Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

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This film turned out to be a disappointing theatrical experience, mainly due to the presence of rowdy kids, so I was relieved to revisit it in the hopes of getting more out of it. As it turns out, however, I was just reminded of how bad it was. My hopes were never exactly what you'd call high for this. However, I had forgotten just how much this movie sincerely lacks, especially considering its overkill runtime of 2h 27m, and bringing everyone back into the story for one significant collaborative effort.

I'm going to enter spoiler territory to review this, so to put it out there, one might not want to read on if they haven't yet seen 'Fallen Kingdom.' Now that I have that warning out of the way, this film picks up about four years after the events of 'Fallen Kingdom,' where young Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) unleashes a bunch of dinosaurs into the world, which rescues them from captivity. So, screw the other animals and people; they'll all eat. Anyway, despite how dumb it all is, the concept of a modern world overrun by dinos was admittedly appealing, but I wish it had been done differently.

With dinosaurs back on planet Earth, the world's ecosystem, to no one's surprise, enters a state of chaos, and humans aren't exactly surviving very well. So, once again, thanks a lot, Maisie. In the meantime, Biosyn Genetics (established way back when as a more crooked rival company to InGen) has been granted permission to create a dinosaur sanctuary in Italy's Dolomite Mountains. There, they continue their research on the creatures. However, they also want to get their hands on Maisie for research purposes, involving her immunity to a genetic disease.

Maisie now lives with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who still works with the Dinosaur Protection Group, and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who now works as a dinosaur wrangler, relocating stray dinosaurs. As life goes on for these experts in this new world, danger is imminent when crops begin getting devoured by giant locusts, which brings in Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to study the phenomenon. What they discover, to no one's real shock, is just another Biosyn "control" plot. I'm sorry if that is considered a spoiler. Part of what makes this so bad is its overpredictability.

The film goes through the motions, warning us about the dangers of messing with nature, and focuses mainly on the locusts and Maisie's significance to humanity, which is a classic zombie/infected plotline best explored in 'The Last of Us.' There are plenty of dinosaurs to be seen throughout, but there's not much to them when it comes to adding to the story. It's just to put something dangerous in the heroes' way. It's less of a dinosaur movie and more of a film that happens to have dinosaurs in it.

It's funny, but even at the time of its release, this claimed that it would be the "last one," but along came 'Rebirth' just three years later, which goes to prove once again that just because a franchise says "this is the final one," money talks. It helped in this case to bring back old characters, who also include Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), to bring in a solid generational split. But it also goes to show that just because everyone's in it doesn't mean it's necessarily good. What you need is a good writer to tie it all together.

When you get right down to it, I could consider the 'Jurassic' franchise to strongly fall under that category of a franchise where the first one is the only one you truly need, as the rest of them all pretty much convey the same lessons in what it means to play God and have control over something that will ultimately bite back in the end. Aside from the presence of a whole load of unrecognizable dinosaurs here (with a few exceptions), it's still just the same underlying concepts with a different delivery system, and altogether unimpressive despite the attempt using the 'Jurassic' all-star cast.

2/5

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