Review: 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' offers a lineup of new characters, but the same old dinosaur action

“Jurassic World: Rebirth,” the seventh in the franchise that started with Steven Spielberg’s masterfully entertaining “Jurassic Park,” the last word in the title suggests that we’re starting fresh — which we are, in a way, because we’re getting new characters we haven’t met before. 

In more basic terms, and in keeping with the genetic splicing and playing with God that have been the impetus of the series for 32 years, what “Rebirth” really means is that we’re getting a clone, a copy of a copy of a copy.

It’s a few years after the events of the last movie, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” and a few things have changed. For starters, people are bored with dinosaurs again, in part because they couldn’t survive in temperate climates and are out of sight in a few areas in the tropics, where international law says humans can’t go. Also, the movie gods have decided we don’t need Chris Pratt, which may be the one thing this new movie gets inarguably correct.

Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a Big Pharma weasel, wants someone to go to those tropics, to get DNA samples from some of those dinosaurs — because the genetic material could produce some wonder drugs, which Krebs’ company would make billions developing. He offers a whopping amount of money to Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), a mercenary who’s quite savvy at getting in and out of places where one isn’t supposed to go.

Zora teams up with an old friend, Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), who has a boat and a crew who can deliver Zora and Krebs to an island where InGen, the company that first developed the genetic tech that created the original Jurassic Park dinosaurs, has its secret lab. There, we’re told, is where the creatures too nasty for the tourists was left behind.

Zora brings along one more expert: A paleo-biologist, Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, from “Wicked”) — a hunk-with-glasses nerd who fills the story space once occupied by Sam Neill’s Alan Grant. (Screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote the first “Jurassic Park” with novelist Michael Crichton, name-drops Grant late in the film, the only character connection from this film to any other.)

While the crew is heading toward the equator, and Koepp provides them enough backstory so Johansson and Ali can tell themselves they’re doing more than yelling “Run!” a lot, there’s a parallel adventure involving a family sailing trip. Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his two daughters, little Isabella (Audrina Miranda) and college-bound Teresa (Luna Blaise), along with Teresa’s layabout boyfriend, Xavier Dobbs (David Iacono), are crossing the Atlantic when they run into some whale-like dinos. They cross paths with Zora, Duncan and company, as well as some land-based dinosaurs.

Director Gareth Edwards, the guy behind “Rogue One” and “The Creator,” knows how to make action movies that set human-scaled drama amid massive special effects. (Seek out his low-budget 2010 debut, “Monsters,” and his 2014 take on “Godzilla” as evidence.) Here, he shows his influences: One action sequence on Duncan’s boat evokes the second half of Spielberg’s “Jaws,” while a set piece in a crawlspace is reminiscent of scenes from “Alien.” 

Koepp keeps the self-references to “Jurassic Park” locked and loaded at all times, particularly in the dispatching of one baddie contains nods to Wayne Knight’s Nedry, Samuel L. Jackson’s arm and the lawyer eaten alive on the toilet. And, for good measure, composer Alexandre Desplat seems contractually bound to play John Williams’ original theme every two minutes. 

In the end, “Jurassic Park Rebirth” is the story of a group of people hoping for a big paycheck by repurposing existing DNA without considering the consequences of what they’re doing. That’s the plot synopsis and a recap of the film’s production.

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‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’

★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, July 2, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language and a drug reference. Running time: 134 minutes.