Dominion, the successor to Jurassic World, isn't nearly as wonderful as its predecessor
After three decades and six Jurassic Park films, fans have been exposed to every kind of adventure imaginable, whether it good, terrible, quick, or tedious. Before Jurassic World: Dominion, I never would have thought a film to be so absolutely dull.
The Asylum's Jurassic World: Dominion rip-off
The people who made Dominion spent way too much time trying to figure out what their characters were thinking. Because of this, this monster's actions are better and more fully explained than those of almost any other character in the movie.
And when the film adaptation was released in June of that year, and people saw how the filmmakers used animatronics and cutting-edge digital effects to bring these massive lizards back to life, and Spielberg worked his suburban-Hitchcock, multiplex-seducing magic (the scene with the reverberating water glass still gives me goosebumps), it genuinely created a buzz. You may not have even enjoyed the film. You still recognized the film thrill experience as an art form.
Even if Jurassic World Dominion isn't the last chapter in this nex-gen reboot cycle, it's reasonable to assume it will be the series' final chapter — or, to put it another way, the last straw. As a series, we've reached the point of no return, when the last embers of hope and enthusiasm for this particular piece of intellectual property have been extinguished like so many poor Stegosaurs.
In the title, the word "dominion" after the brand is a play on words. This movie tries hard to be any kind of blockbuster except a Jurassic World movie.
The original Jurassic Park holy trinity of Dern, Neill, and Goldblum are all on board, with the first two researching why dachshund-sized locusts are decimating fields throughout the Midwest.
Even though the film flings them all over the world and plays musical chairs with its parallel plots, a sleazy tech genius called Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) binds them all together — picture Steve Jobs meets Elon Musk meets a psychopathic whippet. He hopes to utilize all of the genetic information to "make the world a better place," which equates to a lot of money for his firm, Biosyn.
The main spectacle of Dominion — what makes it (better than Jurassic World) a worthwhile big-screen experience — comes from witnessing dinosaurs occupy the human world, rather than monitoring the fortunes of any specific people they chance to meet. Dr. Grant seems to recognize this.
Both of Pratt and Howard's characters are preoccupied with dinosaur wrangling prior to the abduction; she is a vigilante following the illicit market for dinosaur trade, while he has been deputized to hunt dinosaurs on horseback and sometimes lasso them. There will be no repercussions of any kind for any of these storylines in the future.
Pratt and Howard have somewhat more personality on screen than Sermon as Maisie Lockwood, who is less of a genuine character and more of a story device that would be better suited for, say, a television series about dinosaurs and genetic engineering rather than this film series. Despite the fact that their collective storyline focuses on repairing their family and, in the process, Blue's, you never get the impression that they care about each other or acquire a cause to care about them. Dern, meanwhile, embodies the same intellectual outrage that made Sattler so compelling and vital in the previous picture, while her character's chemistry with Neill's fills the void in the connection between Claire and Owen.
In other words, if Dominion wants to be a Jurassic movie, then director Colin Trevorrow and cowriter Derek Connolly, who collaborated on the original Jurassic World, appear more concerned in providing fans with a blockbuster buffet than a well-cooked entrée.
An exhilarating pursuit through Malta's tortuous streets with Pratt and a motorbike is designed to evoke the best parts of every previous espionage thriller released in the last two decades. Another rooftop and apartment window pursuit sequence seems like it belongs in a Bourne movie.
The dinosaurs don't seem like they are just extras in this story. They are more or less extras.
There was no such thing as a "pure" Jurassic Park in the first film. It's a '90s monster movie about enormous creatures going rampant. A novel take on drive-in movie horrors, delivered by Spielberg and the rest of the actors, made the material feel fresh and thrilling.
Biosyn, on the other hand, and its leader, Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), may be remembered by Jurassic Park fans from a meeting where his stooge, Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), revealed his true identity to the public.
That day, none other than Neill himself suggested Dr. Grant's following dizziness and shaking.
Since Neill's last appearance as Dr. Grant was in Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic Park III (2001), the last movie in both Jurassic trilogies, the circumstances of his return to the role were pretty good.