For my triumphant return to the blog, I just watched the latest entry into the Jurassic Park/World franchise, and this might be the most disappointing movie experience of my life. I am so glad I didn’t see this in theaters.
Jurassic World: Dominion is a 2022 action/adventure/sci-fi film based on the (classic, amazing, revolutionary) science fiction novels by Michael Crichton. It is the direct sequel to Jurassic World (2015) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), and is the first film to heavily feature major cast members of both the Jurassic World and Jurassic Park franchise.
Here is the trailer.
I think the obvious place to start with this is to talk about this franchise as a whole. Jurassic Park started as a novel by Michael Crichton and published in 1990. The 1993 film blew everyone’s minds with the visuals, and the tension building; truly, a great adaptation from Spielberg. Not wanting to mess up a good thing, Spielberg convinced Crichton to write a sequel against the author’s better judgement.
Ironically, Spielberg convincing Crichton to write another novel in hopes to get source material for a novel still led to show business impacting the plot. For the sequel, Jeff Goldblum was the only main character from the first movie to sign on. The problem? Ian Malcom (Goldblum’s character) ended up dying at the end of the first novel but did not die in the film. So in the first 2 pages, Crichton had to undo a major plot point from his first book. (This doesn’t really have much to do with anything… I just think the true Hollywood story behind “The Lost World” is super interesting.) Additionally, Crichton made it pretty clear in interviews that “The Lost World” was not going to be nearly as good as his first novel. While personally I love “The Lost World” novel, he was right; not as good.
Anyway, the big takeaway from all of this is that the original author intended Jurassic Park to be a one-and-done story, and he “couldn’t see how anything could be better than Jurassic Park” (an actual quote from an interview during the press tour for “The Lost World”). The Lost World was pretty schlocky, so obviously Crichton knew what he was talking about. Furthermore, Jurassic Park 3 was basically an expensive B-movie; it has it’s charms but the movie doesn’t belong in the same genre.
So then a decade or so passes and we get to 2015’s Jurassic World. The nostalgia bubble for the original film is so inflated, and the hype machine performed beautifully. Nearly everyone saw this movie in theaters, and it was WORTH IT. It was fast paced when it needed, paid obligatory deference to the originals, and gave the audience exactly what it wanted… dino-mayhem in an operational park. Sure, it had all sorts of plot holes, but it still was a fun movie to watch.
3 years later, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom releases. At this point, everyone had a chance to think through the plot for Jurassic World, and we could all laugh at the nonsensical points (running from a T-Rex in heels?). Even still, Chris Pratt was now THE movie star, Jeff Goldblum’s return was hyped like crazy, and the trailer showed some pretty sweet clips of an aquatic dinosaur about to eat a surfer. We were all in… until we saw the movie. Sure, it hit a lot of the notes, but Bryce Dallas Howard was now a completely different character with different motivations, Chris Pratt now wanted all the dinosaurs dead for some reason, and they kept hammering on with the whole “we created our own types of dinosaurs” thing, despite that really being proven to be stupid in the last movie. Oh, also human cloning was now a thing, Jeff Goldblum clearly only showed up on set for 1 day, and all the awesome “dinosaurs in the real world” stuff just came from the epilogue to the movie. But fine… this was the 2nd movie of a 3 part story, so most of the hard-core fans decided to give it a pass and look forward the next one, which just HAD to be about all the people in the world fighting dinosaurs.
And I guess Jurassic World Dominion DID answer some of those questions… in a “Now This” clip in the first 5 minutes of the movie. Outside of that, the dinosaurs were just in the background. I am pretty sure this entire plot could happen without any dinosaurs, and the movie would only use a few action set pieces. Which is just so frustrating, because all I wanted to see from movie that promised to be about humans in a world overrun by dinosaurs is to see some human vs. dinosaur action, which you barely see in this movie outside of 2 set pieces… and one of those set pieces was technically not a “real” raptor but one of those genetically modified petri-dish raptors from Fallen Kingdom.
So here is the basic plot… Ellie Satler (from Jurassic Park) is investigating a locust infestation where a bunch of monster bugs eat all crops that aren’t GMO seeds from “evil corporation” (which lets just call Biosyn). It is leading to an ecological disaster, so she hunts down Alan Grant to drag him along to the Biosyn headquarters, where she has been invited by Ian Malcolm (First movie squad… UNITE!) Thats plot thread A.
Plot Thread B… Owen Grandy and Claire Dearing (Chris Pratt & Bryce Dallas Howard) are co-parenting Maisie Lockwood (clone girl from the first movie). Biosyn really wants her because she is the first human clone, and they want to cash in. So Biosyn kidnaps her from the secret cabin where all 3 of them live. Oh, and also they kidnap Blue’s (the raptor from Jurassic World) kid, but again… that almost seems like an afterthought. So Owen and Claire need to go and rescue her (and I guess also rescue the raptor, but again… who cares?).
Ok, so back to Plot A… Satler and Grant arrive at Biosyn, sneak into the labs and get proof the company is behind the locusts. They also find Maisie and start dragging her along. Plot B… Owen and Claire go to Malta, get involved with dinosaur trafficking underworld mob (yeah, WTF, right?), and run into Kayla Watts, a pilot for Biosyn who kinda sorta doesn’t like her employer. So they all jump in her plane and she flies them to the secret valley where Biosyn has been keeping dinosaurs (basically, Jurassic Park, but not on an island). Plane crashes, dinosaurs attack everyone, and eventually the gang from Plot B run into the gang from Plot A. Now the Jurassic Park gang can quip with the Jurassic World gang… YAY! The movie then ends when the bad guy CEO dies in the valley and the combined JP & JW team all fly away. Dinosaur valley is now a nature preserve, kids keep herbivores for pets, and everyone can now COEXIST. Isn’t that great?
Obviously there are a few scenes in there where dinosaurs attack people, but the things that made the Jurassic Park so great are completely missing from this last outing. No suspense, no mystery, no wonder… It was all just plot point-to-point-to-point. Obviously this film was one of the more expensive films in this franchise, but it just didn’t have any of the effect. I think I like Dominion more than Fallen Kingdom, but they are fighting it out for fifth and sixth place, no question. Even Jurassic Park 3 with all its faults is enjoyable in its own way, but this one is a chore. I gave Fallen Kingdom a pass because I figured it to be a set-up for something bigger, but Dominion is the equivalent of a wet fart.
I mean, if you want to do an “Ellie Satler fights the evil corporation with genetically modified locusts” movie, that could actually work, but don’t market it as “Jurassic World 3”. If you want to do a movie about the emotional implications surrounding human cloning, I’d show up to watch it, but make it a low budget spin-off and not a main plot in big budget sequel. This movie was almost 2 and a half hours long, but both plots didn’t have nearly enough development. And you can’t even tell me they weren’t open to other content between Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, because I think they even had some web series I was supposed to watch between the 2. I am generally here for ALL of the plot points they touched in this movie, just not all wrapped into one. In a marketplace desperately trying to craft “cinematic universes”, stretching all of these plots into three 90 minute flicks as opposed to one 150 minute one was a missed opportunity.
As a fan of the novels and original movies (and even an apologist for the first Jurassic World film), this last movie was by far the most disappointing conclusions I’ve ever seen. I definitely don’t think this is the worst movie out there… far from it. But the lingering potential of this franchise that was so evident when Jurassic World came out 7 years ago was clearly just lightning in a bottle, because what we were given just seems like an absolute waste. I do hope that Universal can now just let this franchise die… It and its fanbase has suffered enough.
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