THE FIRST THREE JURASSIC PARK FILMS—particularly the first two Steven Spielberg-helmed entries—are defined by a sense of awe, of childlike wonder. This comes through visually, of course: the defining image of the first film is Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) fumbling with his glasses, gasping, unsure what he’s seeing, unable to believe it. He grabs Dr. Ellie Sattler’s (Laura Dern) head, physically turning her attention from the plant she’s looking at to the enormous figure in the middle distance, a long-extinct figure mooing. When he’s told there’s a T. rex on the grounds, Alan can’t breathe, he puts his hands on his knees, he’s stunned.
And yes, this is all wrapped up in money—“We’re gonna make a fortune with this place” is how the “blood-sucking lawyer” expresses his sense of awe—but it wasn’t just about money. “This park was not built to cater only for the super-rich. Everyone in the world has the right to enjoy these animals,” according to park founder John Hammond (Richard Attenborough). Of course, that sense of awe curdles into terror as the film progresses, culminating in a giant T. rex eye peering through a window, its pupil dilating when hit with a flashlight beam. But still, even at the end, as the banner pronouncing dinosaurs ruling the Earth came fluttering down and the T. rex roared triumphantly over her defeated raptor foes, the vibe was one of astonishment, even reverence.
The prevailing vibe in the Jurassic World series of films that kicked off a decade ago is different. Awe is out. These are movies, ultimately, about the boredom that would inevitably set in once dinosaurs returned from extinction. You see this in the initial entry’s creation of the Indominus rex, a hybrid dinosaur that combines the size of a T. rex with the hunting skills of a raptor and other various snips and strands of DNA. Why make this mutant monster? To keep ticket sales up at the Jurassic World theme park. There are only so many times you can show people a pterodactyl or a triceratops. The people are always looking for something new, something exciting. Otherwise they get … bored.
That boredom has metastasized into something worse at the beginning of Jurassic World Rebirth: annoyance. A title card informs us that dinosaurs returned 32 years ago (a nod to the fact that the original Jurassic Park hit theaters 32 years ago). It has been years since they hit the mainland, following the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018). And everyone is just kind of tired of them. Most of them died out due to Earth’s climate not suiting their prehistoric needs; the few that remain have largely retreated to equatorial regions that the world’s nations have forbidden travel to. The last remaining brachiosaur in North America is a pain in the ass causing traffic jams in New York City. No one is interested in Dr. Henry Loomis’s (Jonathan Bailey) dinosaur exhibit in New York; they’re packing up shop because he sold just a handful of tickets. And Isabella Delgado (Audrina Miranda), a little girl on a transatlantic sailing trip with her family, wishes they’d all just die off and leave the rest of the world in peace, terrified that sea-dwelling dinos are going to eat her and her family.
But the giant lizards still have some use to Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) and his pharmaceutical company, which believes that blood from the three largest remaining dinosaurs can cure heart disease. So he hires mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and boat pilot Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) to bring Dr. Loomis to an island where all three happen to reside in order to collect blood samples. Along the way, they pick up the capsized Delgado family, and everyone tries to survive on the island. Hijinks, naturally, ensue.
Director Gareth Edwards is one of the best in the business at translating immensity to audiences; his Godzilla helped create awe by hiding the giant, nuclear-fire-breathing ball for much of the movie, only unleashing him in full at the climax. And there are moments in Jurassic World Rebirth where those games with scope and scale pay off in unexpected and dramatic ways, as near the end of this film, when a helicopter attempts a daring rescue in the face of yet another mutant Hybridasaurus mehx.
Mostly, though, the size and scale feels weightless in a way that has plagued the series since Spielberg stepped out of the director’s chair. At one point, our crew walks among a herd of titanosaurs, and they’re very big, but they’re also very not there, very much CGI composites, and as a result, we very much do not care.
Like the people who live in this fictional world, we can’t help but be bored by what we see. The wonder is gone. And we spend most of the time checking our watch as a result.
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