Well, turns out “Dominion” being the “end of the storied franchise” lasted all of three years…

“Jurassic World Rebirth” is the seventh installment of the “Jurassic Park” series, and a light reboot to-boot. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it follows a group of mercenaries (Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, and Ed Skrein) who set out to the equator in order to find a series of dinosaurs.

I’ve never been the biggest “Jurassic Park” fan, although I think the first four films all have moments of fun (I respect the OG and actually really enjoy the 2015 “World”). Despite 2022’s “Dominion” being marketed as the final film of the franchise, plans for a new film were announced just a year later, and like most people I was fairly agnostic to it due to the bad taste left in my mouth from “Fallen Kingdom” and “Dominion.” “Rebirth” marks an attempt to return to formula, bringing back the first film’s screenwriter David Koepp (based on a story by Steven Spielberg) and hiring Gareth Edwards (who helmed 2014’s “Godzilla” reboot as well as “Star Wars: Rogue One”) to direct. The results are largely mixed, as the film plays like a “best of” the original trilogy while not fully being able to shake off some of the lingering “we’re still doing this?” of the past few films.

Scarlett Johansson is a talented actress who has proven herself in the action genre, and she does an ok job here. It is a bit hard to buy her as a rough-and-tough mercenary who “doesn’t care about legal or ethical lines” (especially when her makeup and hair stay near perfect the whole film despite running, sweating, and swimming), but she gets a few chances to drop a quip, and has a nice tender moment with Mahershala Ali’s character. 

“Wicked” breakout star Jonathan Bailey is also serviceable as the civilian scientist along for the ride, but since his character is supposed to be the type to have more in common with dinosaurs than people, he isn’t given the same opportunity to flex his charm as he is in “Wicked.” He does serve as the film’s moral compass and has a speech about how little time humans have been on earth compared to the dinosaurs, but he really isn’t given too much to chew on.

As a director, Gareth Edwards has become known for his ability to create cool-looking monsters and play around with CGI worlds, so he was an inevitable choice to lead a “Jurassic Park” film. He does a solid job staging the dinosaur sequences (much of the film appears to be shot on-location instead of a blue screen on a London soundstage), though at a point it becomes clear he’s checking off studio-mandated boxes. Edwards was brought onboard when the film was already in pre-production, meaning he had little actual input on the plot and choices (likewise, Glen Powell was originally offered Bailey’s role but turned it down because he felt he had nothing unique to offer the character).

And that is largely where the issues of “Rebirth” lie. It feels like the obligatory “return to formula” that so many legacy sequels do, compared to the likes of “28 Years Later” which dared to be weird and different, while still coming off as a respectful follow-up to the original films. The addition here of a family (led by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is entirely to emotionally-bait audiences (a “Jurassic Park” film wouldn’t be complete without endangered children), and it doesn’t help that that also comes with an annoying boyfriend who is there only to serve as the film’s comedic relief (though only one of his jokes landed with me). It would have been much more streamlined and satisfying for the film to just follow Johansson and her crew dodging dinosaurs, and not have to cut back to a group of civilians making questionable decisions in the forest every 10 minutes.

The first hour is largely set-up, which would be fine except it is just recycling the same information multiple times. At the very start we get a title card to catch up anyone who (randomly) has not seen the original or recent films, as well as the state of dinosaurs in the modern world. Friend then tells that information to ScarJo, who relays it to Bailey, before the entire team is briefed. It’s a similar issue with “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” in that movies (typically big-budget ones made with global audiences in-mind) do not trust the viewer to retain or deduce plot information, so they feel the need to spoon-feed it multiple times. These are “Jurassic Park” movies; at the end of the day if big dino go “rawr” and gun go “pew pew” then audiences will be happy.

“Jurassic World Rebirth” will make fans of the franchise satisfied, and offers enough fun for the casual moviegoer looking to get out of the heat for a few hours. I think they played it a bit too safe at too many turns (by the seventh film in a franchise you should be leaning into the weird, not the comfortable), but I also recognize that as both a critic and someone with no nostalgic affinity for the series, my bar is set higher than most when it comes to these movies. “Rebirth” is not as bad as it could have been, but if this is going to be the start of a new era of “Jurassic Park” films, I think they need to shake things up a little bit on our next trip to the Park.

Critics Rating: 6/10