“Jurassic World: Rebirth” is an incredibly curious and even puzzling entry in the “Jurassic World”/” Jurassic Park” franchise, sadly, one of its worst. It’s loud, full of ostensibly thrilling and epic action set pieces—that are kind of scary and intense in the moment—but the movie on balance itself is flat, lifeless and ultimately completely forgettable, a series of action set pieces tied together with no heart or soul, sense of wonder or even scale.  
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Directed by Gareth Edwards (“The Creator”), the film is also strangely phony and hollow; the awe and marvel of Steven Spielberg’s movie is absent and missing, save for the time the movie seems to awkwardly stop in its tracks to inauthentically inject those moments into the narrative in a manner that feels awfully contrived and prescribed.
Peculiarly enough, the draw for ‘Rebirth’ seems to be that it was written by David Koepp, the original writer of Spielberg’s first two “Jurassic Park” films and thus superficially signaling some return to the franchise’s glory days. Still, Koepp’s screenplay is just wholly unremarkable, other than a blueprint for action sequences that sound exhilarating on paper, but with no real foundational sense of the human or emotional connection that makes summer blockbusters entertaining and satisfying.
The rote plot takes place five years after the events of “Jurassic World: Dominion,” disease and Earth inhospitable environment are making dinosaurs extinct again and now, most creatures only exist across the belt of the equator (which just feels like an excuse to return to the original franchise’s remote and exotic locales). In a thematic idea that never seems to pay off, other than ironically, considering the disposable film, dinosaurs have become culturally irrelevant and have fallen out of favor.
Greed, human hubris, corporate self-interest, profit prioritization and the dangers of playing God are constant themes in the ‘Jurassic World’ franchise, and here they manifest via pharmaceutical company, ParkerGenix, represented by its company man Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend). He convinces a worried-for-dinosaurs-existence paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) to join him on a dangerous and illegal mission to explore a-now globally forbidden island in the Atlantic Ocean, once used by the franchise’s bioengineering corp InGen as a dinosaur research facility; the idea being blood samples could create amazing medical breakthrough for all of humanity (haven’t we heard and tried this before).
So, preying on insatiability, Krebs hires a team of covert operations mercenaries, led by Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and pays them a king’s ransom to lead the mission.
Concurrent to this story and eventually integrating into the main narrative is the tale of a father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his shipwrecked civilian family (Luna Blaise, David Iacono, Audrina Miranda), who run afoul of an angry mosasaurus at sea and are in need of rescuing.
All the early set pieces in the Atlantic are “Jaws” with dinosaurs; frightening, extreme, and presumably electrifying, but in the aggregate, with nothing else to hold onto, they’re just empty spectacles that hold no real emotional value or weight ((another set piece act tries to suggest “Raiders Of The Lost Ark” and one wonders if the filmmakers got lost in homage and didn’t keep their eyes on the prize).
Bailey’s Loomis and Johansson’s Bennett —who have no discernible chemistry even though they’re supposed to be mildly attracted to one another— keep wondering if Friend’s Kreb is going to keep his promise about sharing any scientific advancements they make with the rest of the world, but not in the soul in the audience is ever buying this, so there’s zero sense of suspense.
And that’s the real problem of ‘Rebirth,’ beyond the fact, that’s it’s basically three formulaic set pieces—one adventure with dinosaurs at seas, one at land and another perilous with flying raptors in the air—nothing is ever at stake, nothing is suspenseful and the audience is never made to feel that anything’s in doubt.
It’s clear from the outset that this rogue squadron will complete their mission of collecting three different blood sample specimens, and that Kreb will betray them and likely receive his comeuppance. Ali’s character suffers a trauma of losing his family, which is meant to tie into the civilian stragglers that get caught in the middle of this dangerous operation, but it’s all routine, unexciting and predictable.
‘Rebirth’ goes through the motions of manufacturing excitement, but can never actually manage to generate surprise, suspense or even real drama.
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Even folks like Alexandre Desplat attempting to create a would-be engrossing score, and usually captivating actors such as Johansson and Ali can’t rescue this film and imbue some blood into its limp pulse, trying as they might.
All Koep’s writing can muster is a third-act introduction of mutated monster dinosaurs that feels desperate, like the waning sitcom that introduces a cute new child into the stale setting in a frantic bid to breathe life into the brand, and of course, it never works, and the ploy is always transparent.
“Jurassic World: Rebirth” is so uninvolving, despite all the noise, bluster and dirt it kicks up, that it gives one imaginary PTSD from a film they’ve never seen. After experiencing the movie’s odd unresponsiveness, one envisages Edwards’ original cut of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” perhaps competently made, like ‘Rebirth,’ replete with exciting sequences, but lacking the human spirit, drive and impulse to root for, empathize and become immersed in the sensations of cinema on an emotional level. In this regard, ‘Rebirth’ feels like it could be a similar behind-the-scenes experience, minus a Tony Gilroy figure to bluntly tell them, they’ve got great action sequences, and a good skeleton, but completely lacking a humanity that makes movies special.
Furthermore, all that reinforces the nagging idea that ‘Rebirth’ seems rushed. Even “Bullet Train” filmmaker David Leitch passed on the film, and while he’s usually nothing more than an entertaining popcorn filmmaker, perhaps his gut instinct were right; there’s more charm, wit, sparkle and summer escapist attraction in the worst moments of “The Fall Guy” than there is the entirety of Edwards’ ‘Rebirth.’
To say it’s a step backward for the franchise is an understatement. The ironically titled “Jurassic World: Rebirth” does little to restart a billion-dollar franchise that had successfully stuck the landing. All ‘Rebirth’ does is unintentionally support the idea that the dinosaur’s cultural moment has passed, the species’ narrative has run its course, and extinction is inevitable. [C-]