Jurassic World Rebirth - A Return To Form?

Recent entries into the Jurassic franchise have been nothing short of disappointing. With lacklustre concepts and even a story not even about dinosaurs, it was only looking downhill for the once amazing series. However, after the disaster that was Dominion, we were showcased a new Jurassic World movie. We were promised a return to the horror aspects present in the original movie and an island full of defects and monsters of human creation, yet it was all a lie.

I actively dislike Jurassic World Rebirth more than movies I actually thought were worse this year. That is for one specific but very big reason, which is also the reason for my dislike of M3GAN 2.0 - misleading trailers. This was marketed as a return to the horrors of these towering monsters, showing them lurking in darkness, ready to strike at the right moment. I'm sure if you've been to the cinema at all in the past three months you would've heard the phrase "worst of the worst" multiple times. 

We were promised deformities and mutations from crossbreeding, yet nothing came to fruition. The one and only deformity we see - alive deformity, I should say, we do see an incapacitated two headed raptor - is the D-Rex, the one plastered across every bit of promotional material. There was so much wasted potential with this idea of the "worst of the worst" - a sentence you could say for most of this movie because as a whole you could describe this with two simple words: wasted potential.

The actual story of this movie, finding these three different species and extracting their haemoglobin, was just not something I really cared about. This is mostly because it felt as if the writers didn't even care about it, they'd toss it aside whenever they had something cooler happening on screen. It somewhat solely felt like a way to get them onto this island and they didn't really want to progress it throughout so it was just a deadweight that they had to lug around and throw into the movie every now and then.

One thing I did like was that they almost immediately introduced the idea that nobody is safe. However, when your main cast consists of Scarlet Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey, that idea doesn't really hold much weight. You can almost pinpoint exactly who is going to survive until the end just by pointing out the faces you recognise. Right up until the very end of the movie, the only people that died were the random disposable characters whose purpose in the movie was simply to die. The only anomaly to this was Ed Skrein, but still he isn't exactly at the same calibre as the others. I say all this, however, but it is a catch 22. If these characters were given more development, it would've been pointless as none of it would've come to fruition.

While on this topic, let's just skip to the end. Mahershala Ali's character should've died and one of the worst decisions they made was allowing him to survive until the very end. That's not me revealing some personal vendetta against the actor or saying I hated his character, the only reason he should've died was because he was put in an impossible situation. The last time we saw him before the final scene was him sacrificing himself to get everybody else to safety, having the D-Rex right in his face, roaring at him. Suddenly, after about five seconds and no commotion whatsoever, he came out of the bushes completely fine. Not only does this make absolutely no logical sense unless the D-Rex is deaf, blind, and paralysed, it also completely diminishes his sacrifice into nothing.

Coming back to where we were, I think my favourite part of this movie was actually the B plot, which isn't exactly the highest praise for any movie. It may have just been because this group had an emotional bond with each other and there were children involved, but this whole family's lives held much more weight than any of the main group. This was definitely amplified by the amount I just didn't care about the actual main characters. If Jonathan Bailey was eaten by a T-Rex I wouldn't have batted an eye, but if the same thing happened to anybody in that family, even Xavier, I would've been severely taken aback and I would've actually cared.

However, I would've liked to have seen a little more development between Reuben and Xavier, his daughter's boyfriend. There was a bit of this in the first act but once the action started, it was never really brought up again. This didn't have to be a main storyline, they just simply had to complete what was already being set up. I would've even settled for one single line at the end solidifying to the audience that Xavier has won Reuben's approval. One thing I really hated about this B plot, though, was that they constantly forgot about Reuben's injured leg. Even in a scene which was completely motivated by his injured leg, in which his daughter finds a boat so he doesn't have to try and walk for too much longer, halfway through he starts running and even swimming perfectly fine, not even a single wince of pain.

I feel this has all been a very negative review, so I'll end with something that I did actually really enjoy. My favourite part of this entire movie was the scene of them getting the diplodocus sample. It actually showed more facets to these animals and their beauty rather than the horror they can conjure. Jonathan Bailey also really drove this scene and made it what it was. Seeing his character tear up after seeing and even touching the very animal his entire life's work has led up to was very beautiful and actually gave him some good development - not something I can say about many others in this movie.

Overall, I thought this entire movie wasted almost all of its potential. There was no "worst of the worst", there was hardly any deformities, hardly any horror, and not even a good sacrifice. There is an interesting concept within this movie, it was just executed terribly and definitely could've been so much better with the right filmmakers.