Jurassic World: Dominion

Last week I wrote about the box office dominating Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to a two decade old action flick. The epitome of cashing in on nostalgia, right? Right? Turns out…there is an even more nostalgic pitch that exists. Enter Jurassic World: Dominion. Where Top Gun was built to stand on its own, the Jurassic movies have always left a shred of possibility for sequelization, perhaps to their detriment. On a recent thread on Twitter @mistertodd asked: “Is there any other movie as good as Jurassic Park with sequels as bad as the Jurassic Park sequels? Closest I can think of, amusingly, is Jaws, but even Jaws 2 is pretty decent.” It’s a genuinely interesting question. The first franchise that comes to mind for me is Alien. In following the prompt I have to admit that Aliens is a genuinely good movie, but after that Ridley Scott’s ability to convey his ideas on screen has decreased rapidly in the Alien universe. So it’s not just Spielberg movies that find themselves in the unfortunate place of being hard to add to. 

Jurassic Park is one of those movies that exists in a perfect place. Computer generated graphics were nothing like they are now, practical effects artists were in their prime, and - something that I think is essential to this argument - the original Jurassic was able to do something that had legitimately never been done before on the big screen. The moment that Dr. Sattler has her head turned to see the brontosaurus herd for the first time, to this day, stands out as one of the best scenes in cinema. The pacing, the fact that Spielberg focuses first on his actors and their reactions, building tension in the viewer before revealing the mammoth creatures. The rising score by John Williams. It’s entirely magnificent. The problem that Jurassic Park has continued to struggle with since that first movie is, simply put, they haven’t been able to hit the audience with a similar feeling of awe and wonder. And following in that same pattern, Jurassic World: Dominion flounders in the same way.

I should be very clear: I don’t think that Dominion is a bad movie. I do, however, think that it struggles to differentiate itself. An issue that is compounded by the fact that Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum reprise their roles as Doctors Sattler, Grant, and Malcolm. The return of the original triumvirate is an absolute boon for marketing, again, capitalizing on the emotions of people who sat in the theater back in 1993. But the problem is, much like Star Wars before it, the storyline that follows the new characters is sacrificed in an effort to give the original characters more screen time. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are tremendous performers in their own right, and they show that in this movie, but their time is shared, and therefore shortened. 

Following the cataclysmic events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom the Jurassic World park has failed yet again, only this time the dinosaurs got out, migrating across the world. Those events have the possibility to set up a world in which dinosaurs have truly taken over the ecosystem. I will admit, the potential of a Jurassic movie that edges on the post apocalyptic, with dinosaurs taking over cities and people fleeing new and dangerous predators is a delicious idea. Unfortunately the time jump required to convincingly tell that story isn’t taken here. It has only been a few years. Dominion opens with a cheeky Now This news bit that details how much the world has changed since dinosaurs integrated with the ecosystem. It’s brief and somewhat humorous, but the gravity of “dinosaurs live among us” is pretty quickly dismissed as you see the world largely operating normally. The story then focuses in on Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing, as Claire tries to thwart a black market Dino breeding facility and Owen wrangles Parasaurolophus in the Sierra Mountains. Again, interesting, but thematically meaningless, as just a short twenty minutes later the conflict of the film is made evident. 

Believe it or not, Biosyn, the corporate replacement of InGen and Mantah Corp, is up to something. Giant dino-grasshoppers are ravaging crops in the Midwest (but not attacking Biosyn crops) and poachers are spying on Blue (Grady’s raptor friend) and Maisie Lockwood (clone kid). Place setting that builds into Dominion’s core conflict. What results is a genuinely interesting mix of Fast & Furious and Mission Impossible. Which on the surface sounds great, but I caught myself throughout the movie asking the question: “Does this feel like Jurassic Park?” Perhaps that question doesn’t need to be asked. Perhaps by asking it I am setting myself up for disappointment. Still, the fact remains, as a sequel to Jurassic Park there is a sort of expectation that it feels like its predecessor. What’s most confusing to me is that eventually Dominion comes around to that. What starts as a movie about dinosaurs living in the real world, quickly pulls all of its characters into another park. Only it’s not technically a park. Despite the fact that there are observation posts, an underground rail system, and a control room replete with security personnel. A quick trip to Malta and a daring chase with weaponized raptors and Dominion upsets its new formula to venture back into another version of Jurassic Park. To be clear, not the film, the concept. 

Again, to make it clear, this movie isn’t bad. It’s just motivationally confusing. Colin Trevorrow is a good director. I will always stand by the fact that his version of Star Wars Episode IX was far superior to the one we actually got. That notwithstanding, Jurassic World: Dominion is a fun movie that feels like it buckled a bit under the weight of trying to continue the story from the first two films, while also making a movie for the original cast. It’s a lofty goal that is packed into too short a movie. And in an era where CGI transports us to alien worlds and materializes fantastical creatures, dinosaurs just don’t instill the same level of awe and surprise that they used to. Going forward Jurassic Park has to find a way to reignite the magic. There has to be a way to surprise us that doesn’t rely on just bigger badder dinos. Dominion tries, and almost succeeds, but in the end we get a good popcorn flick with noble aspirations and faulted execution. Go in, have fun, and don’t expect too much. 

@LubWub
~Caleb