Jurassic World: Dominion
Year: 2022
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt & Sam Neill
Runtime: 146 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 14/06/22
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt & Sam Neill
Runtime: 146 mins
BBFC: 12
Published: 14/06/22
In an age where the big blockbuster franchises have been having almost yearly release (or in the case of the superhero genre multiple a year), to have a four-year gap in between films feels like a lifetime. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom released in 2018 to a lukewarm reception with it being clear that whilst the series wasn’t necessarily out of ideas just yet, it was failing to make those ideas interesting within the confines of a Jurassic Park film. So, despite its promising ending the franchise was forgotten about until the announcement of Jurassic World: Dominion in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as such also kind of got forgotten about. Now that the final film in the Jurassic franchise is finally here, has it truly been an event sixty-five million years in the making?
Four years since the destruction of Isla Nublar and the Lockwood Estate incident, dinosaurs run free and live in harmony with the rest of the world’s creatures. However, black market activity of dinosaur trade has led to animal rights activists campaigning for equal treatment of dinosaurs to other endangered animals. Former Jurassic World Operations Manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), is one such activist who seeks to uncover and break black market trading organisations to save the dinosaurs she feels responsible for. Claire and Owen (Chris Pratt) live together in a secluded cabin protecting their adopted daughter Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) from those attached to the Lockwood Estate. But when Maisie is kidnapped, along with Beta (Blue’s baby raptor), Claire and Owen travel the world in search for where they’re being taken.
Meanwhile Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is investigating the destruction of crops by seemingly pre-historic bugs which leads her to Biosyn, a genetic engineering corporation headed by a former InGen rival, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott). Ellie reaches out to Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to help her uncover Biosyn’s involvement in the crop destruction and find out what their former associate Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has to do with it.
Four years since the destruction of Isla Nublar and the Lockwood Estate incident, dinosaurs run free and live in harmony with the rest of the world’s creatures. However, black market activity of dinosaur trade has led to animal rights activists campaigning for equal treatment of dinosaurs to other endangered animals. Former Jurassic World Operations Manager, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), is one such activist who seeks to uncover and break black market trading organisations to save the dinosaurs she feels responsible for. Claire and Owen (Chris Pratt) live together in a secluded cabin protecting their adopted daughter Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) from those attached to the Lockwood Estate. But when Maisie is kidnapped, along with Beta (Blue’s baby raptor), Claire and Owen travel the world in search for where they’re being taken.
Meanwhile Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is investigating the destruction of crops by seemingly pre-historic bugs which leads her to Biosyn, a genetic engineering corporation headed by a former InGen rival, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott). Ellie reaches out to Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to help her uncover Biosyn’s involvement in the crop destruction and find out what their former associate Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has to do with it.
Much like Fallen Kingdom before it, Jurassic World: Dominion can best be described as two films that have been forced together, and whilst it doesn’t always work, it is considerably more fun than Fallen Kingdom. Claire & Owen’s story feels like a direct continuation of where Fallen Kingdom left off, meanwhile Ellie & Alan’s storyline feels like a rejected Jurassic Park IV script that’s been thrown in for nostalgia value. The two stories do naturally merge, leading to a great final act where both eras of the Jurassic franchise come together in a loving tribute to the thirty-year history of the series; but it would have been better if Biosyn had been more prevalent in the previous films as I’m pretty sure the only inference we get to the existence of it is in the original Jurassic Park where Denis Nedry obtains the Barbasol embryo canister from a young Dodgson. Director Colin Trevorrow implied that Dominion was going to wrap up unresolved storylines from the original Jurassic Park trilogy, but really all it did was bring back the corporation responsible for the downfall of Hammond’s original park for an entirely new storyline.
The key thing though is that I had fun with Dominion’s story. I have seen a lot of critics slamming the film and it has received a generally negative reception, but the reviews are I feel overly harsh and expect too much from the film. Audience reactions seem to be more positive and whilst Dominion definitely isn’t the best film in the franchise, I mean, it’s not even the best in the Jurassic World trilogy, it’s fun and that’s more than can be said about Fallen Kingdom.
I loved Claire’s character arc over the three Jurassic World films, and she is by far my favourite character in Dominion. The weight of her actions has finally caught up with her here and there’s a really touching moment early in the film where it’s made clear that the reason as to why she’s so committed to her activism is because she feels she needs to atone for her sins at Jurassic World. Bryce Dallas Howard delivers a great performance too, the best in the trilogy in my opinion, and factoring in the fact that Claire has now become an adoptive mother makes her character that much more compelling because it’s such an opposite from where she was at the start of the trilogy.
Owen meanwhile is Owen. I feel like his character might have been minimised as much as possible because of Pratt’s recent fall from grace in the public image. Making him an adoptive father was an interesting choice, though I don’t feel he gets to do very much with it. He gets some of the bets action sequences, but I almost forgot he was there a lot of the time.
I had hoped that Maisie would be more than a McGuffin in this film but unfortunately, she falls into the category of ‘sheltered child prodigy that holds the key to saving the world’ and the entire plot literally revolves around saving her from kidnappers so yeah…still a McGuffin like she was in Fallen Kingdom. But Sermon does deliver a strong performance in the role, hopefully a new young talent on the scene and I look forward to seeing what she does in the future.
I have to admit it was great seeing Laura Dern and Sam Neill reprise their roles. Obviously, Goldblum was in Fallen Kingdom but it was more of a cameo role, and whilst he’s not in Dominion as much as I expected it is a much larger role this time around. Their story doesn't feel like a Jurassic Park story though and I think it’s because they encounter very few dinosaurs. That’s probably got something to do with how old Sam Neill is now, he’s not quite as agile as he used to be and so he likely needed to be in as few action sequences as possible.
Dominion also introduces a new character, Kayla (DeWanda Wise). Kayla helps Claire and Owen look for Maisie and next to Claire she was my favourite character in the film. Wise brings such energy to the role and can hold her own alongside Pratt in the films busiest action sequences.
The key thing though is that I had fun with Dominion’s story. I have seen a lot of critics slamming the film and it has received a generally negative reception, but the reviews are I feel overly harsh and expect too much from the film. Audience reactions seem to be more positive and whilst Dominion definitely isn’t the best film in the franchise, I mean, it’s not even the best in the Jurassic World trilogy, it’s fun and that’s more than can be said about Fallen Kingdom.
I loved Claire’s character arc over the three Jurassic World films, and she is by far my favourite character in Dominion. The weight of her actions has finally caught up with her here and there’s a really touching moment early in the film where it’s made clear that the reason as to why she’s so committed to her activism is because she feels she needs to atone for her sins at Jurassic World. Bryce Dallas Howard delivers a great performance too, the best in the trilogy in my opinion, and factoring in the fact that Claire has now become an adoptive mother makes her character that much more compelling because it’s such an opposite from where she was at the start of the trilogy.
Owen meanwhile is Owen. I feel like his character might have been minimised as much as possible because of Pratt’s recent fall from grace in the public image. Making him an adoptive father was an interesting choice, though I don’t feel he gets to do very much with it. He gets some of the bets action sequences, but I almost forgot he was there a lot of the time.
I had hoped that Maisie would be more than a McGuffin in this film but unfortunately, she falls into the category of ‘sheltered child prodigy that holds the key to saving the world’ and the entire plot literally revolves around saving her from kidnappers so yeah…still a McGuffin like she was in Fallen Kingdom. But Sermon does deliver a strong performance in the role, hopefully a new young talent on the scene and I look forward to seeing what she does in the future.
I have to admit it was great seeing Laura Dern and Sam Neill reprise their roles. Obviously, Goldblum was in Fallen Kingdom but it was more of a cameo role, and whilst he’s not in Dominion as much as I expected it is a much larger role this time around. Their story doesn't feel like a Jurassic Park story though and I think it’s because they encounter very few dinosaurs. That’s probably got something to do with how old Sam Neill is now, he’s not quite as agile as he used to be and so he likely needed to be in as few action sequences as possible.
Dominion also introduces a new character, Kayla (DeWanda Wise). Kayla helps Claire and Owen look for Maisie and next to Claire she was my favourite character in the film. Wise brings such energy to the role and can hold her own alongside Pratt in the films busiest action sequences.
Dominion continues the stellar CGI and animatronic work seen in all of the Jurassic films, with some of the most highly detailed and lifelike dinosaurs ever put to film. However, Trevorrow’s directing is really quite hit and miss when it comes to how the film has been constructed visually. If you had told me that Trevorrow was one of two directors helming the film I could understand the inconsistent quality, but he’s the sole director. There’s a lot of beautiful shots in Dominion, but for every great shot there’s another that sucks. Equally the editing is sometimes spot on, but other times extremely erratic and difficult to follow.
The film is also far too long. At two hours and twenty-six minutes, Dominion is the longest Jurassic film by almost half an hour, and it shows. There’s a lot that could have been trimmed down here to make the pacing tighter.
Whilst on the whole, Jurassic World: Dominion isn’t quite the spectacular ending to the Jurassic franchise fans would have perhaps hoped for, it’s a far cry from the worst film in the series as many critics would have you believe. I had a lot of fun with Dominion, and the families that were in the audience with me could probably attest to that too with shrieks of fear and screams of laughter throughout. Dominion may claim to be burying the franchise for good, but if John Hammond taught us anything it’s that life finds a way, so it won’t surprise me if in ten or twenty years we see the franchise return from extinction.
The film is also far too long. At two hours and twenty-six minutes, Dominion is the longest Jurassic film by almost half an hour, and it shows. There’s a lot that could have been trimmed down here to make the pacing tighter.
Whilst on the whole, Jurassic World: Dominion isn’t quite the spectacular ending to the Jurassic franchise fans would have perhaps hoped for, it’s a far cry from the worst film in the series as many critics would have you believe. I had a lot of fun with Dominion, and the families that were in the audience with me could probably attest to that too with shrieks of fear and screams of laughter throughout. Dominion may claim to be burying the franchise for good, but if John Hammond taught us anything it’s that life finds a way, so it won’t surprise me if in ten or twenty years we see the franchise return from extinction.