Rebirth keeps to an action movie template that’s been through so many generations that its characters and motivations are purely symbolic. (Major spoilers after a warning)
On Monday I went to another of AMC’s “Screen Unseen” mystery movies, 100% convinced that it was going to be the sequel to M3GAN. Same rating, very similar run-time, a week before release: it couldn’t be more obvious what this one was going to be.
I got to the theater after the trailers had already started, to find a camera crew both outside and inside the auditorium, plus posted warnings that we were going to be filmed. The room was packed full, and everybody cheered when Scarlett Johansson and the guy from Wicked appeared on screen to thank everyone for coming. I was holding out hope that it was going to be a comedy fake-out, and they’d reveal they were there to promote an unrelated movie, but no, it was in fact Jurassic World: Rebirth. And with so many studio types around, I thought it’d be rude — not just to them, but to the people in the audience hyped to be there — if I’d just stood up, gave a thumbs down and blown a raspberry, and walked out.
I skipped the last Jurassic World movie, but I wasn’t boycotting the new one or anything. I’d already made a reservation for next month, in fact. I’d just expected to be watching it in IMAX for the full summer blockbuster effect. But I honestly wasn’t expecting much from it, and I had been hoping to see a different movie, so take that into my account when considering my early-ish review.
Because it’s fine. Actually, I’d even call it the third best Jurassic Park movie, after The Lost World. That movie was disappointing at the time and remains baffling: yes, it has the young girl using conveniently-placed parallel bars to defeat a velociraptor with the power of her gymnastics, but it also has what is undeniably one of the best sequences that Spielberg has ever made, with an RV getting pushed over the side of a cliff. Rebirth doesn’t have any sequences that reach that level (very few movies do), but there are some very cleverly-choreographed kill scenes, and an extended sequence with a T-Rex that is outstanding.
Which was a relief, because I was sitting through the first 30 minutes or so completely stone-faced, worried that I was messing up the night-vision crowd reaction footage or something. I avoided the camera crews on the way out, even though I like the idea of being part of an ad campaign that just has an old man in a goofy T-Shirt saying, “I dunno, I thought it was fine. The guy playing the dad was crazy hot.”
The best image during the entire introduction was a traffic jam caused by a dinosaur lying in a park near the Brooklyn Bridge, slowly dying while the New Yorkers seemed more concerned about traffic than about the fate of the creature. Rebirth established repeatedly that the dinosaurs that went global after the events of the last movie are now concentrated only around the equator, not just because of the climate, but because of a lack of interest from the general public. Like the space program in the early 1970s, what had once been a source of breathtaking wonder was now so commonplace that people didn’t care anymore. That felt to me like a pointed bit of self-awareness about this franchise in general.
So in short: this really is one of the better entries in the franchise. There are a lot of charismatic actors doing their best with what they’ve got, which sounds like damning with faint praise, but the reality is simply that they’re fun to watch. There are a couple of really good action sequences, and an awareness that the dinosaurs themselves are no longer the main draw, so you’ve got to make everything else compelling. It’s a by-the-numbers summer blockbuster that holds its own, and it really shines in a few key moments.
One moment that stood out to me as hilarious: the group has all assembled at the site of a dead and abandoned InGen facility, near a convenience store. The generator rumbles to life, and all the lights start to flicker on, accompanied by “Stand By Me” playing over a speaker system. Our little-girl-in-peril character looks frightened, and her dad holds her close and says something like, “It’s okay, baby.” It was funny simply because it was so weird: is this girl who’s survived multiple dinosaur attacks frightened of corny needle drops in general, or just Ben E King?
But the most interesting thing to me about Jurassic World: Rebirth is how it works within its action/monster movie template, and saying so would require spoilers for a movie that’s still a couple of weekends away from release. So spoiler warning in bold not to read the rest unless you want to be spoiled.
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