I seem to have a complciated relationship with the JURASSIC PARK franchise. Like me, it’s seen better days. I was fortunate enough to be invited to a special premiere of the OG film curated for industry promotional executives at Universal Studios Orlando back in the day, giving us a head start on the rest of the country in what clearly became yet anothe testimony to Steven Spielberg’s cinematic genius. And it made dinosaurs cool again for the first time since Dino stopped being the mascot of Sinclair Oil.
So it’s all the more disheartening to see the plethora of downer stories and predictions accompanying the release of the latest installment, JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH, which hit theatres yesterday. It pretty much had everything going for it–a brand name, a long holiday weekend devoid of significant new competition and about as much promotional weight as can be thrown behind any movie these days. But the reaction is anything but epic. KOIMOI’s Aman Goyal provided some specifics:
The Jurassic Park sequel hasn’t been warmly received by critics. Its susceptibility to repetitiveness over originality has weighed it down. Based on 98 reviews, Jurassic World: Rebirth currently holds a 54% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When it comes to Jurassic Park sequels, audiences and critics have been echoing alike that maybe the franchise has run its course and it’s time to put the dinosaurs to sleep. And once again, critics have not deviated from this message.
To contextualize, Jurassic World: Rebirth has already registered as director Gareth Edwards’ worst-received — and only “rotten” — venture among critics, contrary to the favorable reception his other monster-horror reboot, 2014’s Godzilla (76%) and his most successful film to date, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (84%) passaged through.
And that tepid response has apparently had an impact on those from focused on box office prognostication, whose news hasn’t been much more upbeat, as GOLD DERBY’s Kevin Sullivan related yesterday:
The movie, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey, gobbled up $28 million of opening-day grosses, on its way to a projected $127.5 million domestic haul over the five-day weekend. While impressive, that domestic figure is a step down from the previous Chris Pratt-led World trilogy, the smallest of which – Dominion – still managed to pull in $145 million across three days.
Still, amidst all of this, there is context and some reason for optimism. For starters, as Goyal documents, there’s been a bit of actual rebirth in these old bones:
Despite its problems at hand, Jurassic World: Rebirth has certainly brought the dinosaurs from the dead, given its predecessor Dominion had sunk to new lows, taking the series to new lows with a 29% rotten score. Between the two trilogies, Rebirth has outpaced the sequel and threequel in each, falling short of only Jurassic World (72%) and Steven Spielberg’s original Jurassic Park (91%).
All Jurassic Park/World films Rotten Tomatoes Score
- Jurassic Park – 91%
- Jurassic World – 72%
- Jurassic World: Rebirth – 54%
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park – 52%
- Jurassic Park III – 49%
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – 47%
- Jurassic World: Dominion – 29%
Which seems to suggest that despite those previous results from tastemakers there’s enough of an appetite for confrontations among species to justify the expense and support being put into this. And even the NEW YORK TIMES’ Alissa Wilkinson offered some encouragement amidst her own fairly tepid review:
The name “Jurassic World Rebirth” signals the studio’s intention to reboot the series, more or less, with this film. It’s set a while after “Dominion,” with none of those human characters returning. (Yet, anyhow.) At this point in the saga, humanity is getting annoyed with dinosaurs, who keep getting in the way. Early in the film, one long-necked type is blocking traffic near the Brooklyn Bridge which, true to New York traffic, is provoking more irritation than magic. The plot is fairly standard fill-in-the-blanks “Jurassic” stuff: With the “neo-Jurassic period” climate change, the world is getting difficult for dinosaurs to live in. They’ve mostly been herded toward the Equator in an area to which humans are strictly forbidden to travel; furthermore, as we know from the first movie, there are very, very scary mutants among them.
Everything in “Rebirth” is perfectly competent, so the fault likely lies in the screenplay, written by the prolific David Koepp, whose credits in the past few years include the limp “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”; and the far more limpid “KIMI,” “Presence” and “Black Bag,” those three all streamlined collaborations with Steven Soderbergh. Maybe the budget and attendant studio oversight is the problem, because this one feels hacked to pieces, with thematic and plot lines raised and then ghosted.
I have no doubt the “Jurassic” movies will keep making money as long as they keep getting made, because some part of our brains can’t resist the prospect of eating popcorn and seeing Pteranodons on a hot summer day.
And that alone may give those fearing the worst to perhaps rethink things. Lord knows we need something to escape to in times as challenged as these, and F1 can only fill some of that void. There are arguably far worse forces attacking our cities these days in the real world, as we know. A rebirth is something we can all agree is something we should aspire to and support. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll see that species become extinct before the dinosaurs return to their own non-existence.