'Jurassic World: Rebirth': Scarlett Johansson can't make ends meet either.

Its title speaks of rebirth, but the film itself is begging for the coup de grâce . Not even Scarlett Johansson 's presence is a guarantee of quality anymore; another poor, precarious millennial forced to subsist on infamous works like Jurassic World: Reborn , the umpteenth rehash of Michael Chrichton 's novel, a sequel so centrifuged that everything is now a déjà vu . All that's left to think is that Scarlett Johansson can't make ends meet. I'm settling in to watch Jurassic World: Reborn unprejudiced, paying for my morning 3D ticket, with my polarized glasses and bucket of popcorn, but in less than five minutes, the laziness with which this film was made becomes apparent. Not even the deaths have any significance or spectacularity; it's a constant rush forward to fill the two-and-a-quarter-hour window.

Not even the monsters impress. And that's despite the fact that they're Gareth Edwards ' specialty, who comes to the Jurassic saga after having directed Monsters (2010) and Godzilla (2014), and also Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) and The Creator (2023). What in Jurassic Park (1993) were animatronic dinosaurs with volumes, textures, and a life of their own, thirty-two years later has degenerated into some extremely poor special effects , so absolutely shabby and poorly lit - pay attention to the turbulent waters scene - that it can only reflect the idea that, for some time now, the big studios have been pulling the wool over our eyes, like when we discover that such and such a supermarket - I won't name names because I can't afford lawsuits - maintains the price of the product while reducing its quantity in order to sell it as a bargain and a victory for the customer.

I read on Bluesky -the Twitter account for those of us who are mellifluous- that Jurassic World: Rebirth had inherited the pulp philia of Kevin Connor - The Land That Time Forgot , 1975- or Juan Piquer Simón - Mystery on Monster Island , 1981-, but any of their B- movies exude more imagination than this overheated blockbuster that doesn't even bother to offer any halfway interesting action scenes. I'm lying, perhaps, again, about the turbulent waters scene.

Jurassic World: Reborn doesn't trust the cerebral capacity of its viewers. It treats them in such an indulgent manner that it's offensive . In case anyone had any doubts, it makes it clear who the virtuous and morally twisted are from the first sentence. Dialogues that serve to explain the supposed meaning of a mission as idiotic as it is potentially deadly. In the cinematic present of Jurassic World: Reborn , dinosaurs are eking out a more or less integrated existence on the different continents, in danger of re-extinction due to climate change and the general lack of interest of the public, who no longer queue up to see them in museums or dinosaur zoos (or something like that).

Since blockbusters , like jars of guacamole, only understand grandiose proportions these days, the main character team must travel to the most dangerous island in the world, one forbidden by every government on the planet (finally they agree on something!), to extract a vial of blood from the three largest species ever imagined. A job commissioned by a pharmaceutical company executive ( Rupert Friend ), a man with a wicked look and immaculate chinos, who intends to design - and secure the multi-million dollar patent for - a drug to prevent heart disease . Dinosaurs have very large, very powerful hearts, and with their blood they'll achieve blah blah blah.

The team consists of a mercenary with post-traumatic stress syndrome, Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson in one of the worst roles of her career) , the paleontologist Henry Loomis ( Jonathan Bailey ), as a sort of affordable double of Ryan Gosling, a certain Duncan Kincaid ( Mahershala Ali ), ship's captain and former partner in Zora's adventures and a group of secondary characters who, paraphrasing Dawn is Not a Little (1989), are more contingent than necessary. On the way to the most dangerous island in the world they meet a family of castaways - Manuel García Rulfo, Luna Blaise, Audrina Miranda and David Iacono -, who must also survive the attacks of the saurians by land, sea and air.

It's not that the characters lack coherence—the bookworm, who has never shot, suddenly demonstrates an innate ability for rappelling—but that David Koepp's script presents one impossible feat after another, blatantly and without shame. We go from a cliff being the steepest our eyes have ever seen to plunging off it without a scratch. The level of negligence is such that one scene unfolds as follows: one of the characters, whom the screenwriter has made it his mission to present as the laziest and most foolish of all, walks across an island he's never set foot on before and dares to infer: "The base we're looking for is about two miles from here." How does he know? He doesn't even have cell phone reception on the most forbidden and dangerous island in the world!

And so it all is, in the middle of a plot that simply recycles what worked and had some soul in the previous installments. Here, everything develops and unravels a bit for no reason. There's no terror or suspense either—again, beyond the turbulent water sequence—because the creatures appear and disappear from behind —traitors!—and in the blink of an eye, that character they didn't even bother to develop disappears, to no one's dismay. At least we cared about Gennaro ( Martin Ferrero ), the boring lawyer from Jurassic Park, when he was devoured in that bamboo toilet.

And Johansson, the ever-diligent Johansson, struggles to deliver her lines without causing herself to blush, because, my goodness! That check must be huge—as huge as the one offered to her character in the film —to descend into the abyss of the hypervitaminized Z-series that is Jurassic World: Reborn . Please, someone, please end the agony of the dinosaurs. Let us, finally, embrace the meteorite.