Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(2025)

Alternate title: Jurassic World: Sorry About the Previous Film

Seriously, if they (gnomes) had wrapped up Jurassic World: Dominion properly, would we even have Rebirth? Dominion was a nostalgia fest with hardly anything to do with dinosaurs, vicious or docile. It bugged me. Haha! See what I did there? Comedy!

With that in mind though, was Rebirth a decent apology film? I have chosen to accept this apology.

But let’s face it. JP/W (Jurassic Park/World) is turning into Jaws. The first one (directed by Spielberg, no less) was a masterpiece, not without its problems, but fun nevertheless. The sequels went up and down the scale of quality as the ratio between sincere passionate filmmaking and money-grubbing swayed to and fro.

I would also compare these films to Tremors or the Alien franchise. Producers seem to think each installment needs a bigger, more ferocious threat and higher stakes. That’s a hard thing to top several times in a row. I don’t think it’s as much of a necessity as they think it is but I get it. So now we have hideous mutant dinosaur experiments. You know what I say to that?

Cool! At least it ain’t bugs in a dinosaur movie.

The character development amongst the family in the film happens through situations. It’s decent. The other main characters literally sit down at a table and recite their backstories. It’s telling without showing. It’s boring. There’s even some clumsily tacked on lines at the beginning, alluding to the fact that our heroine indeed has a backstory. It may as well have been ADR, it was so out of place.

But you know what? These are basically kaiju films by now. The human element may be necessary so we can have someone onscreen through whom we may project emotionally. If we’re being honest, though, most of us are here to see dinosaurs and/or people get eaten by dinosaurs… also, cool dinosaur themed vehicles with awesome paintjobs.

In this case, the movie did everything right in my opinion.