7 Things About Jurassic World: Rebirth

1. Man, I wish all of the human characters were eaten

I mean, seriously, I know that Owen and Claire were annoying as hell, but this new crew. I wanted all of them to be eaten by dinos. 

Martin Krebs, the biotech firm representative, should have EITHER been the first eaten, or should have survived the entire movie and changed from a slimy corpo to joining the resistance faction.

Rueben Delgado, why in the name of fuck would a married man take a sailboat transatlantic trip with his two daughters and the eldest daughters dipshit boyfriend and leave his wife behind? In 2025, what writer's room would said wife ALLOW her husband such freedom. The entire family should have either been the axis of the plot, or shouldn't have been in the script.

Scarlet Johannson must have gotten a hell of a check for this phoned-in performance

Xavier Dobbs, the boy allergic to wearing a shirt and poster boy for 2025 weak men, should have had an arc where we, the audience, see his insouciant slacker self rise from being the sleep all day, smoke weed, and complains constantly, be forged into a figure worthy of a Greek epic. We didn't get that.

2. Gareth Edwards

Gareth made a hash of a movie, it doesn't know if it is an action movie, survival horror, or what. He made a paycheck for himself, but his film is going to fall into the quagmire of being yet another completely forgettable installment in a series that should be breathtaking. But, the man who made this possible has been dead for a long time now. Mr Creighton's legacy is long and those who try to walk in his shadow are wearing clown shoes. Like almost everything recently, and franchises that are built on omnibus level works, the entire Jurassic Park franchise has been a sprawling house built on the weakest foundations. 

But here is where I get serious, Edwards designed Distortus Rex, the six-limbed rancor-saurus that is only in the opening credits and climax of the movie. The villain dino should be showcased through the film, much like how the terror of the raptors is established in the opening sequence of the original film, they remain an ongoing threat, and aren't dealt with until the iconic rotunda scene. Edwards should just stick to Star Wars films, where internal consistency, thematic cohesiveness, and character arcs don't matter.

3. The Magical World of Invisible Dinosaurs

In more than one scene dinosaurs appear from nowhere, or vanish without a trace, for no reason.

The main scene is when the surviving crew are hunting the titanosaur herd on the island, which is it's own biome problem) and crossing a broad tall grass infested valley they don't see any dinos. Then all of the titanosaurs get up, because they were all laying down in the grass. A bull elephant laying down in the grass is still going to be a great boulder of mass sticking up like a rock. In comparison, a titanosaur is allegedly anywhere from 50 to 100 tons. If the hills had gotten up to grunts and farts it would have been more believable that 100+ sauropods just copy-pasting in from the great beyond.

The raft scene T-rex chase appears in the this film, and gives us some of the best and the most baffling t-rex action in the movie. THe best is the sleeping rex, grunting and rolling over on its back, like a real animal. It pulling a slasher movie villain vanishing as the raft pops across the screen is the worst. We've established that Rex has mass, they shake the ground, they radiate power and presence, until its more useful to use them in a shitty jump-scare. 

4. CG and the Lack of Engagement

This is a recurrening complaint of mine, the lact of engagement between the dinosaurs and the actors. This is easily explained because there are no dinosaurs, no animatronics, no costume work, its all done in post. The best actors in the world in front of a green screen can only do so much, and the animators are in the same position, being rushed, crushed, and discarded by the studios. When Isabella hides from the mutodon in the convenience store cooler, mimicking the kitchen scene from the first JP, there is no weight or menace to the mutodon. Instead we see a child actress hide in a cooler for 30 seconds and then climb out and walk away. She cannot interact with something that isn't there, and the mutodon itself doesn't interact with the environment in any meaningful way.

Contrast this with the raptor snout in the window, and then the glass misting over from its terrifyingly hot breath. Likewise, the raptors shrieked loudly, and they jumped on things, and like asshole cats, they knocked things over constantly. Mutodons melt out of the ceiling, menace about slickly, and have zero personality. 

5. No Heroes, No Villains

Rebirth doesn't have a hero or villain dinosaur. Yes, there is the dumb as hell Distortus Rex, but it isn't a menace through the movie. The Indominus and the Raptors demonstrate how to have antagonist dinosaurs. Blue and the original Rex demonstrate how you can have protagonist dinos. Distortus doesn't menace through the film. The mutodons follow the humans, but they are more or less flying monkeys of evil.

There is no real moment where the audience gets to cheer.

6. Sequelitis

Most famously infecting Star Wars, Sequelitis is what occurs when multiple movies are made across a franchise and there is neither a unifying plan, or a common director. Things set up at the end of one movie are squashed in the opening credits of the next film. The previous Jurassic offering showed us dinosaurs spreading across the planet, and reintegrating into biomes everywhere. This could have very easily been set up to show us being edged out as the dominant species on the planet, with activists protecting dinosaurs because feelings and environmentalism, until compys outnumber rats in NYC and unattended children and the elderly are easy prey for their paralytic bite. Dino scavengers and opportunistic hunters attacking campers, infesting national parks, eating homeless people while politics churn on as normal until an allosaurus pack stalks into a rally to eat a few armed security people and interns.

No.

Instead we're told that the environment isn't right for the dinos and their previous rapid spread was just a spike and now they all live on the equator, where everyone single country in the world agreed to ... not go? Not let people go?

7. I love going to the theater

The day we went it was mid-90s, theater AC is fabulous, proper popcorn, cherry coke, surround sound.

Even a bad movie is good at the theater.

I did enjoy it was a summer popcorn movie.

I probably wont rewatch It later