Jurassic World Rebirth

⭐6/10

It's embarrassing to admit, but this was the movie I was looking forward to the most this year. I say I love these movies, but really I only like 1 movie out of 6. And yet I always have faith that the next one will be better. This time they had bigger names, including Gareth Edwards who I have a ton of faith in despite never actually making a great movie. But I love his style, and surely by now they've come up with a better idea than having the main characters going back to Jurassic Park before everything goes wrong. 

Nope. That's the plot of the movie. I remember this being hinted at in the trailers and thinking like, this must be misdirection, surely they can't do it again. They did it again. And in some instances I'm even willing to forgive that if the movie is dumb and self aware, but this movie is not that. There are actually some hints of some new ideas, that the dinosaurs have kinda taken over the land along the equator, and that governments have made the entire area restricted. I always enjoy when filmmakers are at least able to think logically about how things like this would play out. But from there, no new ideas are introduced and it's just a schlocky blockbuster that adds nothing to the genre. 

I think Edwards was still the right choice to direct this. There are some great sequences, and he is always able to frame things in really dynamic ways. He often leaves a lot to the imagination, and never lets us see things directly, but always through fog or smoke or from a distance, and always from the human pov. He is great at making things look natural and creatures react in actual animalistic ways. He is great at following natural progression in terms of what does it actually look like when a boat comes full speed onto shore, or what does it look like if a T-Rex bites a life raft. It's little things, but I still retain that faith in his vision. 

The problem is the writing, and this story is just nothing. This is most certainly a movie that didn't need to exist. The opening sequence is a perfect example, where a snickers wrapper has a mind of its own and interrupts a door closing (very funny, unintentionally) and then that leads to a horrific death. Again, if you want to be dumb and funny, I'm in, but this movie doesn't want to be and so it's a lame, self-serious movie. 

That's really all I've got. The magic is gone from this franchise. The action remains fun at times, but not fun enough. It's time to shut this thing down, or else take a break and really rethink how they want to approach this IP.