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Anyone who knows me knows just how much I love Jurassic Park. It's my favorite movie of all time. Growing up, my dad and I watched it all of the time. Whenever it's on TV, I put it on. This movie means so much to me and I have so many memories attached to it. This series was my Star Wars. When I was younger, there were always rumors that there was going to be a fourth one, but it never came to fruition. This all changed in 2013 when it was announced that a new movie was coming out called Jurassic World. It felt too good to be true. The movie came out in 2015 and was great. I remember sitting in the theater seat not really believing I was finally getting a new Jurassic. Since it made all kinds of money, a sequel was announced. It came out three years later and was called Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. When I watched it, I thought it was great, but upon repeat viewings it didn't really hold up all that well. It wasn't terrible by any means (I still think it's pretty good), but it wasn't amazing. What was really interesting was that, in the end, dinosaurs were in the mainland and began to spread all over the planet. It was really becoming a Jurassic world. There was a sequel announced prior to Fallen Kingdom being released and in 2019 something really special happened. It was announced that Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum were coming back as paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, and chaotician Ian Malcolm, repsectively. This was huge. For me, this trio is like the Han, Luke, and Leia. I was thrilled and very emotional. Fast forward three years and the movie is finally out. It was one of the first movies to resume filming during the pandemic and went through some troubles. Finally, it's out. The premiere happened a few days before it was released and the reviews, um, well they weren't the best. Right now it's the lowest rated in the entire franchise. When I went to see it, I was very worried. At the time of this writing, I've seen the movie twice. Is it as bad as critics are saying or is this an example where I think they're wrong? That's what I'm here to tell you.
Jurassic World: Dominion is directed by Colin Trevorrow and stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, and Isabella Sermon. It's been four years since Isla Nublar exploded, and dinosaurs now roam the planet. Owen Grady (Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Howard) are now raising Maisie (Sermon) in this new, dangerous world and soon set out on an adventrure that will take them across the globe. With all of that out of the way, let's dive into the review!
Dominion is not nearly as bad as all of the critics are saying. It certainly is not worse than Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (any chance I can to take a dig at that movie I will). Is it perfect? Hell no, but I had a lot of fun watching it. For me, the highlight of this movie was seeing the original trio come back from the very first movie. Alan Grant (Neill) is one of my favorite movie characters and when he showed up for the first time, I got a little choked up. It was great seeing him interact again with Ellie (Dern) and Ian (Goldblum). Him and Ellie spend the most time together throughout the film and he regrets where the relationship ended up. In the first Jurassic Park, they were romantically involved but by the third one, Ellie ended up getting married to a different guy. The chemistry between the three of them is great as usual and it feels like old friends catching up. Goldblum, as usual, steals a lot of scenes, too. When it comes to the characters from the previous two movies, Owen and Claire are great as usual. In this one they are a couple and raising Maisie in secret. The relationship comes across as genuine, since Pratt and Howard have such great chemistry with each other. When it comes to Claire, it's been really cool to see her arc over these past couple of movies. In World, she only saw the dinosaurs as assets, just things on a checkboard. In Fallen Kingdom, we see her trying to rescue the creatures from an exploding island and here, we see her really trying to come to terms with everything she has done over the past two movies. When it comes to new characters, my favorite is easily Kayla Watts (Wise). She's a pilot that brings in cargo for a company called Biosyn (more on them in a bit). She was a great new addition to the series and added a ton of energy to the movie. I really liked what they did with her. It was also great seeing Grant, Ellie, and Ian interact with Owen, Claire, Maisie, and Kayla I never thought I'd get to see it in this franchise. For me, it had the same feeling as in Infinity War and Endgame, seeing all of this old and new characters talking with each other. There's one scene involving Grant and Owen that's just fantastic. It's one of my favorites of the whole movie (I won't get into it too much because of spoilers). Moving on from the humans, the dinosaurs are great. There's the classic ones like T.rex and Blue the raptor (who's barely in the film sadly), but there are also a ton of new ones as well. For the first time in the franchise we get to see feathered dinosaurs, like the Therozinosaurus, an herbivore with claws like Wolverine. This guy had a scene with Claire that was just amazing. It was tense and very suspenseful. The other new guy on the block I really liked was Giganotosaurus, one of the biggest carnivores to ever walk the planet. He wasn't the most accurate portrayal of the animal (to be fair, not a lot of dinosaurs in this franchise are), but he was just really cool to look at. There's a sequence that's in the trailer that just got me really excited involving the whole crew. It felt like classic Jurassic. What was really cool was that he was portrayed as a physical prop on set. The actors were able to see a giant animatronic dinosaur. Here's a good look at him.
For those of you who don't know, animatronics are mechanical puppets. They've been a part of this franchise since the first one. The effects on the dinosaurs, for the most part, were fantastic. On my first viewing, I saw the movie in IMAX, so I was really able to see all of the details. The action sequences in this movie were also top-notch. There's one in Malta which is essentially Jason Bourne meets dinosaurs. It's very cool and is one of my favorite sequences in the movie. For hardcore fans of the franchise like myself, there are also a lot of little Easter eggs to previous installments.
I'm just warning you, this section is gonna make it sound like I hate this film. I don't. It's just that I love this series so much. So, Fallen Kingdom, as mentioned before, ended with the dinosaurs getting to the mainland. We've seen a glimpse of this premise in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, when the T.rex was loose in San Diego. Fallen Kingdom was making it seem like we were gonna see that but times ten. It was a huge part of the marketing campaign for this movie and I was really excited to see it, since it was one of the most unique premises this series has offered. Unfortunately, we don't see a lot of it. This plot line is mostly delegated to the beginning in a news montage. The trailers also showed Owen wrangling a herd of Parasaurolophous and Maisie seeing an Apatosaurus in town. That, and the Malta sequence, is really the extent to which we see this idea play out. It sucks because they were great parts of the film. I was really looking forward to seeing the dinosaurs live among us and how we adapted to living with them. Going in, I knew that it wasn't going to be dinosaurs versus humans because these creatures are animals. Wolves don't try to take over towns. I wanted to see how these magnificent animals could disrupt ecosystems, which have taken millions of years to get where they are now. Instead of this really cool idea, we get a plot that mainly has to do with genetically engineered locusts. Yeah, you read that right. I'm really sorry for spoiling that for you, but it is a huge issue I had with the movie. I don't know why Colin Trevorrow thought it was a good idea to manufacture such a convoluted (and unneeded) subplot. Continuing this trend, I have to talk about Maisie. In Fallen Kingdom, it was revealed that she was a human clone. I was ok with this idea as long as they didn't do more with it in this movie. Just leave it alone and move on. They don't. If anything the filmmakers doubled down on it and kind of retconned the explanation in the prior film (I won't spoil it). It felt like the writers of the movie (for which Trevorrow is one of them) were trying to make things harder for themselves. It got to be a little too convoluted and had me rolling my eyes at parts. All you had to do was focus on dinosaurs around the world. Another thing that really bugged me was Biosyn and Dodgson (Campbell Scott). Forgive me, but this next part is me nerding out. Dodgson was actually in the first Jurassic Park movie. He was this guy:
In that movie, he hired Dennis Nedry to steal the embryos from Jurassic Park so his company, Biosyn (not mentioned in the film but featured heavily in the books), could profit off of them. Biosyn is a genetics company that's rivals with Ingen, the corporation that made the dinosaurs. After the first movie, we never hear about him or his company again. For Dominion, he was coming back with a new actor (since the original guy was a creep). I was excited to see what we were gonna see from him and Biosyn. My problem with the movie is that they don't mention his, or the company's history, with the franchise. Not once is it mentioned that he's partially the reason the original park tanked or that Biosyn was in competition with Ingen. Don't get me wrong, Scott does a great job with the character, but I wanted to see what he was up to since the original park fell. It felt like a missed opportunity. In regards to the music, it was fine. I love Michael Giacchino's theme for Jurassic World, but there's nothing really new here. It was a huge mistake not using the original theme from the first Jurassic Park. My next issue is the same one I had with Rise of Skywalker. For this movie, Colin Trevorrow said it would be the conclusion to all of the prior films. I was hoping this would include Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 (which rules and I won't hear anything less). This film doesn't really follow through on that promise. Granted it does feel like a conclusion, albeit a little rushed, but it doesn't really tie into the prior installments. This was just something that bugged me a little. I also felt the ending was a tad bit rushed. For something that's marketed as the "epic conclusion", it didn't really feel all that epic. I wanted to spend more time with everyone. I mentioned earlier that this movie used a lot of animatronics. A lot of them were great/fantastic (the Giganotosaurus). There were a few, however, that looked a little fake. A little gripe I had was that the end battle was kind of the same as it was in Jurassic World. I loved the fight there, but here I was hoping for something a little different. At times it was a little hard to see as well. Another complaint I have has to do with the marketing. Like the previous installment, the previews showed a lot of this movie. One of the final scenes is shown and it really irritated me. This next part is gonna sound like a negative but it's not. I'm not really sure where they can go next in the franchise. This is gonna sound bad, but I don't want another movie. I don't want this to turn into Star Wars where I just start to ge tired with each new release. What would really be cool is if they made an anthology series that explored different people's encounters with the dinosaurs in the wild. It would be a really interesting way to explore the world and deliever on this unique premise. A few years ago, we got a tast of what this could be with a short film called Battle at Big Rock. I won't delve too deep into what it's about but you can watch it for free here.
To wrap everything up, Jurassic World: Dominion is a really fun time and not nearly as bad as everyone was saying. The original trio was great and their chemistry was still fantastic, Owen and Claire were awesome, it was amazing seeing the new and old crew interact, DeWanda Wise crushed it as Kayla and the new dinosaurs were amazing. It also helped that the action sequences were a lot of fun and, for the most part, the dinosaur effects were really well done . What really holds this movie back from being amazing though, is that is never really does anything with the dinosaurs living among us premise, which stinks since it's such a cool idea. Instead the film chooses to focus on an unnecessary subplot involving locusts and the movie doubles down on the human cloning aspect, which was one of the most uninteresting parts of the last one. The movie really doesn't mention Dodgson's link to the first movie and never explores Biosyn's history with Ingen. The music is also a little lackluster, too. Is the epic conclusion I was hoping for? No. Are there things that I wish were done differently? Oh yes. With all of that being said, I did have a lot of fun with this movie. It's bittersweet that this franchise is ending (for now at least). I came to the realization that I'm in the same spot now as I was in over a decade ago, wondering if we'll ever see another entry in the Jurassic series. I'm sure we will, but I don't think it will ever be the same. There was a moment towards the end of the movie, where a character is emotionally looking at a dinosaur and it's staring back at him. It turns and runs away. In a way, that's kind of a representation of how I feel. I'm pretty sure we're not going to get another movie with the original cast again and even Chris Pratt said it would be years before he comes back. I'm really going to miss these guys. I'm also going to miss seeing these movies with my mom, too. It became a bit of a tradition for us. If I were to rate it, I'd give Jurassic World: Dominion a 7.5-8/10. Be sure to see it on the biggest screen possible. My God, what a ride it's been!
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