I have not seen ANY of the Jurassic Park movies. I have tried to watch the first one 8 times in the last week alone and I get about 20 minutes in before it's lights out for Lauren. I dunno if it's the fact 90s movies have a magic which calm me down and get me to drift off to sleep or the fact that I just don't really care about dinosaurs, either way I haven't managed to successfully watch a JP film in my 27 years until now.
It was date night, Friday at 22.30 to be exact. Jamie and I had decided to try out 4DX on a more thrilling movie to really push our limits. This was another of his picks totalling 2 this week, but he is a massive Jurassic fan and it's like Planet of the Apes all over again, he's recommending these movies and his hope of getting me into his fandom rests solely on the shoulders of the newest movie once again.
It's safe to say that he has told me himself that he's not allowed to pick the movie ever again. The rant on the way home about how disappointed he was in that movie was long and hilarious. I didn't think it was too bad actually, but Jamie assures me that the JP movies are much, much better and that I shouldnt base my opinion of the franchise on this movie. I thought it was watchable but clearly I'm wrong, this goes deeper than just watching a movie which has been presented as a standalone, this is about honour for a beloved series.
Rebirth follows a small handful of characters with a split narrative. On one hand we've got the people employed to go to the dangerous dinosaur infested island and we watch how they navigate this, on the other hand we have the innocent family caught up in this all and how they try to survive the island they did not want to go to.
Zora, a retrieval specialist, is employed by the Parker company to go and collect some dinosaur samples in order to create a cure for heart disease. Along with Dr Henry Loomis who is coming for the dinosaurs and the knowledge, Zora employs a team of her friends who are also specialists in order to craft such a dangerous and covert operation.
Meanwhile, a nice family sailing expedition is going wrong as the father gets frustrated with his daughter's lazy boyfriend. He didn't want the boyfriend to come and makes that clear, but before they can get into the nitty gritty they are attacked and overturned by the species the mission needs for its first sample.
Calling out a mayday they are picked up by our operatives and soon realise the danger they are in. Krebs shows himself to be a vile man and just how far he'll go in order to keep the mission secret and then continues to manipulate the others in order to get what he wants.
As the team go deeper into the jungle on the island in order to get the samples, the family who escaped the crashing boat continue to try and find the old village in order to wait there safely for extraction. Of course we see both sets of characters attacked by various dinosaurs, but my favourite is Bella's new pet Delores and I want one of whatever they are.
Once they finally get all the samples and meet the civilian family at the village all hell breaks loose as the D-Rex causes chaos and kills both the helicopter which was due to extract them, plus thankfully Krebs. Both the family and what is left of Zora's team escape on a boat and head for safety.
Jamie believes heavily that the movie has cut loads of what makes Jurassic Park movies so good in order to market them to kids. He says the others are quite graphic, quite horrific and a little scary in theme with movies made from that era. He says that this one seems sugar coated in comparison in order to make it more palatable for a younger generation, as you cant scare kids a little like you could back in our day.
I see his point. I remember when I was a kid I was obsessed with the 1999 version of The Mummy. The thrill of watching this on what is now known as ITV and scaring myself silly was what made the film so appealing. It was on Saturday afternoons as family friendly movies were back then, live TV, it's not like I'd stayed up after midnight and watched something I shouldn't. But dead Mummies running around all skeletal is terrifying for a six year old and thinking back perhaps that's the true origin for my fear of zombies? Regardless, that movies is my number 1 favourite of all time. The original Jurassic Park movie is from the same era so it would absolutely have had the same sense of adventure plus the scare factor. Of course we'd now call those effects cheesy, but from what I've seen of the first film it's the same vibe, Rebirth is missing that for sure. The adventure is there, but the gore and suspense is lacking.
I'll admit I was bored at times and the 4DX didn't do anything to help. What I thought would be a movie where I was chucked about and soaked at least 90% of the time turned into more like a 35% chance of the chair moving. It wasn't worth it. The chair rumbled when a dinosaur was near and water sprayed when it splashed on screen, otherwise the narrative was too quiet to trigger anything. Jamie says all of the older movies had a lot more action, especially dinosaur wise within the first 15-20 minutes, this one was slow.
He also found a fault with ScarJo's acting in this film. We've followed her in a lot of movies now and we can see her range, he felt she was just a bit flat in this film. I'm actually inclined to agree with him. It felt as though she'd joined this franchise just to save it, just have a well known face thrown into the mix and have her name in another huge franchise. Minimal effort from her was given, we barely saw any of her talent and additionally we didnt get much of her on screen. The daring stunts went to others and she swanned about making sarcastic remarks to why she's in charge and everyone should do what she says. It was draining, but I still ship Zora and Loomis and hope they become a couple. I mean when we are setting off for the mission we learn she's grieving for a fallen colleague who died on her last mission. I've seen this woman play grieving friend more than once now. Look at her performance in Endgame and Black Widow. I believed she was broken, I believed she was losing her spark. This one was crocodile tears and then a bouncy let's get shit done, nah I'm over it.
Despite Jamie viewing this movie with an extremely negative light, and the fact it was quite boring in places, I enjoyed the adventure aspect. It wasnt National Treasure, The Mummy, or Jungle Cruise in terms of inspiring that feeling of wanting to discover something unknown, but it was getting there. I enjoyed when Loomis was able to get close to a safe dinosaur and even touched it. I felt the thrill as that's exactly what I'm like when I get to touch something of historical interest. Of course I'm only a baby Egyptologist not a dinosaur specialist but the excitement is the same.
What I didnt like about this movie was that it was long. I expected to be out of the cinema at about Midnight maybe 12.30? 10 past 1 in the morning is when we rose from our seats. Dinosaurs are supposed to be thrilling, they took a fricken backseat in this movie that's for sure.
The crashed plane in the jungle trees was a nice touch but I think they should have explored this more. I think as a throw back we should have seen more of the skeletal remains of the people who died here. We should have seen the fresher humans being ripped to shreds in order to inject some fear into these big lizards. We got a severed arm which was cool, but everything else was off screen. I guess I just really wanted an adventure movie which focused on the adventure rather than a movie in which the water was more of a danger than the big Jurassic threats. I swear more characters were in danger of drowning then they were being eaten. Should have called this movie Waves, I'd have waved goodbye like I should of when we entered the screen.
There was so much hype and I should have known it was too good to be true. The only good characters in this movie were Loomis and Krebs. The former brought the passion and immersed me, the latter was the right amount of evil business man to make me hate him. Everyone else was just noise, and that Xavier, bloody hell I wish he'd gotten eaten man. People have been saying online how this movie brought back the magic from the originals. If that's the case then I won't bother with them after all, although I might have to finally sit through the original to prove them wrong. 90s movies are elite as far as I'm concerned.
I'm giving Jurassic World: Rebirth a 5/10. While it looked good on paper, I think the movie should now be an end to this franchise. This should be the final nail in the Jurassic coffin, it's overdone and clearly there is no way to be original going forward as a lot of this was rehashed from the previous movies anyway. I mean they didn't even explain about the D-Rex, I found out about that monstrosity online. Key storytelling elements were missing here, especially as this one was intended to be a stand alone in the franchise. It focused too much on the characters to actually build a story or a plot. We had get the samples and try not to die, there was no in between, there were barely any dinos. I'd sit through it again only as background noise in the middle of a storm waiting for the power to go off as there is literally nothing else to watch. Jonathan Bailey had too much on his shoulders in this movie, he didn't succeed in carrying it, but I think if they wanted to continue with this then perhaps a limited TV series following him and Zora would be good as they try to save the remaining good dinos, kill the bad ones, and save humanity. Just a thought.
I'm open to recommendations! Just drop me a DM on instagram and I'll happily review your favourite movie, book, or TV show!
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