I was disappointed.
Severely disappointed.
This movie is extremely predictable. Zero surprises. Everyone you expect to die, dies, and everyone you expect to survive, survives. The plot is basic, we've seen it a dozen times before in this franchise. The writers took zero risks and it really, REALLY shows. Not to mention that every potential plot hole is overexplained to the point that it's annoying.
The dinosaur scenes are a redeeming aspect of the movie... or at least they would be if there were more of them. For a Jurassic movie it felt like half of it was just meaningless talk. Plus they overplayed the emotion behind some of the deaths without any reason to care (as well as in two fake-outs when we know the characters will live). The scenes themselves were pretty tense though, even if the plot armor was painted safety-vest neon. It is nice that it added some more horror elements back to the franchise, even if those elements are few and far between.
The characters aren't that interesting. Zora is the only one with something resembling a character arc, but even then it's buried so deep that it feels like it never gets any payoff. A fantastic lesson of why "show, don't tell" is horrible advice. Just about everyone else is either a cardboard cutout or obvious cannon fodder. The Delgado family was kind of nice though, and Xavier was pretty much the only character who actually got a laugh out of me from time to time.
My biggest problem with this movie, though, is that it basically ruins any future Jurassic projects. In case you've been living under a rock, the premise is that dinosaurs are slowly dying off because they aren't accustomed to our modern climate, except around the Equator. This just completely takes any and all potential Dominion had of "dinosaurs in our world" stories and brutally guns it down. I'm certain there will be more Jurassic World movies after this, but with the ending of Dominion ruined like this I have no clue what those would even be. The whole backdrop of this film is an irreversible mistake, and I am unbelievably frustrated with it.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on Rebirth, but... I don't know, guys. This movie just isn't good. I'd probably rank it about on par with The Lost World, just below JP3 and just above the rock-bottom disaster that was Fallen Kingdom. What did you think about it?
