After Jurassic Park 3 in 2001, fans of the series began with Steven Spielberg as director and Michael Crichton as the book’s author thought that was it for the franchise that brought dinosaurs back to life on the big screen. Think again. Jurassic World stormed into theaters in 2015, starring Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, and before all was said and done, it had banked $1.67 billion.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom would land in 2018, taking $1.31 billion to the bank. Thanks to a pandemic and the world shut down, production on the third and so-called final film in the Jurassic series was met with delays on top of delays. But where we left off… dinosaurs had made it to the mainland and were spreading like a, well… virus. Talk about a cliffhanger! Four years after that tease of the “new normal,” audiences finally get Jurassic World: Dominion.
To the surprise of nobody, things aren’t going swimmingly. Dinosaurs and humans haven’t shared space ever in the billion-year history of our planet. The very thing that could destroy us, we actually made in a lab. Humans brought back to life something nature had naturally selected for extinction a long, long time ago.
The end is nigh for the Jurassic Park/World and what better way to bring things full circle, but to find a way, plot-wise, to bring back the original three—Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern—and have them star alongside Pratt and Howard? I’ll spare you the details of the plot of Dominion because it’s not worth even talking about. There are major Jurassic Park retreads throughout the final film, but what could have been a huge opportunity, was sadly instead a swing and a miss.
Dino-infused locusts? It’s like they had door #1, door #2, and door #3 in terms of a narrative for the sixth Jurassic movie, and filmmaker Colin Trevorrow (who also co-wrote the film with Emily Carmichael) went with door #105 and delivered us a story about a corrupt bio-science executive (who looks an awful lot like a certain Apple CEO), Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) and how he brought us to the brink of extinction—NOT from dinosaurs, but from a collapse in the global food market.
Sure, dinosaurs are there to complicate matters throughout the film. After all, our heroes and heroines need to add something to the story to increase the audience’s pulse rate because food science—I guarantee—will not do that.
There’s also this subplot, actually, it’s quite major, involving Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), who is effectively a clone of Charlotte Lockwood, that Pratt’s Owen Grady and Howard’s Claire Dearing have been raising for the last four years. She’s fourteen, and a handful. But we’re supposed to believe that she is the key to the entire franchise. Claire and Owen have her in the middle of nowhere, Montana, believing that nefarious folks want her and would turn her into a human pin cushion. They’re not wrong. How that plays out is beyond the suspension of disbelief we all surrender when we enter a darkened theater.
The set pieces are the dinosaurs. Still are and always has been. Permanently stuck in my brain is sitting in the theater back in 1993 and seeing the computer advancement right up there on the screen. Audiences had never seen such a realistic imagining of something that wasn’t really there… ever. It’s not that that sheen has worn off, but it has been almost 30 years. Film fans are a wise bunch and have “seen it all.” What is going to have to grab them beyond the shock and awe of the special effects, is the plot and/or an emotional tether between the audience and the characters onscreen. Sadly, neither aspect was achieved by Trevorrow and his team, even if all those involved tried valiantly.
From Neill to Dern to Pratt and Howard, all the actors are fantastic in their roles. The novelty of seeing the original three work with the new stars is managed quite well and they do more than fan service. They literally stumble on each other, and it makes sense that all would know of the others, and hearing their conversations, albeit too short, where they compare notes, is an entertaining experience for longtime fans.
It’s just too often Jurassic World: Dominion trips over itself. There are numerous plates up in the air to juggle and Trevorrow just doesn’t stick the landing, despite everyone’s best efforts. An opportunity was missed here to not just close out the series with a nice (and thrilling) bow, but a statement could have been made about greed and science and how the two should never mingle. There is also the opportunity to treat the dinosaurs like a virus, as previously mentioned. Then, use that as a commentary on how the Coronavirus was overseen globally and the transfer of wealth that shrunk the middle class further.
Instead, we get… ‘roid-raging locusts.
Grade: C-