‘Well done, Universal; you’ve screwed another couple dollars out of me, banking on my childish awe of dinosaurs and the undeniable quality of the original movie, that never in its wildest dreams had a sixth instalment in mind’… or at least, that’s what I would’ve said if I’d seen this movie back in June, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to cinemas. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom was just that bad, so I revaluated my time and resources. Plus, I’ve wanted to soak myself in this franchise by revisiting the old movies first, considering this might be the final chapter in the Jurassic Park saga. And I’m glad I did; I watched them very differently this time around – where I’ve always appreciated them with my brain, this time I appreciated them with my heart. I saw the dinosaurs with the same awe that our palaeontologists do, instead of merely a masterful achievement in CGI. But enough of that gooey sh…show of emotion – let’s get down to business. First, I will rank how I view the franchise to date, and then let’s get into Jurassic World: Dominion.
- Jurassic Park
- Jurassic World
- The Lost World: Jurassic Park
- Jurassic Park III
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Jurassic World: Dominion – Locusts! There are giant locusts destroying crops and threatening the world’s fragile food supply. However, somehow, Dr. Ellie Sadler (Laura Dern) is on the case, after noticing the locusts won’t go near crops produced by Biosyn. Perhaps a greedy conglomerate is trying to corner the market 🤔 And… oh yeah, there’re dinosaurs living in the real world – you’d think that would be our most pressing concern, but… nope. Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is still working with her activist pals to free captive dinosaurs, where underground illegal trade is alive and strong. As she drives away from a bust, the possibility of successfully navigating a Sinoceratops field are approximately 3,720 to 1, but never tell her the odds! She makes it home, residing in seclusion with Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Masie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), where the latter is being hunted, as the first human clone makes her very precious. I was wrapped to discover that Colin Trevorrow wasn’t the director of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom after that was incredibly infuriating, but equally perturbed to see his name all over this one.
The Transformers franchise now has Jurassic World to over the mantles for bloated and nonsense. What a slog this movie is. I can’t believe we finally have dinosaurs in the real world and the movie’s plot revolves around giant locusts… If you like dinosaurs, appreciate the first ten minutes or so, while a Brontosaurus walks by loggers, because the awe dries up pretty quick. Through this glob of storytelling, I had to remind myself more than a few times, ‘what is it we’re doing…?’ Oh yes, we’re jet-setting to Malta, where former park rangers are now French Intelligence, because although Masie was just a pet project for John Hammond’s former business partner, she’s important now for dumb reasons explained later. And we’re investigating locusts. Locusts! Because if there’s one thing I care about at my premium destination for dinosaurs, it’s locusts. Call this the dumbest plot of the year, and it’d be hard to disagree. The movie has even got Jurassic Park veterans Sam Neil and Laura Dern reprising their lauded roles, but has them being swarmed by pests in a bug enclosure 😐 I wonder what they were thinking while they were filming these scenes – you never know what’s going to be a hit, I suppose. There is something to be said about giant companies making biological mistakes and passing on the effects to the entire world, with the plot of the true-story movie, Dark Waters, coming to mind. But if you’re going to tackle that point, do it with dinosaurs ruining the ecosystem, surely. Not locusts, surely! Despite such a long runtime, this movie is never smart enough to make an interesting point.
There is no reason for Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neil) to be back in this caper – Dr. Ellie Sadler needs a witness on her grasshopper reconnaissance, so she goes to a leading dinosaur expert to get him back into the fray – movie, do better. From memory, it’s not like the pair use their celebrity to be allowed into Biosyn, which could’ve made sense; Ellie already has an appointment with Dr. Ian Malcolm, and decides to take Alan, who hates him 😐 And I’m sorry, I know we all loved Harrison Ford reprising his role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens after so many years, but I found Jeff Goldblum so disappointing, from his acting to his tepid character. As the most prolific human in the Jurassic Park saga, Goldblum was more Dr. Malcolm in the ‘minute bookends’ of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom than he is here, and why would Biosyn’s CEO Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) hire Malcolm to lecture at his dinosaur sanctuary when he’s so vocally against their re-existence? The movie’s logic is very hard to unscramble. But Malcom’s presence is really hampered by a new character, a young whippersnapper that the movie always wants us to view as the smartest guy in the room – that’s supposed to be Ian’s job, and you take that away from him. And geez, while I’ve already mentioned Harrison Ford once, the other new character, Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), is right out of the Han Solo guide to cool smuggling but is as memorable as Zorri Bliss.
But as Hal Rudnick once said, ‘a man in prison still smiles once and a while’ – my favourite cheesy moment has got to be how the human characters surround baby raptor Beta to trap her, flipping the script, and recalling how the raptors hunt in Jurassic Park. Since it’s Maisie’s idea, I would’ve gone the whole hog, putting extra cheese on my cheese, and had Alan say the ‘clever girl’ line, but that’s just me 🤣 I’m still laughing at how a falling motorbike knocked an atrociraptor out the back of a moving plane, but only because it’s so stupid. And I’m still cringing that Owen choked a dilophosaurus to save Claire 😑 It boggles my mind how these dinosaur-obsessed companies have so much money, but still find ways to screw it up and have chaos reign. By torching his exposed locust crop, Dodgson sets fire to his own nature reserve…😂 At least in Jurassic Park, although we know Hammond ‘spared no expense’, the entire story is about how inept he was at realising the gigantic risk the dinosaurs possess. But these last two villainous companies don’t have that excuse, and technology has advanced so much in thirty years that it’s hard to believe that still nothing goes to plan. Biosyn has a private monorail for goodness sake, and dinosaurs are now chipped to herd to a certain destination – they’ve spared no expense, and there doesn’t seem no expense to spare! I’m also still not sure why a Jurassic Park or Jurassic World can’t exist with only herbivores, and perhaps carnivores that are modified to only grow to one eighth their size, but I suppose that conversation is so far behind us by now that it’s not important. Yet the more we learn about this Jurassic Park-World universe outwardly, it’s all kind’ve silly.
I really enjoyed the pure portrayal of Dr. Ellie Sadler, especially after placing Laura Dern is more venomous roles of late, like Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Marriage Story, and Twin Peaks: The Return. Although he had no right to be here, I can’t, and I shan’t knock Sam Neil. And honestly, I’ve come to decide that Bryce Dallas Howard is pretty decent in this trilogy too, as she learns to value dinosaurs as living creatures, and is appropriately fearful in the right places. I expected Alan to smugly call Claire a fool for trying to run a dinosaur park once, but that remark never came. Chris Pratt is so much better elsewhere, like Guardians of the Galaxy obviously, but the best thing about Owen Grady is how all the other characters he meets immediately think he’s cool.
Admittedly, there were a few things in Jurassic World that took me a while to consolidate, like raptor training – I thought they were supposed to be the enemy. But it makes sense, after coexisting for a number of years, that raptors might come to see humans as beneficial, and our domestic dogs were once wolves who hunted us too. Jurassic World: Dominion can whiz by in a blur, so if I were to watch it a second time, maybe I’d connect some dots, and better understand what this movie is trying to do. But I wouldn’t be doing so for fun, and I certainly won’t be attempted that for a long while. In cashing in on the requel boom, Jurassic World is more scattered than a Disney Star Wars, when a Disney Spider-Man is so much more preferred – yet part of me, despite myself, still appreciates the effort though, and the desire for originality this trilogy strives to be. Since I only just ranked the Jurassic Park movies at the beginning of this post, I’ll tentatively throw Jurassic World: Dominion into the mix, but I would consider this is the worst one. Pick your sports metaphor for Jurassic World: Dominion – Air-ball! Gutter-ball! In poker terms, it’s a brick.
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