Jurassic World Rebirth sets a new low

Midway through Jurassic World Rebirth, the scientist character played by Jonathan Bailey, whom we can all immediately spot as a scientist (he wears glasses), tells us that intelligence is not especially useful for a species. Look at dinosaurs, he continues, “who are dumb but survived for 165 million years.” These Jurassic films have been going for 32 years so intelligence may not be necessary for the long-term survival of a movie franchise either. More worryingly, as each of these films is dumber than the last, it could go on forever. I say all this as a fan of the first film who has been perpetually disappointed ever since.

This is the seventh film, and after the especially pitiful fifth and sixth ones, we were promised a rebirth. It’s in the title. Written by David Koepp and directed by Gareth Edwards, this film, we were told, would be a new start with a new cast and new characters with some “call backs” to the 1993 original. That was directed by Steven Spielberg who had, you could say, already made his definitive dinosaur movie, at least in spirit. (Jaws.) I was hopeful of a return to form right up until the moment the film opened. Where are we? A secret research laboratory. What are they up to? Creating mutant dinosaurs. Might one escape? New cast, new characters, same old story.

We spool forward 17 years to meet a smarmy fellow (Rupert Friend) whose business is big pharma. He hires Scarlett Johansson, who is a “situational security expert” (nope, not a clue), to take him to the island where dinosaurs have been contained. As some can fly and others are aquatic, can this count as containment? Somehow he has discovered that the cure for human heart disease lies in extracting the DNA of living dinosaurs, and if he can effect a cure, he’ll make trillions. It is illegal for any human to travel to the island but needs must.

They talk Dr. Henry Loomis (Bailey) into accompanying them. They hire a boat and a mercenary (Mahershala Ali) and there are other crew who are not named and thus have “lunch” written all over them. Their first encounter is with a colossal Mosasaurus. It proceeds to terrorize the boat in scenes that are so derivative of Jaws we’ll save any embarrassment by calling it an homage. The Mosasaurus also terrorizes another boat at sea. This belongs to a father and his family. There’s a little girl on board whose name I can’t remember but she might as well be called: “Child in Danger.” Their boat is capsized and how they managed to radio a “mayday” alert while straddled on an upturned hull without any equipment is anyone’s guess,

They’re rescued by the bigger boat and make it to the lush tropical island where various dinosaurs try to pick them off. A Spinosaurus, a Pterodactyl, a Tyrannosaurus rex with its silly little arms. As there is no suspense, it’s the sort of jeopardy that becomes tiringly repetitive while you’ll have to suspend your disbelief quite significantly. The Bailey character falls 300ft into a 2ft deep creek and not only emerges unscathed but with glasses on? I guess that without glasses we wouldn’t know he was a scientist: he could be a chicken farmer or cheesemonger or anything.

Finally, the “mutant” dinosaur arrives. Given how bland and generic the characters are, I was praying it would triumph. However, on the plus side, there’s the John Williams score (reworked) and the CGI is spectacular. It’s always astonishing to think that these beasts did once roam the Earth and it was this thought that stopped me slipping into sleep. Meanwhile, I forgot to say why the lab was creating mutant dinosaurs. It was because the general public had become bored of what they had and wanted to see something more exciting. I know exactly how they felt.