Review: Jurassic World: Dominion
Jurassic World: Dominion, directed by Colin Trevorrow, tells the tale of a world where dinosaurs are suddenly brought back from extinction. Dinosaurs are now everywhere around the globe, and humanity now must learn to cohabit the world with these animals together. But the world gets even further into disarray when giant prehistoric locusts start decimating the world’s crops, bringing Dr. Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) to investigate after a tip-off from her old friend Dr. Ian Malcom (Jeff Goldblum) suggesting there’s something more sinister behind these super bugs. With the help of another old friend Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neil), Sadler gets her hands dirty once more and tries to stop a famine before its too late….oh yeah and also Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) are in the movie too trying to rescue their newly adopted clone daughter Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) and a baby raptor from some shady folks.
This is the latest installment in the Jurassic franchise and also the purported final film for storyline that started with 1993’s Jurassic Park as well, and THANK GOD for that. Every film in this cursed franchise after the still-brilliant first film has been a heaping pile of de-fossilized dino-dung, and this film, big surprise, is no different. Dominion is not quite as horrible as Lost World or Fallen Kingdom, but my god it’s still an unfocused, boring slog of a film that’s banking on the nostalgia factor HARD.
Clocking in at a massive two hours and twenty-six minutes, this is the longest film in the Jurassic franchise, and every single minute of it was a drag. The story had no focus, the writing was almost kindergarten levels of simplistic, there was a surprising lack of dino action throughout the film, and almost every character in the film had no real purpose to be here outside of pure fan service. Almost all these characters could’ve easily been written out entirely, but no, we gotta capitalize on that nostalgia somehow.
Ellie Sadler is the only character in this film that was actually relevant to the plot. Alan Grant was pointless, Ian Malcom was pointless, even the Jurassic World cast was shockingly pointless. You’d think that with this being a Jurassic World film the main characters of Jurassic World would be the main focus; Owen and Claire go missing for almost half the film and the whole subplot involving the velociraptor Blue and her baby felt like an afterthought. Most of these characters could’ve been replaced with complete rando’s and nothing would’ve changed.
Now you might be thinking, “Oh stop being so critical! We all know this isn’t trying to be a deep film! I’m just here to see dinosaurs eat people!” One: dinosaurs make up about a quarter of the film (the whole plot of the film involve LOCUSTS) so there isn’t even enough dino-action in the film for me to be satisfied. Two: need I remind you why Jurassic Park became iconic in the first place?
The first Jurassic Park film had plenty of smart and thought-provoking discussions about what would happen if mankind suddenly had the power to de-extinct an entire species, and whether or not any of it would be ethical. That’s kind of the reason why Michael Crichton wrote the damn book in the first place; all Spielberg did was make the human characters in the book actual relatable humans and break up the heavy discussions with some iconic dino-action that drive the main theme of the book home.
This is a key reason why that first film holds up incredibly well even today. Even Jurassic World, despite being more of a generic summer blockbuster, attempted to continue the discussion by taking it to the next level. Gone is all the intrigue that Crichton brought up in his original story and now instead we get a generic, dull company-spy-espionage film written for dumb babies that need white noise to play in the background.
Overall this film was, unsurprising to me at least, a mess. It might not be as brain-numbingly stupid as The Lost World or Fallen Kingdom, but it’s definitely more boring, and I don’t know if that makes it worse. Nothing about this film stood out; everything was either barely serviceable or just plain dumb. I guess people who refuse to remove their nostalgia goggles will enjoy this film fine, but I don’t expect even the most die-hard Jurassic fan to come out loving this film. It’s time to put this franchise into a museum where it belongs.
Final Verdict: 2/10