This Two-Time Oscar Winner Should Have Passed On Jurassic Park Rebirth

"Jurassic World Rebirth" is not, as far as studio tentpoles go, overly long. Though it's the second-longest of the seven films in Universal's dinosaur franchise at 133 minutes (behind "Jurassic World: Dominion," which runs an sluggish 147 minutes in its theatrical cut), it isn't anywhere in the punishingly interminable league of "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning" or "F1." Given that we expect summer event movies to give you a little extra bang for your buck (particularly when Steven Spielberg is on board as an executive producer), a slightly inflated runtime shouldn't be taken as a sign of trouble in and of itself.

Unfortunately, "Jurassic Park Rebirth" is frustratingly bloated — particularly for a film blessed with such a streamlined premise. Scarlett Johansson stars as Zora Bennett, a veteran mercenary hired by a Big Pharma executive to quarterback an extraction mission on Ile Saint-Hubert, one of InGen's abandoned dino islands near the equator. The objective is to obtain blood samples from three different types of creatures in order to provide her deep-pocketed employer with the means to produce a miracle cure for heart disease. Paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) is the MVP of this operation, as he possesses an understanding of dino behavior and thus knows how best to approach these dangerous beasts to ensure the team can safely acquire the samples. It's basically a badasses-on-a-mission movie wherein suspense is generated by the team having to audible when the extractions don't go quite as planned. There is clear potential for conflict between Loomis, who wants to open source the cure to the entire world, and Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), the pharmaceutical rep whose allegiance is to the company looking to make a killing off the medication — and we expect somewhere down the line that the apolitical Zora will be forced to pick a side in this ideological disagreement. Predictable? Yes. But as long as the set pieces deliver and the characters are fed enough witty banter to keep us chuckling in between scares, it's a formula that has worked splendidly in the past.

So how did ace screenwriter David Koepp (who scripted "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park") and director Gareth Edwards botch this seemingly sure thing? You might be tempted to blame the insertion of the pleasure-boating, in-need-of-rescue Delgado family into the storyline, but they're actually a fairly decent fit all told. It's the film's exposition-heavy setup that holds it back. Koepp spends entirely too much time imparting the backstory of Zora's teammates, and one of the most glaring reasons for this is that the production cast a far too commanding and talented actor in the role of team leader Duncan Kincaid. And this is how "Jurassic World Rebirth" claims the honor of repping the first time I've ever wished two-time Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali wasn't in a movie.

There typically isn't much to a merc like Duncan Kincaid. Oh sure, there's a reason why a man like this, who possesses a unique mix of survival and straight-up killing skills, opts for a high-paying life of danger, but we needn't know the why of him. Edwards and Koepp could've easily generated more than enough emotional investment via the tragedy that haunts Zora, the family drama supplied by the Delgados (particularly the tension generated by the oldest daughter's slacker boyfriend), and Loomis' principled desire to share the cure for heart disease with the entire world. So why did they try to give Kincaid an added human dimension?

The simple answer is that when you cast an actor of Ali's caliber, you need to make sure you're not renting out a Ferrari to haul lumber. I have yet to see Koepp speak to whether the casting of Ali altered how he wrote Kincaid (save for one scene which we'll get to in a moment), but this would certainly not be the first time a character suddenly got more scenes than they needed simply to justify the inclusion of a big name.

"Jurassic World Rebirth" is riddled with plot issues, but the ones that bothered me most grew out of the decision to make a team member whose role is clearly defined (and fairly simple) prominent in the story. Kincaid is also struggling to cope with a tragedy (the death of his child), but this element is so tenuously developed that when the time comes for Kincaid to save the crew by sacrificing himself to the Distortus rex, we feel nothing because the character is perfunctory by design (and it turns out he survived the encounter anyway). He's the ship's captain, and he's been nothing but reasonable along the way. It feels like there was an attempt to give him more depth by hinting at a potential romantic relationship with Philippine Velge's Nina (whose death on the beach of Ile Saint-Hubert would thus bring him to even greater grief), but this is left puzzlingly vague. As such, it feels extraneous.

Mahershala Ali is obviously fine as Kincaid, which is hardly surprising as he's never given anything close to a bad performance. But his presence here gears you up to expect more than this character can or should deliver. I don't think paring down Kincaid's part and casting a more meat-and-potatoes character actor in the role would have fixed "Jurassic World Rebirth," but it might've gotten the film out of the blocks a bit faster in the first act. And it would've freed Ali up to do something more meaningful in the interim (though I do wonder if, on a strictly financial level, he wanted to book an event movie to make up for the money he lost while sitting on the tentpole sidelines for so long as Marvel Studios' cursed "Blade" failed to go before cameras).

Ali will return next year in Travis Knight's star-studded dark fantasy "Wildwood," and, who knows, maybe he'll get to play Blade one of these days.

"Jurassic World Rebirth" is in theaters now.