In theory, it shouldn’t be hard to make a good Dinosaur movie. They’re an intersection of two of Hollywood’s favorite genres: the monster movie and the sci-fi movie. They’re creatures that seem so otherworldly and cool and yet really existed on our planet long before us. It’s a seemingly perfect concept and one that Spielberg capitalized on with the 1993 classic “Jurassic Park.”
Now, almost 30 years later, the finale (or so Universal says) of the Jurassic saga has come. Six movies after the original, “Jurassic World: Dominion” is here, and like other legacy sequels it features members of the original cast to seemingly remind audiences of their nostalgia for the franchise. Instead, it ends up reminding them that they could be watching a far better movie.
Set four years after the events of the previous film, “Dominion” sees Owen Grady, played again by Chris Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy,” “The LEGO Movie”), and Claire Dearing, played again by Bryce Dallas Howard (“The Help,” “Terminator Salvation”), trying to find their kidnapped adoptive daughter Maisie Lockwood, played again by Isabella Sermon (). Meanwhile, Dr. Ellie Sattler, played by Laura Dern (“Wild at Heart,” “Big Little Lies”), reteams with Dr. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neill (“The Hunt for Red October,” “Peaky Blinders”), as they search for the source of a massive swarm of prehistoric locusts that have been decimating crops across the United States farmland.
The fact that locusts are a large enough part of the plot of this dinosaur movie to mention in the opening summary leads directly to one of the film’s biggest problems. Trying to change things up or subvert audience expectations isn’t a bad thing by any means. But given how the ending of the previous film perfectly set up a sequel that saw dinosaurs running amongst human civilization, its massively disappointing that this film focuses so heavily on another isolated location where things run amok.
More than any of the previous films, it feels like another boring slog through everything we’ve seen before. The brief moments set in cities where dinos and humans exist in tandem are the film’s best parts. A car/dino chase through Malta is one of the best moments in the film and its over far too quickly. It not only feels like a squandered opportunity, but it feels almost like a lie perpetrated to the audience given what was set up by the previous film.
But that’s okay. Maybe the time spent in these isolated labs once again is still a fun romp. Don’t be mistaken though, its not. There’s zero weight to the events of the film and it all feels like busywork. Even the moments with the dinosaurs, which should be the coolest in the movie, just feel flaccid and weak.
To go on a bit of a tangent, one of the things that made the original “Jurassic Park” so terrifying and fascinating was that, despite the bloodthirsty beasts running around, only three people died by the end of it. Whereas this new “World” trilogy is practically a slaughterhouse of increasingly mean deaths. It sucks the humanity out of what should be a fun sci-fi romp with dinosaurs.
Although, the actors are doing the film any favors either. Pratt is sleepwalking through the film and this is yet another example of his best work is when his characters think they’re badasses but aren’t. Howard fares better, mostly because she seems to be tuning into her inner scream queen for most of the film. Sermon is fine. It’s hard to tell if her acting is subpar or if her character is just too cocky, but she’s far from the worst performance here. Dern, like Howard, is clearly in on the tone and joke of the film and is delivering enough cheesy one-liners to get through mostly unscathed.
Neill seems like he was kidnapped and woke up on the set of the film, stumbling around as if he had no input on his own casting in the film. Even the seemingly untouchable Jeff Goldblum (“Thor: Ragnarok,” “The Fly”) just feels like he’s on autopilot, doing his trademark hand gestures and philosophical lines with seemingly no thought. He does get the best, most badass moment in the film though, so that does help to make up for things. The other two legacy characters, Dr. Lewis Dodgson, played by Campbell Scott (“The Chaperone,” “Royal Pains”), and Dr. Henry Wu, played by BD Wong (“Mulan (1998),” “Oz”), fare just as badly, as if they’re husks of characters, reanimated for another trip through a science lab go awry.
Besides Dern and Howard, the two new characters are actually quite good. Kayla Watts, played by DeWanda Wise (“She’s Gotta Have It (2017),” “The Harder They Fall”), is a pilot who helps Owen and Claire with sneaking into BioSyn. Her cocky, smug attitude actually works, and makes Pratt’s worse by comparison. She moves with the kind of assured swagger that makes you relieved when she pops up on screen. Ramsey Cole, played by Mamoudou Athie (“Sorry for Your Loss,” “Underwater”), is one of BioSyn’s heads of communication and he actually seems to be having a good time. His part isn’t huge, and it isn’t Shakespeare, but he’s clearly one of the few actors who doesn’t consider it a chore to be here.
It's important to understand that, even as classic as the original film is, these movies don’t have huge expectations behind them. Show some dinosaurs, show some people quipping, show some fake science, and that’s it. But somehow, director/co-writer Colin Trevorrow (“Safety Not Guaranteed,” “Jurassic World”), writer Emily Carmichael (“Pacific Rim: Uprising”), and writer Derek Connolly (“Pokémon Detective Pikachu,” “Safety Not Guaranteed”) have forgotten to make any of it fun. When the whimsy of these creatures is taken, they become little more than giant CGI death machines, indistinguishable from any number of big gray aliens, robots, or faceless armies that have plagued blockbuster action films over the last fifty years.
The film isn’t a complete flop though. There are the handful of aforementioned cheesily good performances and the car/dino chase scene is great. Also, like the Star Wars sequel trilogy, there’s a larger emphasis on practical effects and puppeted dinosaurs. These moments really stand out compared to the CGI ones and they’re some of the best parts of the film. Even when they’re amongst the worst of the plot and acting, it makes all the difference seeing an actor actually react to a real creature right in front of them. It’s also a nice touch that the returning character actually have their own plot, instead of being stuck in the background of the newer characters. That plot is the boring, weird locust one, but still, the intentions are good.
But even with that, there comes a point in this two-and-a-half-hour-long film when you realize that, once again, you’re watching a “Jurassic Park” movie that’s once again set at an isolated facility for the fifth time and where a majority of the plot isn’t about dinosaurs but about locusts. It’s just the epitome of lazy filmmaking that can’t even get the nostalgia-bait aspects right. It’s a tyrannical turd that makes “Fallen Kingdom” look like a masterpiece. If this really is the last “Jurassic Park” film, although the film itself doesn’t seem to acknowledge this fate at all, then “Jurassic World: Dominion” makes a damn good case for why it should go extinct. 1/5
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