Jurassic World Dominion - Theatrical Review

Whatever inspiring or creative story that came with Steven Spielberg's vision of Jurassic Park is long gone in Jurassic World Dominion. It was missing in Jurassic World as well, but now two films later, both Colin and Emily would rather showcase the cheesiest lines of dialogue and nonsensical action beats that only serve to create a nostalgic form of stupidity that try so hard to re-create favorite scenes from the original 1993 film. None of it works unless the prescription called for a smattering of random dinosaur chickens running around while the humans make one bad decision after another. At least someone on the film crew saw through this mess of a movie and added a couple of lines that had their characters breaking the 4th wall and saying how cheesy and bad the movie really is.

What made Jurassic Park work so well back in the '90s was that Spielberg and his crew knew how to make a movie with animals without being cruel. It navigated what a real-world scenario would be like if an extinct animal and humans crossed paths and all the chaos that came with that. But these Jurassic World films took a meaner approach to these dinosaurs that was not about exploration and science, but rather about making money and selling dinosaurs on the black market. These films did not have a kind bone in their body besides the hilarious element that Chris Pratt could be a Velicoraptor Whisperer. Now Jurassic World Dominion is set four years after the events of the last film, and offers zero original plot or engaging characters, even when the film brings back the three key stars that helped make the original film so memorable.

The funny thing about this third and hopefully final film of this franchise is that it doesn't even rely on dinosaurs for being the main threat. Instead, it's a laughable locust that has been engineered to be the size of a submarine sandwich. These sandwich-sized locusts have now been eating all the world's grain at an alarming rate and will cause a mass extinction if something is not done about it. The leader of this diabolical outfit is the doppelganger for Tim Cook from Apple, which is where the political and social commentary comes into play, but other than corporations trying to make a quick buck at the expense of the human race is about as far as it goes. As far as this Tim Cook surrogate goes, he's such a terribly thought-out villain that he is willing to kill off the entire planet (and likely himself in the process) just to make money, which when anyone gets in his way, he throws a temper tantrum and punches rolling chairs.

Meanwhile, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and their adopted kid of mysterious origins are hiding out in the woods with Blue the Velociraptor and its baby Beta. Soon enough, people kidnap the kid and baby Beta for reasons that are revealed later, but this sets Pratt and Howard on a trek across the globe to rescue both kiddos. At the same time, the script calls Sam Neil, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern to the same place in order to uncover the truth about the locusts that will have the two franchises meet in the middle and team up, complete with a T-Rex and more chicken dinosaurs. None of it is done in an organic entertaining way, but instead, it reads like these actors are just reading lines on cue cards to service the nostalgic elements of what came before it in the '90s. It's heavy-handed, unfunny, and completely dumb. But that's what everyone gets when a movie hires the writer from the Pacific Rim sequel. Yes, Hollywood is the only place where you can fail upwards.

Now despite all of that rubbish, perhaps the visual effects and action scenes could supplement the virus that is this movie's plot and dialogue, but those elements are indeed downright awful. The practical effects with the animatronics still look excellent, but every bit of CGI looks rushed as if they came from the early '90s. Not sure what happened here, but these computer-generated dinosaur effects range from shoddy to downright terrible in that they come across as unfinished. The action beats don't allow for any real suspense either due to the quick cuts every few seconds and the poor editing that would have a character on one side of the island one second, and the next, they would appear with the entire group out of nowhere. There is no sense of logic, suspense, or fun in this third film, no matter how hard they try to get you to love this franchise one last time by bringing back cheap nostalgia every second of the movie.

Jurassic World Dominion is the lowest form of cinematic storytelling and everyone should be disappointed that this was ever made and released. This movie offers nothing in the form of entertainment, fun, or even something poignant. It's time to lay this bird to rest or at least have the O.G. Spielberg come back and really make a movie that's worthy of telling in this universe. Skip This One Altogether.