Jurassic World: Rebirth

Apparently, people in the future will be bored of dinosaurs. This is the line that Gareth Edwards' 2025 blockbuster sequel, "Jurassic World: Rebirth," takes, being set two years from now in a world where interest in giant lizards has waned to the point where museums are being closed down. One wonders if that is the same for "Godzilla" movies.

Presumably this is some sort of ironic commentary on the big-budget Hollywood franchise film, which at the moment looks as though it could be one for extinction. That said, the "Jurassic" series, which with "Rebirth" numbers seven instalments, continues to make billions, despite the last three featuring the supremely irritating Chris Pratt. This one stars Scarlet Johannson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey amongst others, and when I say others, I mean dinosaurs.

The action this time is set on yet another island where they had a secret laboratory. Because of the lack of interest in the dinosaurs, this lab was concentrated on splicing genes to create new species to try and get the public excited again. So we have "mutadons," which are velociraptors crossed with pterosaurs, and a new version of the T-Rex called the D-Rex - D for "Distortus," which inevitably escape in a brief prologue.

The plot involves Johansson and Ali as mercenaries doing one last big job for a pharmaceutical company who are interested in using dino-DNA "for good" to help people with heart disease. Apparently, they need samples from the three biggest dinosaurs because they have the biggest heart muscles. So off they go to the island, along with a paleontologist (Bailey), the pharmco exec (Rupert Friend), and a some expendable people, where they encounter a family whose sailboat was capsized by a mosasaur. Said mosasaur also capsizes the merc ship, making it run aground, so they have to get the samples and wait for a chopper.

You know what happens. The island is teeming with actual dinosaurs as well as their mutated brethren, so you're rarely safe from a pair of chomping jaws. This should be exciting and dangerous, but the problem is that the picture makes clear from early on, through various near-miss action sequences, that none of these characters are expendable beyond the obvious, i.e. Mr. Big Pharma. This leaves it somewhat inert, dramatically, even when the dinosaur chases are well put-together as they are.

Alexander Desplat's fine score helps proceedings, with a small but healthy dose of the original John Williams themes, but it feels somewhat like a theme park ride. It might seem dangerous, but it's all going to be okay in the end. The archetypes don't help; from evil pharmco guy to merc with a secret heart of gold and the palentologist who is more interested in helping the world than money. There are eight core characters that the film focuses on, so development is spread thin, and it shows.

There's a sense here, as sequels are wont to do, of going back to the originals. It's similar to "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" in that respect, with this need to make it tonally similar to the first two "Jurassic Park" flicks - it's no coincidence they brought back the writer of that duo, David Koepp, for this one. And there are sequences from Michael Crichton's original novel that didn't make it in previously, like a T-Rex hunting people downstream in a raft, which is actually one of the most impressive sequences in the film.

There are also several scenes that were done better previously in other movies. There's a fun sequence with Johansson trying to get a DNA-dart into a mosasaur that feels like an intentional nod to the shark chase in "Jaws," and a scene in an abandoned mini-mart that feels like a blow-by-blow retread of the kitchen scene in "Jurassic Park," only with the mutadons. Unfortunately, the mutadons seem far dumber than the raptors, and therefore a lot less scarier, as is a scene with the flying dinosaur Quetzalcoatlus, which is less frightening and fun than a similar scene with Pteranodons in "Jurassic Park III." Also guy running with flare to distract dinosaur.

And then there's the D-Rex. As soon as you see it munch someone in the frenzied prologue, you know it'll be the final boss. It's very big and kind of goofy, not having the terror or the charisma of the T-Rex, or even the Spinosaurus. It looks a bit like an Alien (from "Alien") and the Rancor monster from "Return of the Jedi," and you'd imagine it bumps its head a lot while walking through buildings with low ceilings.

The acting is pretty good and holds it together pretty well, as does the evocative cinematography by John Mathieson ("Gladiator") and Desplat's music. It's clear director Edwards has talent, as he previously showed with movies like "Godzilla" and "Rogue One," but you get the feeling there were a number of studio mandates here, along with a script that needed more work. "Jurassic World: Rebirth" is better than all of the previous "World" pictures, but audiences paying £12 a ticket deserve more than a retread in new clothes. The world may not be bored of dinosaurs like in the film, but we're certainly getting tired of average-at-best dinosaur movies.