Probably at some previous point, I understood that Jurassic World referred not just to the park, but to the fact of the dinosaurs having gotten loose and now they live here too, like it was the Jurassic all over again[1]. Anyway, they made a trilogy on that theme, and now that Chris Pratt has made enough money, they decided it was time for more Marvel alums to get in on that sweet, sweet dinosaur cash.

Here, therefore, are the things you should know about Jurassic World: Rebirth.

1. There’s nothing “rebirth” about it. It’s still the same dinosaurs from the same consistent series of movies at the same consistent starting point as it was for every prior sequel. Furthermore, it doesn’t even feel like it’s meant to be a franchisal rebirth. This told a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and no real hooks for sequels starring the same characters.
2. It’s a little bit of a rip-off of a loving homage to several movies. I can see Jurassic Park 3 in there (with the sailboat family shoehorned into an otherwise straightforward snatch and grab plot), a decent chunk of Aliens (if Newt’s family had survived along with her, and to be fair that may cancel out JP3), and a whole lot of those old GI Joe 5-episode miniserieses they’d put out every year where the Joes and the Cobras are chasing parts of, for example, a weather control machine.
3. There was no compelling reason to make this movie. Other than “give me some cash”, it doesn’t have a story that needed to be told. That sounds worse than it actually is, the story was fine, extraneous things can often be fine. But it was extraneous more than it was fine, you know?
4. With that caveat: it was also fun. Possibly because I cannot accept what the writers posited the world to be like 30 years after the rise and fall of InGen, the dinosaur-cloning company. Those character inhabiting that world are all, “meh, I’ve seen dinosaurs, and mostly they’re boring murder machines, so who cares if they go extinct again, or that they ever existed in the first place?” Whereas I will probably never lose my childlike wonder for them, and they keep on looking pretty great in these movies. Thanks Steven Spielberg.
5. The less said about the pointless “what if we make mutant dinosaurs?” subplot, the better, Pretend it never happened, and you have a better movie. Because wow, it adds nothing and is probably the thing that most made me consider whether the movie was necessary, a la point 3. If you have a subplot that would have been your main plot except you flubbed it entirely? That’s a bad sign.
6. …but it was still fun, and I do not regret having seen it. The movie was not ruined for me, I just selectively edit a handful of the dinosaur characters to be something just as useful for the service needed in the plot during those scenes, but not pointless and dumb at the same time.
7. I do a little bit regret not seeing Superman instead. But only a little bit.

[1] But mainly the Cretaceous, not I suppose that this is important to their larger point.