Dumb humans in Jurassic World Rebirth

Thirty-two years and now seven movies should be enough to finally say it: Jurassic Park does not support franchising. Every sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic, Jurassic Park, is varying degrees of bad or dumb or bad AND dumb. It’s a massively successful franchise, though, with deep nostalgia roots, so we will never stop being exposed to this dino insanity, which is why I appreciate the sort of Willy Wonka approach to the seventh Jurassic film, the fourth in the “Jurassic World” sub-series, Jurassic World Rebirth. This is a film that loves three things: dinosaurs, candy, and dumb f-ck humans getting eaten.

Picking up years after the killer locust plague depicted in Jurassic World: Dominion, it turns out that giant murder lizards won’t thrive in our current disastrous climate. Earth is too cold now, and the only place the liberated dinosaurs can survive is in the equatorial belt, which has become a human no-go zone. (In grand JurassicPark tradition, the latest dino science is enthusiastically ignored, in this case it’s a theory that some dinosaurs, especially the big ones, were warm-blooded.)

But when have the people of the Jurassic universe ever displayed good sense? Never! They’re the dumbest people ever conceived! And so it is that pharmaceutical exec Martin Krebs, played by Rupert Friend with a smarm quotient that clearly reads “I will be completely and comically devoured at some point”, decides to track down three “colossals”, the three biggest specimens of land, sea, and air dinos. He wants to use their DNA to develop a cure for human heart disease because something something big dinos had long lives due to big hearts. Yes, it is exactly like Deep Blue Sea but with dinosaurs. 

Krebs hires mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson playing against type), a surprisingly chipper murder merchant confident in her ability to secure everyone’s safety despite being a terrible planner and a generation-long history of dinosaurs eating whoever they want when humans get in their way. Joining Zora is her associate, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali, having a grand time). These are not especially well written characters—original Jurassic Park co-writer David Koepp is back on scripting duty—but Johansson and Ali have believable chemistry as a pair of longtime field operatives who know each other well enough to work in synch with little discussion. 

Also going along for the ride is Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, also playing against type, the casting on this movie is legit great), a dweeby paleontologist bummed out because his museum exhibit on dinosaurs failed. Of course it did, he lives in a world with living dinosaurs, and the general mood of the public is “f-cking over it”. But Henry, Zora, and Duncan are EASILY the most fun Jurassic trio since Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm. They have great chemistry together, they deliver dumb sh-t dialogue with gusto, and they play their confidently idiotic characters with a surplus of charm. It’s a massive step up from the repugnant and regressive pairing of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in the previous Jurassic World films. At least you LIKE Zora, Duncan, and Henry. 

The dinosaurs are also quite likeable, calling back to the majesty of the brontosauruses or horrible yet indifferent power of the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. A sequence in which dinosaurs initiate a mating ritual is strangely yet sweepingly romantic, suggesting these creatures do have inner lives. And while the dinos of Rebirth include some mutant nightmares, failed experiments abandoned to their own devices on a tropical island, they, too, are given an impression of life beyond just a prey drive. The central antagonistic dino is the lab-grown “Distortus Rex”, a lumpy six-limbed nightmare with a hankering for chocolate. He’s awful but also sort of adorably hapless.

Pictured – Distortus Rex throughout Jurassic World Rebirth

Unfortunately, Rebirth is committed to one of the worst aspects of the Jurassic franchise. There is a family lost on the tropical island with the mercenaries, because Jurassic movies will insist on imperiling children, even though it has literally never worked since the first movie. Rebirth loses momentum every time the story swings between Zora, Henry, and Duncan, and the stranded Delgado family. The mercenary pharma plot is already quite busy and does not need imperiled children to add stakes. There are no stakes in a Jurassic movie, anyway, we’re just here to see people get eaten. 

Or rather, there aren’t really human stakes. A couple of directors in the franchise have managed to inject some stakes for the dinosaurs who, after all, did not ask to be here. Like J.A. Bayona in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, here director Gareth Edwards infuses a conservation allegory into the storytelling. These dinosaurs are only horrors to us. Left alone, they are majestic and relatively peaceable. They coexist in a food chain, but absent humans, they’re doing just fine, and causing no problems. They only become problems when humans insist on being around them. 

Within the world of Jurassic, it’s simple—we never should have brought dinosaurs back to life, they weren’t meant to exist with us. The larger context, though, is that nature does just fine without us. Humans only make things worse. Fallen Kingdom posited that we are responsible for the environments we claim to control, Rebirth suggests we stop claiming to control anything and just let nature go its own way without interference.

After three progressively worse Jurassic World movies, Jurassic World Rebirth is an upgrade. It’s dumb as sh-t, yes, but it is at least fun, the dinosaur spectacle is great, and some thought was put into treating the dinosaurs as not just death machines, but creatures with lives that go better without humans constantly bothering them. The magic of Jurassic Park will never be recaptured, but if we must continue making Jurassic movies, we can at least make them fun. This is the most fun Jurassic movie in a long while.

Jurassic World Rebirth is now playing exclusively in theaters.