Jurassic World: Rebirth
After wrapping up long projects at work our management likes to hold “lessons learned” sessions in which employees are encouraged to share bits of knowledge we gained that might make the next project go more smoothly. I’ll never forget the time a coworker of mine, after a particularly grueling project came to an end, stood up in one of those meetings and offered the following advice: “the lesson I learned is that we don’t learn our lesson!”
If there’s one thing anyone associated with the Jurassic Park franchise should know by now it’s that greed never pays. Jurassic World: Rebirth begins with a drug company hiring a mercenary for a secret mission. The company has discovered dinosaur hearts contain a chemical that could be turned into a drug to essentially eliminate heart disease in people. After it is established that the only way to extract this solution is to travel to the equator, get within 10 meters of the largest land, sea, and flying dinosaurs, and shoot them with a gun-powered needle, a stereotypical team is assembled: a mercenary, a local security guy with a boat, a scientist, the head of the drug company, and some two-legged dinosaur food. On their way to the island, the team rescures the crew of a capsized sailboat which adds a few kids and teans into the mix.
It is soon revealed that the island the team has landed on was used by the original Jurassic Park scientist to create genetically-modified dinosaurs, and the worst of the worst were dumped here. If you’re wondering “what could possibly go wrong,” the answer of course is “everything.”
1993’s Jurassic Park contained ground-breaking special effects, which makes it hard to top. 22 years later, the dinosaurs here look essentially the same and the magic of seeing them for the first time is gone. In I can only assume was a decision by marketing to sell new toys, all the dinosaurs in this film are mutations and new which means the team is in pursuit of a (I had to look this up) Titanosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, and Mosasaurus. Fortunately, they all look pretty much like dinosaurs we already know. There’s also a tiny dino that attaches itself to the group and sounds suspiciously like an Ewok; I can only assume a game based on it has already been developed and is waiting to launch.
The only actor I recognized in the film was Scarlet Johansson, who plays Zora the mercenary. The other lead roles are played by Mahershala Ali, Johnathan Bailer, and Rupert Friend. Maybe those names mean something to you.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is a summer action flick. Most of the characters make dumb decisions, there are leaps of faith in the plot a jumping jumpasaurus couldn’t cover, and plenty of dinosaur madness. Check your brain at the door lest a T-Rex eat it and enjoy the show.