Main cast: Chris Pratt (Owen Grady), Bryce Dallas Howard (Claire Dearing), Laura Dern (Dr Ellie Sattler), Jeff Goldblum (Dr Ian Malcolm), Sam Neill (Dr Alan Grant), DeWanda Wise (Kayla Watts), Mamoudou Athie (Ramsay Cole), Isabella Sermon (Maisie Lockwood), Campbell Scott (Dr Lewis Dodgson), BD Wong (Dr Henry Wu), Omar Sy (Barry Sembène), Justice Smith (Franklin Webb), Daniella Pineda (Dr Zia Rodriguez), Scott Haze (Rainn Delacourt), Dichen Lachman (Soyona Santos), Caleb Hearon (Jeremy Bernier), Freya Parker (Denise Roberts), and Kristoffer Polaha (Wyatt Huntley)
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Oh god, unlike the dinosaurs, this franchise shows no sign of dying, and given the box office receipts of Jurassic World Dominion, it will probably live on until the next millennium. It’s all our fault, and god knows what we will be called to do as penance later on.
Now, after the events in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, I assumed somewhat naïvely that this movie brought back all the main cast members of the franchise for some epic man versus dinosaur showdown. After all, that idiot girl Maisie let loose all the dinosaurs in that movie because she thought they were like her, so it’s prime monster mash time, right? Well, no.
This movie is about people versus an evil corporation, BioSyn Genetics, and the dinosaurs here kill because they are driven to it by poachers and mad scientists, and it’s totally the fault of these people when they become dinosaur chow.
There are two different stories awkwardly squished together here.
The first one, comprising the annoying folks from the previous two movies that can’t dial down their sarcasm and volume are back to go all woo, dinosaur rights, dinosaurs are our friends, dry hump one today. The velociraptor Blue has managed to lay an egg on its own and produce a kid which is called, brilliantly, Beta.
Naturally, that imbecile Maisie decides to sneak out with Beta because they don’t like staying safe away from the bad guys, and get kidnapped by BioSyn people that want to do the usual research on them to make bad things, blah blah blah.
Owen, Claire, and the rest of the insufferable twats along with new and equally insufferable allies will wisecrack, quip, and sass their way to look for the useless two wretches.
On a less obnoxious side of things, Dr Ellie Sattler discovers that genetically engineered dinosaur locusts are slowly wiping out crops, which can lead to worldwide famine and put an end to the global obesity pandemic once and for all. She also finds it super suspicious that the crops genetically modified by BioSyn are left alone, so she contacts Dr Alan Grant for his assistance.
Meanwhile, Dr Ian Malcolm is working for BioSyn, and he soon realizes that, indeed, those people under the leadership of Dr Lewis Dodgson are planning for world dominion by controlling the global food supply.
Oh, and all this is Dr Henry Wu’s fault. I don’t know why nobody has done the world a favor and shoot this fellow dead, because he is behind every problem in every freaking movie in this franchise. He’s in good company with the insufferable Greta Thunberg-wannabe Maisie, though. The world would be a better place if someone would tie up these two in a sack, weight the sack down with stones, and toss it into the ocean.
I suppose the dinosaurs are nice to look at, but they aren’t the main focus of this movie. When they do appear, it’s for some tired old “someone does something stupid, and the big tall lizard monster is then provoked into going all Godzilla on everyone else” moments that have been done to death already in this franchise. Jurassic World Dominion may have a grandiose title for a movie, but the dinosaurs feel more like an afterthought, something for perfunctory action and suspense moments and then tucked away when this movie fancies itself to be some evil big pharma thriller.
It’s not even a fun thriller because the whole plot is trite, boring, and done many times before. Also, because this is two big stories squished together, both story lines barely develop before colliding for a tired, robotic denouement involving… yes, big scary lizards and the obligatory T-Rex. How many times do I need to see these things, really?
The parts with the three older characters are watchable, as they resemble human beings in some ways, and the cast members aren’t trying too hard to be hopping around and creaking out sarcastic one-liners as if they would be paid in one Adderall per line. However, their stories and their relationships are never fleshed out in ways that are memorable.
The other faction… ugh, maximum annoyance. If anything, having the two generations of cast members together in one movie only drives home how superior the first three movies in this franchise are compared to anything that come after!
So, in the end, nothing really changes, Wu and Maisie are still alive to stink up the joint and no doubt spark further catastrophe to give these people an excuse to make one more movie, and I never really get to have any fun here. They could and should have split this one into two movies, if you ask me, so that each story can be given appropriate treatment with a climactic confrontation with BioSyn in the third movie. Plus, doing so would have allowed for more dinosaur action—the main draw of these movies, after all.
Anyway, Jurassic World Dominion is a half-baked, often messy movie with the sole saving grace being that the most obnoxious characters don’t get as much screen time here as they did in the previous movie. Thank the packed cast for that! Still, if they were just going to half-ass the movies from now on, maybe it’s time for call for an extinction order on this franchise.
