Review of Jurassic World Dominion (2022) by Soulwarfare — 15 Jun 2022

One thing that the Jurassic World franchise has done better and better is the visuals. Jurassic World Dominion has no doubt the best visuals and cinematography of all the films so far. There are some pretty great shots of dinosaurs without a doubt. There are also some pretty fun action sequences. For example, in Malta where dinosaurs are chasing Chris Pratt and Bryce throughout the city. The part in Malta also explores the black market of Dinosaurs and that was pretty interesting. One pretty annoying issue with the Jurassic World franchise is the lack of animatronics but Dominion uses a lot of animatronics. I appreciated it as it made the Dinosaurs feel a bit more real when they were being interacted with.

My biggest reason for watching was the OG cast and it was great seeing all of them together again. Laura Dern and Sam Neill are great together as Ellie Satler and Alan Grant respectively. Both of them don't phone it in and it feels like the same characters we last saw 21 years ago. My favourite is Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm and he just steals every scene he is in. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard also return and they are fine. The movie introduces some new characters and one of them is Kayla played by DeWanda Wise. DeWanda is great and a real standout in the film thanks to her charismatic performance. Kayla ends up being a fun character to watch thanks to her coolness and natural reaction to all the craziness happening. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is very difficult to like. My biggest annoyance is the plot. There are two plot lines, one with Chris Pratt involving a kidnapping of Maisie (the clone daughter from the previous film) and another with the OG cast which just features them snooping around a big corporation. One of the plotlines is more exciting and interesting while also resulting in thrilling dinosaur action. The OG cast plotline is just so boring, goofy and just dumb. It's a shame that the OG cast was done dirty like that. The movie feels like two different movies shoved into one leading to two different stories with different tones. The main story also features this plot device concerning locusts and it's just really stupid. The movie also features a sort of new human villain in Dodgson played by Campbell Scott. I say sort of new because he is technically playing the same character that was briefly in the first Jurassic Park film albeit it's a different actor now. He is just a very underwhelming villain. He is just not that interesting or threatening. They also have a new dinosaur villain in the Giganotosaurus and it also sucks. It barely has any screen time and is not even as scary as any of the previous dinosaur villains. There is also another new character introduced called Ramsay played by Mamoudou Athie who I think does a good job in the role. What makes his character is his supposed relationship with Dodgson which is mentioned a couple of times. However, it is barely explored yet for some reason is put into the film like it is an emotional or important element and it was just baffling.

Maisie returns from the previous film and has become incredibly unlikeable. I'm not a big fan of bratty kid characters, especially ones that cause the deaths of dozens of innocent people. Her character is written poorly and I do think the actress gives a pretty weak performance which doesn't help. The movie is also way too long with its runtime being 146 minutes. A majority of the runtime is just boring human stuff with maybe 15-20 minutes of some dinosaur stuff. The original Jurassic Park cast and the new Jurassic World cast don't even meet until the final act. Once they meet, it feels very anti-climatic and unnatural, it just sort of happens. I'm gutted that the movie wastes an interesting idea in exploring the consequences of dinosaurs being released into the world and how the world deals with it. Instead, this idea is just brushed over within the first 5 minutes. The film doesn't do anything original and just does dinosaurs on an island again! The movie doesn't even spend time dealing with the message that the film starts with which is can humans and dinosaurs coexist? The film just ends with this magically being answered and resolved with no explanation how?

Overall, what a massive disappointment. While I didn't particularly enjoy Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), the movie ends on a fascinating note that could've made for an amazing 3rd film. Regrettably, Jurassic World Dominion ends up being more interested in being a cheap, cheesy, B movie action thrill and even then it doesn't do that great either. I'm devastated that the so-called Avengers of the Jurassic franchise is just a very mediocre and underwhelming dinosaur movie. I ended up feeling like it was time for this franchise to go extinct. As Ian once said, "that's one big pile of s#*%".