I had already shared my concerns about the new Jurassic World film beforehand in my 'Thoughts' post on my website, fearing it would be a hastily thrown-together piece of trash, and unfortunately, my gut feeling turned out to be right. Almost all of my reservations proved true.

Nothing about this movie felt right to me. In my opinion, it was also a mistake to rush another Jurassic World sequel so soon after Dominion. The last installment was released not that long ago, and given the creative crisis Hollywood is currently facing, this work could hardly be more than a lackluster reboot.

As for the first Jurassic World from 2015, it came at exactly the right time and it literally blew me away. I liked the cast. The film had great dinos and above all, they had Blue. For me, that was the true rebirth of the Jurassic franchise and at the same time a genuine love letter from the creators to the original Jurassic Park. I actually enjoyed this film much more than The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which was still directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a story by Michael Crichton.

“Rebirth,” on the other hand, is not a rebirth but a meteor strike to the franchise, and in this review, I’ll also show you why the film tries to fool the audience and get away with complete nonsense.
It starts right from the opening sequence, when a carelessly discarded Snickers wrapper practically leads to the destruction of the entire island lab.

At least Indominus was clever enough to outsmart the humans and escape from her enclosure. This film, however, is based on what’s called an 'idiot plot', a storytelling style where the plot only works because all the characters act like complete idiots.

The original plot, which featured a mysterious virus triggered by dinosaurs posing a threat to humanity and serving as the reason for the expedition to the new island, was apparently discarded. Instead, it’s now about some heart disease that needs to be cured but has no connection to the dinosaurs. But they still need the DNA of the largest dinosaurs from land, sea, and air for making the cure. Even the dinosaur expert said so!

Well, I don’t know where this expert received his education, but the fact that his museum had to close seems to me a logical consequence of his incompetence. You really don’t have to be a paleontologist to know that pterosaurs and marine reptiles simply aren’t dinosaurs.

Yet the movie still tries to feed us exactly that. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the terrible mini series "Dinotopia", where a Triceratops was called a hadrosaur. Apparently, they just assume the average audience is too dumb to notice such mistakes.

But why does it have to be these particular species? There used to be plenty of dinosaurs on the mainland. The reason? Because they can live especially long and because their hearts are so big. You really have to let that sink in! Even Roger Corman the creator of "Carnosaurus" would probably have found that too absurd.

And anyway: The supposed reason why all the dinosaurs on the mainland died is even more outrageous. The film tells us that the dinos suddenly couldn’t cope with climate change and extreme weather conditions, and within five years they were almost completely extinct on the mainland or had migrated to equatorial regions.

However, the dinosaurs in Dominion coped VERY WELL with the climate. The dinosaurs had adapted to our world. We saw Blue together with little Beta in the snow, and it didn’t bother them. In the world of Jurassic, life has always found a way and now suddenly it doesn’t? Now the environment is supposedly bad for them?

That was truly a very weak and completely unnecessary decision by the creators. So for this film, you have condemned all the dinosaurs living on the mainland to death?

But we haven’t even reached the end yet. The characters are all empty shells, without soul or emotion. They have hardly any backstory, and their motivation is mostly driven by money. You don’t worry about their lives because at no point do you form any connection with them. The one emotional “death” scene near the end had the potential to be really powerful, but the film still ruined it. The guy survived as if by a miracle, but how he managed it remains a mystery. No one will ever find out because the film assumes you will just applaud and not think about it.

You can especially notice Gareth Edwards’ influence in the creature design. His mutants would have fit perfectly in his Godzilla movie, but I don’t want to see that kind of thing in Jurassic World.
The whole storyline about the mutated dinosaurs feels ridiculous. It seems like they deliberately wanted to avoid the word “hybrids” from the previous movies, so they just slapped the label “mutant” on them instead.

What excited fans about the Spinosaurus, Rexy, or the Indominus Rex was that they were both terrifying and cool. It was thrilling to watch them fight through minor characters or face off against each other. There is absolutely nothing cool about the D-Rex. Its design isn’t even original. It actually looks like a Rancor from Star Wars, but not like something that could pass as a dinosaur. He barely adds anything to the story, other than breaking out at the beginning and popping up a few times near the end just to annoy the main characters.

Even the winged creatures, which apparently are meant to replace the velociraptors, are boring. The movie explains absolutely nothing about them. Their entire role feels like a lazy substitute for what originally made the raptors so iconic.

Speaking of raptors: Before the movie’s release, some leaked images surfaced online showcasing really cool raptor designs. They reminded me a lot of the male raptors from Jurassic Park 3. So I was sure they would play a bigger role in the movie. In the end, they were on screen for what felt like only ten seconds and that very scene made me really angry. I took this scene as a personal insult.

The film’s humor is simply nonexistent. It places the entire responsibility for comic relief on a single character, but it doesn’t work at all. The jokes are bad and they destroy any tension that might have been building. Later, the movie tries to give this character a kind of redemption arc so the audience will like him, but it fails at that too.

Are there any good elements? Yes, I really liked the T-Rex scene on the river, even though that scene originally came from the original book. In 1993, the special effects technology wasn’t advanced enough to portray something like that. The new spinosaurus also looked really interesting. I liked everything related to the “real” dinosaurs.

However, the negative elements of the film tarnish the overall impression. “Rebirth” shows no respect for the original and and suffers from a lack of good ideas and creativity. The kitchen scene from the first Jurassic Park was copied almost shot for shot, with the raptors merely replaced by those winged creatures.

They had shamelessly copied from other movies as well, including Indiana Jones, Jaws, and most notably Kong: Skull Island. In fact, the movie mostly gives off Skull Island vibes; only the soundtrack reminds us that we are actually watching a Jurassic World movie.

Furthermore, the product placement in this film is especially intrusive.

For me, this movie seriously messed up the lore and damaged the franchise. The plot and script are even weaker than those of Godzilla vs. Kong. “Rebirth” is Jurassic World in name only and doesn’t deserve its name. Yet, the movie’s impressive dinosaurs are the only thing that keeping it from vanishing into utter irrelevance.

I give the film 5 out of 10 points, and I’m still being generous. For me, this marks the sad low point of the Jurassic World series. This movie was unnecessary, and I definitely won’t be watching it a second time, let alone buying the DVD later. Maybe someday Hollywood will stop making movies for an ignorant audience. Maybe then they’ll finally take the time to write good, thoughtful plots again, with believable characters and create scenes that truly evoke something in us: inspiration, suspense, fear, joy, sorrow, or relief. But that day is still far away.