Main cast: Scarlett Johansson (Zora Bennett), Mahershala Ali (Duncan Kincaid), Jonathan Bailey (Dr Henry Loomis), Rupert Friend (Martin Krebs), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Reuben Delgado), Ed Skrein (Bobby Atwater), David Iacono (Xavier Dobbs), Luna Blaise (Teresa Delgado), Audrina Miranda (Isabella Delgado), Bechir Sylvain (LeClerc), and Philippine Velge (Nina)
Director: Gareth Edwards

Jurassic World Rebirth is a reinvention of sorts for Scarlett Johansson, as in her post-MCU career, it seems like she wants to try her hand at being an action movie lead. ‘

Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, as someone needs to step up to the plate and kicks rear ends now that Kate Beckinsale and Milla Jovovich seem to have slowed down a bit. However, this movie is written by people that don’t seem to want to do a dinosaur movie, and it shows.

First off, this movie is set about 17 years after Jurassic World Dominion, and right off the bat, I am treated with exposition that tells me that dinosaur props and CGI are expensive, so they have decided to make most of the dinosaurs roaming the Earth die off due to being not able to get used to the climate, and now the remaining dinosaurs are conveniently located in a place where it’s easier to put all of them in a film. 

So yeah, the events in the previous film all come to this big fat “Whatever!” development that essentially reboots the whole thing back to the same old “dinosaurs in an island” formula all over again.

Our heroine Zora Bennett is hired by Martin Krebs, a Big Pharma dude that I’m sure will not turn out to be some double-crossing “I’m doing this for the money!” asshole later in the movie. He wants her to work with paleontologist Dr Henry Loomis to retrieve three “biomaterial samples” from three big dinosaurs, which are important ingredients for a new heart disease medicine. 

So, Zora recruits her buddy Duncan Kincaid, who becomes the leader of the whole operations, a boat driver called LeClerc, another bad-ass lady Nina, and the super-hot Ed Skrein that  

Oh, and there is also a family that is shipwrecked around the island. 

Right away, this movie has a problem: too many characters, not enough dinosaurs. The script has this annoying tendency for characters to launch into monologues about their life story, past traumas, etc in a way that is clearly meant to be exposition dump rather than anything actual human beings would say to one another, only for all this information to have squat all to do with the plot.

Therefore, these people are babbling just to fill the screentime, and it’s annoying, especially when these characters are all cardboard-thin clichés that never develop in any significant manner throughout the movie. 

Seriously, these people only reach the island about 45 minutes into the movie. Even then, there is hardly any action. Just these idiots stumbling and walking around, encountering mishaps that are caused more often by their own foolishness than by dinosaur hanky-panky.

It is only much later in this two-hour-plus movie that the dinosaurs show up in full force — well, fuller force than the boring, plodding nothing’s happening up to that point anyway — and even then, the scenes are quick lackluster.

Anyone hoping that this movie would recapture the magic of the first Jurassic Park movie should… well, just go watch that movie instead.

I’m serious. This is a movie that is all about boring one-note, forgettable characters babbling endlessly about what predictable stereotypes they are, with the occasional peekaboo by dinosaurs to break the tedium. If Scarlett Johansson is hoping that this movie would be her launchpad for more kickass heroine roles, she should have read the script a bit closer first before signing the dotted line, as she hardly has any opportunity to do girlboss things until the movie has passed its one-hour mark and I’m trying very hard not to nod off in my seat.

All in all, a very dull movie that makes the previous few entries look like masterpieces. At least there are no annoying kids here, I suppose, but still, there is no reason whatsoever to watch this lifeless bore over the original Jurassic Park unless one is in dire need of a sleeping aid.