Monday night, as part of AMC’s Screen Unseen—where they premiere an upcoming movie without revealing the title in advance—Jurassic World: Rebirth was the featured film.
Note: Universal doesn’t pay me to see its movies—nor does any studio—so I’m not under any review embargo.
As I said in my out-of-theater reaction, Jurassic World: Rebirth is mid at best. It’s just dumb shit happening over and over to push the plot forward (see below). It’s so bad that the people behind it are either totally incompetent or, more likely, they have zero respect for the audience and think we’re all idiots.
It’s also an anti-big pharma movie, with subtle references to environmentalism and such.
Right out of the gate (pun intended), the movie starts doing dumb shit, and it doesn’t stop. The characters fall flat across the board, including both Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali. The plot is extremely predictable and drags at times. Honestly, this might be the first movie I’ve seen where a bunch of people kept getting up to use the bathroom like they didn’t care what they missed.
The big reveal of the final villain completely misfires. Like Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, the mutant dinosaur gets barely any screen time. Worse, it looks awful, like a weird mashup of a dinosaur and a Xenomorph. I hated it.
Note: Spoilers follow
The dumb shit
When it comes to the dumb shit, it starts within the first five minutes. There’s a flashback to a secret lab where they’re creating mutant dinosaurs. Everyone’s in full hazmat suits, yeah, it’s that serious. Except one guy, whose visor is up so he can eat a Snickers. Naturally, the candy wrapper gets sucked into a door mechanism, shuts the whole lab down, and somehow lets the mutant dinosaur escape. I was shaking my head at how fucking stupid it was.
And we’re not even close to being done. One of my biggest gripes: where the fuck are the guns? These are supposed to be hired mercenaries, but none of them are armed. We’re talking literally trillions of dollars on the line—and tens of millions for each merc—and not a single proper weapon in sight.
The only gun we see is some kind of concussive blaster that does absolutely nothing, and the guy using it gets killed immediately. Later, the cartoonish big pharma white dude villain finds a random 9mm on the island (of course), pulls it on everyone, but gets eaten, and Johansson ends up with the gun. She manages to kill one dinosaur with it… then runs out of bullets.
Earlier, the movie tries to hint that guns might not work because of the dinos’ thick hides, but that argument goes out the window when Johansson drops one with a pistol. So where the heck are the automatic weapons? The armor-piercing rounds? Anything? It’s a complete f’n joke.
I’ll give you one more. The plot revolves around a big pharma exec hiring mercenaries to collect blood from three different dinosaurs to develop a heart medication worth trillions. Once again—no guns in sight.
The first target is a tagged water dinosaur they’re tracking. Leading up to that, they make it clear the area is so dangerous that not even the military will patrol it. Total no-go zone.
So of course, Dad of the Year brings his two daughters and their obnoxious boyfriend there on vacation. Says they do it all the time. Are you kidding me? WTF?
It’s this dumb shit that happens over and over and over.
There are maybe three cool scenes. One is clearly inspired by Jaws (though dumb shit still happens in it), another features the velociraptors, and the best one probably involves the T-Rex.
But then the ending rolls around with the mutant dinosaur, and—surprise—it falls completely flat. Yep, more dumb shit. The very end also makes zero sense compared to how they set things up with the journey to the island.
The Verdict
Jurassic World: Rebirth is intended to be watched by fans who don’t have one iota of intelligence. It treats the audience like idiots and hopes they won’t mind. It’s what happens when Hollywood thinks the audience left their brain at home. If you enjoy watching dumb shit on repeat, this one’s for you. Everyone else? Skip it.
Jurassic World: Rebirth gets a 3/10.
