Ironically, last week I went to see a movie about race cars. (F1, a surprisingly entertaining and well-made movie.) This week I went to see a movie about dinosaurs, but saw a car crash.

The Jurassic Park franchise has made a mockery of itself. Jurassic Park: Rebirth brings absolutely nothing new to the franchise or to entertainment. It’s just the same old slop as the previous few Jurassic Park movies, only much worse.

Writing

David Koepp wrote JP: Rebirth, and he’s no hack. He has some serious movies under his belt:  the first Mission: Impossible, the first Jurassic Park, the first Spider-Man, Black Bag, etc. I did a quick analysis of all 42 movies he wrote for, and his IMDb average is 6.53. Right now, IMDb has a 6.4 for JP: Rebirth, but I’m sure that number will decrease over the next few days.

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There’s an important guideline in writing fiction: if you’re writing about something impossible, then everything else in the story should be as real as possible. Meaning, if you’re writing about dinosaurs alive today in the modern world, then run with it. But everything else in the story should be as realistic as possible.

In the first few minutes of the movie, we learn that dinosaurs aren’t coping well in the modern world, partially because of the oxygen content in the atmosphere. “The only place that’s suitable for them is near the equator, where there’s more oxygen.”

Really? You could come up with dozens of reasons dinosaurs are struggling in the modern world, but throw out the comment that there’s more oxygen content near the equator and even the most scientifically challenged person will have to pause and think, “Is that true?”

In fact, it’s the opposite. At a given altitude, there’s less oxygen in a hot, humid atmosphere than there would be in a cold, dry atmosphere. That’s because the water vapor displaces some of the O2. It’s a very negligible amount; in the extremes, it’s going to account for less than a 1% decrease.

But that’s not all. The airflow through dinosaur lungs is different than that of mammals. In birds/dinosaurs, air flows through the lungs. In mammals, the air flows in from the top, mixes a little, and then flows back out the same way. It’s far less efficient. In fact, it was a key evolutionary advantage that helped the dinosauria clade outcompete the mammalia clade about 315 million years ago. It led to their domination for the next 250 million years.

Kids are going to see this movie!

At the very least, try to get some of the actual dinosaur science correct. The whole plot of this movie is to get DNA from the three largest dinosaurs: the titanosaur, mosasaur, and pterasaur. Wait. WHAT. Those last two aren’t even dinosaurs! The mosasaur belongs to the Squamata clade. You know, LIZARDS! And the pterosaur belongs to the archosaurs, a group that includes crocodiles and birds, but are not dinosaurs themselves!

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Some might call this nitpicking, but science education in this country (US) is so pathetic that we end up with a population that believes that it’s possible to put tracking devices in vaccines. Can we not vomit scientific inaccuracies in our movies just because the writer couldn’t be bothered to spend five minutes researching on Wikipedia?

Rant over, for now. 🙂

One last comment on the plot: the whole reason for the scientist to go on the mission is because he’s the only one qualified to identify the species we’re looking for. But, they already pointed out that they’re looking for the really, big ones. You don’t need a scientist to tell you which ones are big, do you? That’s just lazy writing.

Acting

Obviously, there’s nothing in this movie that’s going to qualify an actor for any awards, but everyone pretty much did their job. Scarlett Johansson was on point as Black Widow. We all knew this from the first trailer, but her character is indistinguishable from her Marvel role. I just really have to wonder why she took this role in the first place. Maybe she signed on before a script was written, because I have to think that if she had read the script, she would have passed.

I liked Mahershala Ali’s character. He’s a good addition to the cast.

The Delgado family was the best characters in the story. They probably could have made a better movie if the whole story were about just them.

Dinosaurs

Whose brilliant idea was it to make deformed dinosaurs? You can’t convince me that the designers for this movie weren’t going for a dinosaur version of the Alien queen. And the flying raptors? Are you kidding me? I guess they did make that one cute dino that had the personality of a small dog. That will sell some merch, but as for the rest. Yuck. Bad call.

Music

It isn’t often that the music stands out enough to be noticeably bad, but it was. There were a few action scenes where the music was distractingly discordant. I wanted the action to end so that the music would stop. And this is coming from someone who listens to movie soundtracks all day long while working.

Cash Cow

It’s a sad fact that the Hollywood system doesn’t reward quality. This movie already has plenty of horrible reviews. It’s RottenTomatoes critics’ score currently sits at 54% and I have to think it’s going to drop. I’m curious to see what the audience reviews will look like, but they won’t be good. Unfortunately, there will be enough people who see this movie over the holiday weekend that it’s probably going to make money. Enough money to greenlight another Jurassic Slop movie. But maybe not. F1 was a surprisingly good movie that is going to attract a big audience, and JP: Rebirth has one week to get some butts in seats before Superman comes out. If we’re lucky, this movie will be a colossal money loser and some suits at Disney will think twice before greenlighting more of the same.

Grade: D-

About The Peetimes: The 2nd and 3rd Peetimes are great. They are plenty long and there’s no action or plot development.

The 1st Peetime isn’t bad, but we learn some details about major characters.

There are no extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Jurassic World: Rebirth.

Plot
Five years post-Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.