The more dinosaurs change, the more they stay the same.

And perhaps we’ve grown accustomed to that sentiment ever since Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park dawned on the industry with great ambition and new flair to add to the well. However, it seems a dastardly trend has reigned even more since The Lost World: all the gargantuan, greed-filled corporations have to squeeze every penny out of securing dinosaur DNA to make more dinosaurs! But is that the only transcript we can get to revel in the awe and spectacle of the dinosaurs on screen? Because Jurassic World Rebirth is not much of a rebirth at all; you’ve been here before, in some fashion, with a different director to helm said blockbuster.

Now, to be clear, it is grand to involve Gareth Edwards in leading this picture, thanks to his astonishing work on 2014’s Godzilla and Monsters, as he has a grand background in introducing terror onscreen with colossal giants. The opening scene, set seventeen years earlier, exemplifies this aspect. Then, we jump to our big lead mercenary, Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), and our prominent new greedy corporate executive, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), to assemble a crew to head to a hazardous island…and we’re back in the same cyclical, rehashed plot structure.

The plot follows Zora and Martin as they recruit friends and a doctor on their journey to an off-the-grid island (Ile Saint-Hubert) to collect three samples of three different dinosaur breeds, aiming to secure a massive payday. The samples could provide a breakthrough in helping humanity extend its longevity. It turns out that in a world infested with dinosaurs after Dominion, dinosaurs are finding many areas of the world to be inhospitable, forcing them to relocate to places where they once flourished during the Mesozoic era. Zora and Martin collect the following individuals: team leader Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey). Then, we also meet some folks of Kincaid’s crew, such as Bobby Atwater (Ed Skrein), Leclerc (Bechir Sylvain), and Nina (Philippine Velge), who all sail to the island to complete their objective. But wait: then there’s a family of four they stumble across who get shipwrecked, consisting of Rueben (Manuel García-Rulfo) and his two daughters, Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and Teresa’s boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono). Now, it’s a battle of survival between the crew and the family on the island while the former attempt to achieve their objective of collecting the three samples.

Perhaps it’s the lack of perspective, but there are too many variables to maintain a sense of cohesion. While the main characters contemplate whether this cure should be given to another run-of-the-mill corporation or shared equally with humanity (minus their payday), the audience seems to lose sight of that pivotal question as the dinosaurs take precedence. The film soullessly then shoehorns these jaw-dropping shots because anytime you hear the Jurassic Park theme, it must mean it’s a sight to behold, right? Credit where it’s due: some of the action is relatively fun, and you get some nice beats of emotion and comedy from the family (even if one can argue their involvement is superfluous). The dinosaurs are a sight to behold, as usual, unless you have invested in trying to learn every mutated species conjured up. And Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali do their best to hold the fort here, but it’s no tantalizing performance you’ve witnessed in previous works of theirs.

Rebirth is another middling chapter in a franchise endeared to them; the pomp and circumstance of another dinosaur (or multiple) terrorizing our human group grows wearisome and formulaic, and what comes of it is another feature that’ll get tucked away behind the one that started it all back in ’93. So much for “more teeth,” now we’re just asking, “When does it all end?”