The Jurassic Park: Rebirth Trailer has been Released… The Franchise is Doomed.

Beatrice Ramos ‘28 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

The official trailer for Jurassic Park: Rebirth was posted February 5th on Universal Pictures’ YouTube channel. It features a new cast of human characters, and a million and one callbacks to dinosaur species that all Jurassic Park fans know and love: the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Velociraptor, and Spinosaurus are just a few of the major players being brought back into the game and appearing in the new trailer. The release of this film confirms the claim made by Jurassic World Dominion (2022) director Colin Trevorrow, saying that his contribution to the Jurassic Park franchise was not meant to be an ending.

But I think it should have been.

In an interview with Deadline, Trevorrow says that there were elements in Dominion left open for exploration in future Jurassic installments. If that was the case, why does Jurassic Park: Rebirth appear to contain none of these elements whatsoever? The logline for Rebirth itself reads: “Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments… ” Dominion was meant to leave the Jurassic Park universe with humans and dinosaurs living in harmony. The entire moral of the film was that humans need to learn to respect and coexist with beings that have lived on Earth long before they did.

So, Rebirth basically just ignores all of that set up and uses the theme that has already been beaten to death: humans meddling in things they shouldn’t. In fact, Rebirth takes every Jurassic World installation and essentially tells us why those films didn’t matter at all. The original dinosaur-habited island, Isla Nublar, was destroyed at the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018). The eruption of Mount Sibo almost completely wipes out the dinosaur species living on the island in a scene clearly meant to parallel the mass extinction dinosaurs went through 65 million years ago. It was an interesting way to end Jurassic World’s story, managing to tie up most of its own loose ends. What does Rebirth do? Introduce a whole new island that has never been mentioned before in any installment. Even this concept copies what’s been already used in The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), the discovery of a random island that had been used “for research purposes.” All of the characters, from Jurassic Park and World alike, got their own happy endings and versions of closure in Jurassic World Dominion. Rebirth’s solution is a whole new cast of characters who, at least based on what was shown in the trailer, appear to be cardboard cutouts of characters that have existed before. Scarlett Johanson’s character clearly mirrors Robert Muldoon, the skilled weaponry professional that has experience with dinosaurs. Jonathan Bailey plays the reluctant but intrigued paleontologist, echoing the revered Alan Grant. What are these carbon-copy characters adding to this repeated narrative?

Jurassic World Dominion was the lowest rated film in the Jurassic Park franchise, earning a measly 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. According to general audience opinion, the biggest downfall of Dominion was the film’s central focus, which was humans. Sure, the film had dinosaurs. But they hardly had any character, let alone screentime. Audiences don’t watch Jurassic Park films to hear about familial issues and relationship struggles: they’re there to watch dinosaurs and human beings, the planet’s two dominant species, figure out how to interact with each other. They’re there to see dinosaurs go wild and show humanity that nature shouldn’t be messed with! Universal Pictures set up an amazing franchise. They had all the pieces, and they had the audience. But Universal lost their audience as soon as they strayed from the original vision. They stopped focusing on the dinosaurs, and started trying to include witty one-liners that pull the viewer out of the story. The human characters of this franchise were quite literally created to be less interesting than their co stars, the dinosaurs. While watching the Rebirth trailer, I couldn’t help but feel like there was no heart in the work anymore. There’s no grandiose sound score, the simple marvel of the dinosaurs themselves doesn’t exist. Instead audiences are urged to look at these marvels of nature as nuisances, some sort of scary but also kind of cool CGI “thing” that gets in our main character’s way. We lose scenes like feeding the Brachiosaurus and taking care of a sick Triceratops in favor of longer chase scenes with genetically-modified Velociraptors, which really steals from the magic and buildup of possibility of humans and dinosaurs forging a relationship that isn’t completely hostile.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. There is a very real possibility that Jurassic World: Rebirth could be good. To be fair, many people were skeptical about the release of Jurassic World, and not only was it a box office success, it was also a narrative success. It gave the fans what they wanted: A new scenario that honored the old, but still brought a fresh take to the table by exploring the possibility of Jurassic Park actually becoming a successful amusement park. Maybe a “rebirth” is exactly what this franchise needs. If Jurassic World: Rebirth can introduce us to a new concept, one that makes us think about the ethics of science and also how awesome dinosaurs are, then I’ll be impressed. But past evidence makes it hard to believe that Universal will deliver.  

In closing, I have very low expectations for this film. I am a huge fan of Jurassic Park, and I enjoyed the first two installments of Jurassic World too. But this is because they actually had something to say. Yes, the spectacle of the dinosaurs was a huge draw for audiences. But at the end of the day, all of the Jurassic Park films had an overarching message that was expanded upon with each installation. This expansion of a hypothetical philosophical argument ended when Jurassic World Dominion was released. It’s my prediction that Jurassic World: Rebirth simply won’t have the narrative chops to rescue this franchise.