hirty-two years have passed since Jurassic Park first brought dinosaurs back to life. After numerous catastrophes caused by greedy corporations and reckless scientists continued to introduce the archosaurs into modern society, many thought mankind would not survive. But decades of disease, inhospitable environments, and increasing disinterest from the general public have pushed the creatures into only a few small islands in tropical, equatorial regions where all world governments have staunchly forbidden travel. When Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) of the massive ParkerGenix pharmaceutical company approaches security expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) with a dangerous – and highly illegal – mission proposition, she initially declines due to tragedies from a prior venture. But the retrieval and extraction specialist has a change of heart when an extraordinarily sizable payment is discussed. Without delay, Zora’s team, including sailor Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), weapons specialist Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein), and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) head to Ile Saint-Herbert to obtain blood samples from some of the largest dinosaur species ever to exist.

“How many times are we gonna keep doing this?” asks a disembodied voice in the background of the very first scene – a particularly bad, eye-rolling line of dialogue for the seventh chapter in this long-running franchise. As it turns out, this latest film is riddled with rehashed, recycled, reworked concepts, redoing not just a considerable amount of shots and elements from the series, but also borrowing liberally from other movies – to the degree that they’re rip-offs as opposed to homage. Sadly, even the introduction here is repetitive and uninspired, as yet another cataclysmic containment failure unfolds, stealing one of the best sequences from “Alien: Romulus” for its PG-13 dino violence.

In an effort to undo the ludicrous world-building (or, rather, world-ruining) from before, this sequel starts somewhat fresh by explaining away a re-extinction of sorts and a new, isolated location (not unlike the island of Dr. Moreau) for the protagonists to have their unrelated prehistoric adventure. It’s awfully easy to have this present-day-set story set aside the fact that in the universe of “Jurassic Park,” humans have coexisted with dinosaurs for awhile (coming across them casually while strolling through neighborhoods and fields), totally bored with the mundanity of seeing them in oversized zoos. And so, lifting concepts from “The Lost World: Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic Park III,” a gang of rough-around-the-edges mercenaries and survivalists dually attempt to recover blood samples (perhaps easier than literally herding various species like a futuristic Noah) and rescue hopelessly stupid civilians who have wandered into hazardous waters.

Perhaps the most obnoxious components of “Jurassic World: Rebirth” arrive in the character development department – a woefully limited arena indeed. Zora exchanges a longing memory and a couple of tears for a fallen comrade in a brief recap with old pal Duncan, which is apparently all that audiences are allowed to know about these leading black-ops soldiers. And, against everything from the setup, in which they’re both shown to care only about monetary compensation (so much so that they rehearse a fictional scenario, after an agreement has been made, to get their employer to double his offer), they suddenly put the lives of the pathetic, lost family above their own, prioritizing their safety beyond the mission itself. What kind of unusually empathetic, noble, principled antiheroes are these?

As it turns out, most of them are the kinds of heavies who can outrun and outmaneuver dinosaurs. Despite a large cast, there’s not nearly enough deaths arising, which is unfortunate considering that the characters are so badly written that viewers will surely be rooting for the dinosaurs to win, as if they’re slasher movie maniacs. The film is essentially an undemanding, poorly designed, crudely arranged premise for dinosaur adventures; personas fight, flee, or scream (youthful roles are included almost exclusively to be scared) continuously as they move from set to set, trekking or battling their way to one unbelievable escape after the next. And it’s terribly repetitious, with a lot of familiar tactics at play – ranging from dinosaurs distracting other dinosaurs, to the usual sneaking/stalking/snapping as they barely miss taking a chunk out of human prey, to the nonsensical geographical coincidences (in which separated parties happen to bump into each other just in the nick of time), to characters standing around in the open and paying zero attention to their surroundings, to leg injuries having negligible impact when sprinting away is necessary, to long-abandoned machinery functioning as if regularly maintained. The contrivances and conveniences are staggering (and who was lugging – through a dense jungle – the hundreds of feet of rope needed to get to a pterosaur nest?). In the end, it may be a return to big-screen dino mayhem, but it’s so unoriginal and unexciting that it’s genuinely mind-boggling that this is the best the creative team could do with a reboot scenario and a blockbuster budget.

– The Massie Twins