The premise of Jurassic World: Dominion realizes the nightmare scenario first implied by Jurassic Park 29 years ago. Namely, what would happen if these resurrected creatures somehow escaped a Costa Rican island and then spread like kudzu across a city, a country, a continent, a hemisphere, the entire Earth? What are the national security and geopolitical implications? Would humanity be in a constant state of martial law as militaries seek to round up and destroy this invasive threat? Would we all become enthusiastic gun owners, just in case a ravenous prehistoric beast decided to pay an unexpected dinner visit, with your family as the main course?
These are questions Jurassic World: Dominion has zero interest in exploring. Dinosaurs have fully populated the globe since they were released into the wild during Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the previous installment of this increasingly dreadful franchise. Pteranodons now nest atop Manhattan skyscrapers with impunity. Leviathans happily snack on fishermen off the coast of Alaska. Razor-toothed predators terrorize patio diners, interrupting Sunday brunch as if being eaten alive is a new normal humanity simply shrugs away.
Perhaps Jurassic World: Dominion is merely offering biting commentary (ha ha) on a lax reaction to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Even if that were the case, its presentation of societal apathy is so over the top that whatever political points the film may be trying to make evaporate as soon as people flee with fright from one shrieking disruption of daily life after another, seemingly on an endless loop. No, I suspect this is more a matter of narrative laziness and a lack of curiosity for how such a situation would actually play out (probably something akin to Steven Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds or maybe A Quiet Place). The outright spoof Mars Attacks! seems more plausible by comparison.
Has another series of sequels squandered the promise, and misunderstood the brilliance, of a flat-out masterpiece so completely? Whatever counterexamples first come to mind – and, yes, there are many – these sequels are somehow worse. The key to Jurassic Park’s original artistic triumph was a perfect mixture of Spielberg as a maestro of soaring wonder (E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) and mischievous suspense (Jaws). He, it should be noted, was also working with Michael Crichton’s bestselling source material, a thrilling update of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
We’re now left in the incapable hands of returning director Colin Trevorrow (who helmed Jurassic World, the 2015 “reboot” of this disastrous IP) and his co-screenwriter Emily Carmichael (working with a threadbare story by Trevorrow himself and Derek Connolly). Jurassic World: Dominion is a kludge of a film that (finally?) unites two separate casts of characters: the beloved original trio (Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Sam Neill) and the one we couldn’t give a damn about (Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, a CGI velociraptor named Blue). Needless to say, the latter should be honored to grace the presence of the former. All involved should be embarrassed about participating in Jurassic World: Dominion.
If you’re wondering about this film’s kitchen-sink plot elements, in broad terms, here we go. It’s a rescue mission. A Bond-style espionage extravaganza. A disaster epic. A great escape. A Kaiju clash between two towering monsters. A battle against genetically engineered locusts. A full nostalgia trip. All of these narrative jigsaw pieces interlock into overwhelming boredom, frequent watch-watching. Jurassic World: Dominion amounts to a complete waste of time, one that I hope isn’t, yet again, replicated.
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
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