Jurassic World Rebirth - Hit or miss?

While I'm glad that Jurassic Park as a franchise continues to deliver entertaining blockbusters with Jurassic World, I find it rather curious that none of the films released since the 2015 reboot/revival starring Chris Pratt have managed to do anything genuinely ingenious with the originals' premise.

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Instead, we get a series of course corrections that fail to grasp the essence of Jurassic Park. They're functional on the surface, but riddled with ill-fitting ideas that only make an adventure that could be played in an hour and a half tedious. Jurassic World - Rebirth is perhaps the biggest offender so far.

This time, we follow Zora Bennett, a covert operations expert played by Scarlett Johansson, tasked with collecting raw footage of the three largest and most dangerous dinosaurs on the island that previously housed the Jurassic World theme park.

For Bennett, although this DNA could represent a major scientific breakthrough in the field of medicine, she prefers the option of selling it to a private pharmaceutical company, making herself rich in the process.

I think just by reading this premise, more than one person can glimpse the course the events depicted in Rebirth will take, not only the complicated process of obtaining samples from the dinosaurs while they're still alive, but also the sudden redemption of Bennett and the men who accompany her.

This predictable nature isn't bad per se, but it does make the film's generic execution particularly tiresome.

There's a subplot focused on a family shipwrecked at sea due to an attack by a marine dinosaur that struggles to connect vaguely to the main plot, but at the same time contributes nothing to its themes.

The action sequences are technically very polished but lack flavor, especially considering the excellent work Steven Spielberg did on the 1990 classic.

Jurassic World - Rebirth is a mediocre and harmless film, and it will probably be successful enough to warrant another couple of sequels, but the problem is that, at least for now, there's no sign that the story will take an inventive course.

This score was taken from my Letterboxd account.