The first Jurassic Park movie, from 1993, is a great concept and a great movie. A great movie from a better book, a book brought to life on screen in ways that are still compelling now. The sequels have increased in ridiculousness exponentially, so much so that the wheels came off the suspension of disbelief very, very quickly. I fell out of touch with that whole outfit. 

The most-recent-until-now movie, in what I assume is called the “Jurassic-verse,” was among the most memorable cinematic events of my adult life. It was so cartoonishly ludicrous and manipulative that we laughed uproariously the whole way through it. One of us, who may have had an edible, laughed so hard that she had to use her inhaler several times, and I suspect the people sitting behind us still reminisce about her from time to time. (Those folks themselves went out and picked up an entire pizza at some point during the movie, so the memorableness is reciprocal.)

We were so committed to seeing the next film in the series, Jurassic World Rebirth, that we realized upon arriving at the theater in a state of high excitement on Sunday that none of us actually knew the correct name of the movie. We all just thought of it as “the next Jurassic movie,” and gosh did it live up to that anticipation. 

I have begun to gauge things that are formulaic now by the possibility that they were written by an AI. During the winter, my regular golf group gets together every couple of weeks to play a round at an indoor simulator. The Spotify station they play there is known among us as “AI country.” It hits all the high points — lost woman, lost truck, unfaithful man, drowning in cheap whiskey, etc. — but without playing one single recognizable tune. It is next-gen Muzak. 

I have seen movies that felt like this, and most television does, but this is the first movie I have seen that I thought, “This was written by a really good AI.” It is formulaic, and pleasingly ridiculous, and the quips are the right kind of quips. The people act in a humanlike way, and so do the dinosaurs. 

It wasn’t written by an AI, exactly, but it was clearly written with the aid of so many focus groups and marketing wizards that there might not be a big difference beyond how many people were involved. The movie hits all the beats it’s supposed to hit, and neatly. You can almost sense that the studio knew exactly what percentage of the time the child should be in peril and precisely how much of the movie should be dedicated to setting up the sequel and the correct order in which to reveal the dinosaurs to get the best reactions, just the same way they know how to maximize the revenue and minimize the spending. 

Scarlett Johansson is given top billing and is the biggest star who is not a dinosaur, but she is not treated terribly differently than any of the other performers. Given that her star has not fallen precipitously for a reason of which I am unaware, the other obvious possibility is that they just knew that they needed a bankable star and she happened to be the one who was willing to do the work they needed for the check they offered. It’s not dissimilar to the idea that baseball and basketball have now also been reduced to math games.

The thing is, it’s fine. The movie makes no claim to be anything other than the piece of manufactured entertainment that it is, and it is a beautifully made piece of manufactured entertainment. It’s not a hand-assembled Bugatti sports car, it’s a really nice Toyota. It’s not a piece of art, it’s a craft and a science. Which, interestingly, makes it kind of like cloning dinosaurs. 

I just wish I thought that was a point they had been trying to make on purpose.