Jurassic World Dominion Review :: Two generations collide in Jurassic World

Universal Pictures

It is pretty amazing to thing, considering the amount of special effects work involved, that it’s only taken five years to complete the Jurassic World trilogy. It took four year to get a second Jurassic Park movie made and another three years for the third. Of course, computers have gotten more powerful over time, allowing for more detailed models and faster rendering times, bringing the majestic and terrifying dino-beasts to life on the big screen. Unfortunately, quick turnaround times for films like this seem to mean story is sacrificed in favor of effects and action scenes.

That seems to be the case with the final film of the second trilogy, Jurassic World Dominion. The story picks up several years after the end of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The dinosaurs that escaped into the wild and into civilization are a bit of a problem, not adjusting well to the larger cities they find themselves in. Surprisingly, the government is trying to find ways to protect them by creating habitats and moving them to a remote location in Italy’s Dolemite Mountains with the help of a company called Biosyn (apparently these dinosaurs have adapted or been engineered to survive in the cold). Meanwhile, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are holed up somewhere in a remote cabin with Maisie (Isabella Sermon), now a teen, still unaware that she is a clone and fed up with being forbidden from going out into the world, feeling trapped with these two people who aren’t her parents. Raptor Blue is still out there in the forest but she has a surprise … a baby Blue, having reproduced on her own just like Dr. Wu (BD Wong) had warned because of the DNA used to fill in the missing pieces of the raptor DNA. Owen and Claire are doing their best to keep Blue, the baby and Maisie from being captured … until one day Maisie and Beta (the name she gave the baby) are indeed kidnapped.

Universal Pictures

But that’s just half of the film’s story. In the heartland of the US, crops are being destroyed by gigantic locusts, obviously bio-engineered but by who and for what reason. Enter Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern, making her return to the franchise aside of lending her voice to some video games), who is trying to figure out where the big bugs came from. One clue is that the locusts are not eating crops grown with Biosyn seed. Coincidence? She knows of one person who might be able to help her so she drops in on an archaeological dig headed by … Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill also making his return). The two obviously have some unresolved feelings even though they haven’t seen each other for years, but Ellie drags Alan (actually a willing participant) on her quest, and she has an invite to visit the Biosyn campus, thanks to old friend Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum, who did appear in the last film). He helps them get into the area where the locusts are created so they can get a DNA sample but as they try to make their exit all hell breaks loose and they also encounter Maisie, and eventually Dr. Wu (the longest running character throughout the six films) who explains that Maisie and Beta hold the to stopping the locusts he created, because if he doesn’t the food chain collapses and we all die. The two worlds collide when Owen and Claire also show up at Biosyn after they learn that’s where Maisie has been taken, and then it is up to the characters from both series to stop the end of the world.

I mean, that’s a lot to pack into one summer blockbuster. And that’s not to mention the subplots that take Owen and Claire to Malta, underground dinosaur dealers, newly created species, and the nefarious scheme of Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), head of Biosyn, and the introduction of new characters Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman), the ringleader of the kidnappers, Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a pilot, and Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), Dodgson’s right hand (or is he?). And yes, there are brief appearances by previous cast members Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda to tie everything together. There’s just so much going on that we only get threads of story that are overtaken completely by action sequences, giving us as many dinosaurs as we could ever want. The movie rarely takes a moment to breathe, and when it does that it very short-lived because there’s another action scene right behind it. And that doesn’t give the cast a whole lot to do either except react, panic, scream and/or run. The writers assume we know all of them by now so we don’t need to have any more personality from them, and the new characters are thinly drawn (except for Cole, who does play a larger part in the story).

Pratt’s Owen is pretty much the guy we’ve known from the last two movies, but there is some humor with his characters when he meets Grant who is bemused that Owen thinks he can actually control the dinosaurs with ‘mutual respect’. Goldblum’s Malcolm is also amused by these young people as well as the fact that they’ve given the dinos names. It’s almost a shame that the Owen and Claire characters had to be in the film because the dynamics between Ellie, Alan and Ian are much more interesting when they are together — Alan and Ian still seem to have some unspoken rivalry when it comes to Ellie — and they seem to have their acts more together once the two worlds collide. I haven’t seen the original trilogy since the last one was released, but it still felt like those three characters had never left as the actors fit right back into their roles. Pratt and Howard’s characters just don’t have that much history so they suffer in the storytelling.

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The standouts are Sermon’s Maisie, the impetuous teen who doesn’t know her own secret and just wants to be a normal kid. Sermon brings a surprising maturity to the role and she never allows Maisie to be helpless. No matter how much Owen and Claire worry about her, Maisie has balls and knows how to take care of herself, often helping the others get out of scrapes. Mamoudou Athie is also very good as Ramsay Cole, probably the more complicated of the film’s characters. When we first meet Cole, he’s simply functioning as Dodgson’s emissary, guiding Ellie and Alan around the Biosyn campus, taking them to a lecture being given by Ian who is on the Biosyn payroll. But Ramsay plays a much larger role in the storyline and there is one point when he makes a point of telling Ellie and Alan which elevators to avoid that there is more to him than we originally assumed. I really liked DeWanda Watts, and she made the most of her cardboard character. Lachman was just a cartoon villain whose only purpose was to set up the plot that brought everyone together. She was just in and out of the picture. It was good to see Dr. Wu again, and BD Wong actually manages to make you empathize with him as he sees the error of his ways and is thwarted at every turn to stop what he put in motion. When Ian first encounters him, we get one of the biggest laughs of the movie with his reaction to Wu.

Of course the real stars of the film are the dinosaurs. As we’ve come to expect, the blending of CGI, animatronics and puppets is seamless, and you will be wowed by many of the action scenes with the amount of work that has gone into not just the foreground action, but everything going on in the background as well. It is some very impressive work. And on top of that, the dinosaurs almost have more character to them than most of the humans. Of course the Apex predators are terrifying, but some of the other, smaller ones were really able to give me an emotional connection to them, especially the baby dinos. We even feel for Blue when her baby is snatched away. It’s crazy to think that the CGI actors have more depth to them than most of the humans, so we have to tip our hats to the special effects crew who did all of that.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours, the film probably could have used some pruning (especially the whole Malta subplot) and brought the legacy cast together with the newer cast much sooner. As it stands, Jurassic World Dominion should be a Summer crowd-pleaser for those who are just going for the dinosaurs and the action. If you’ve followed the franchise from the beginning, you will enjoy seeing Dern, Neill and Goldblum together again because they still have that dynamic of old friends (or frenemies). It’s certainly not a film for which you will see many good critical reviews, because it’s not a movie made for critics. It’s a Summer blockbuster, pure and simple, so if you just want to escape from the real world for a couple of hours, there are worst ways to do that. Jurassic World Dominion is a filmic rollercoaster ride, and it fulfills that mission to just be an escape. Take it for what it is and have a good time.

Jurassic World Dominion has a run time of 2 hours 26 minutes, is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action, some violence and language.