them, indifferent visual effects, and a severely underbaked script are just a few of the plagues afflicting Rebirth’s sclerotic, half-dead carcass as it shambles through its overinflated running time. For the third time now we’re going back to the well of genetically modified monster-dinosaurs, this time for the Distortus Rex, a sort of glossy, off-model incarnation of Phil Tippett’s famous Rancor from Return of the Jedi. For a franchise which has stubbornly resisted taking any kind of inventive or speculative approach to the designs of its dinosaurs, it’s mystifying that they keep inventing new and more X-treme genetic hybrids in an attempt to elicit bigger thrills. Flying raptors, the Distortus; none of it has the punch that bold art direction and a more nuanced approach to animal behavior might impart.

Nothing about Gareth Edwards’ stab at reviving Universal’s cash cow franchise feels either fresh or effective. Rupert Friend’s unsavory big pharma financier, Martin Krebs, is just a pale carbon copy of the original film’s craven lawyer, Gennaro. The Delgado family are a rehash of Jurassic Park III’s Kirby clan, helpless civilians blundering into danger. Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and her motley crew are a sort of diluted swirl of every mercenary, big game hunter, and supporting player in the franchise’s history, and while Johansson gives her role the old college try, there’s only so much to be done with something so underwritten. Mahershala Ali’s Duncan Kincaid having a dead kid is about as deep as characterization goes here. Even creature elements like the Distortus Rex and the genetic testing facility feel massively underdeveloped.

Nowhere is the film’s failure to recapture what made the original Jurassic Park so captivating than in its slapdash recreations of two culturally seminal scenes: the raptors in the kitchen, and the first sight of sauropods in the wild. The scene in which the protagonists come across a herd of titanosaurs tries for the sense of awe felt by Grant and Sattler, but between its failures of scale and effects and its ill-advised tight focus, it feels like a microwaved version. The raptor scene is, if anything, worse. With the iconic original designs replaced by winged mutants and the kitchen setting swapped out for a convenience store, less complex in layout, less tense, less focus given to the fear and panic of the characters being stalked. There’s a fun bit with a sweater and some fogged glass, but it only sets itself up to fail by riffing on a classic. About the best thing I can say for Rebirth is that the color grading is okay. The rest is corporate sludge, an extruded product which occasionally rises as high as “fun”.