The Pointless Exercise That Is 'Jurassic World Dominion'
By Steve DiMatteo
I am perhaps in the top 1% of Jurassic Park fans worldwide; I’ll always maintain that it’s one of the few perfect films in existence (there’s just no room for argument there).
I am also a staunch defender of The Lost World, and I think Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is an underrated gem. I enjoy Jurassic World enough and I can even get behind Jurassic Park III when I stumble upon it while flipping through the channels on a lazy Saturday.
But Jurassic World Dominion? This is, sadly, the film where I realized even I have my limits with this overextended, clearly cooked franchise (and it’s not just because of the mysterious disappearance of the colon in the title).
It brings me no pleasure to say this, but Dominion, as Ian Malcolm once proclaimed, is one big pile of shit.
I was a bit hesitant going into this supposed final installment when it was announced Colin Trevorrow would return to direct. Much like Rise of Skywalker, it would have been nice to give it over to another name, someone with some sort of actual vision aside from flinging dinosaur slop at us for two hours (though funny enough, Trevorrow was at one point attached to direct Rise of Skywalker as well).
I will say this about Dominion: It’s great to see the old cast back together again, even if Alan Grant truly has no reason to be here in the context of the story. I don’t care about that - Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum have some of the best chemistry ever put on film.
And they do have actual roles within this odd, paper-thin yet nearly incomprehensible plot; these aren’t the glorified cameos you often see in a legacyquel.
But after that, everything falls apart. Props should once again be given for the abundance of practical dinosaur effects, but the tension and suspense at this point in the series have all but disappeared. Even Trevorrow seems bored by it all - the climactic dino battle between the T-rex, Giganotosaurus, and whatever that third dinosaur was seemed like a painful obligation; even the dinosaurs seem to be going through the motions.
And Trevorrow appears to have recently visited the Well THAT Just Happened School of Dialogue, as DeWanda Wise - playing a new character with loads of potential - is given nothing else to do but fire endless quips at breakneck speed.
There is a solid-enough set piece in the middle of the film, where Chris Pratt and the crew uncover something of a dinosaur black market, full of illegal dino gambling and other sordid underground pleasures, but we breeze by it so quickly in the jumbled mess of the overall plot. I want to revisit that kind of story, how humanity has adapted to the dinosaurs becoming a part of our everyday life.
Perhaps the biggest indictment here is how it all feels so pointless now - there is still the notion that humans shouldn’t try to play God, and there’s plenty more to mine there (Dodgson being back is a nice touch), but the movie doesn’t seem all that interested in pulling at that string any more than it has to. And when it’s all said and done, you’re not left with much more to think than “That’s it?”
Well, that and how I’d just like to take a breather on this series for a while.