HOLLYWOOD—Look I am going to say something that a lot of people would disagree with, but prove me wrong. There is NOT been a great movie in the “Jurassic Park” franchise since the 2015 sequel “Jurassic World” with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. There is something about Steven Spielberg’s touch on the 1993 classic that is just genius. That movie was so awesome that nothing has come close to it, since, not even the 2015 sequel.
Spielberg was a great storyteller and he knew how to balance adventure, action, terror and comedy in a way that made the story feel almost effortless. “World’s” success propelled a sequel that was ok, and now we have “Jurassic World: Dominion” which is awful. There is just too much going on here and I didn’t care one bit about anything. Was I intrigued with the prospect of legacy characters portrayed by Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum returning to the franchise? Without a doubt, but here’s the problem with the remake/sequel or as Mindy called it in the latest “Scream” flick in 2022, which should have simply been called “Scream 5:” it doesn’t always work. If you’re bringing legacy characters back to the fray the story needs to work with them being introduced flawlessly. It cannot feel forced and that is EXACTLY what it felt like in this movie. I almost asked myself this question out loud watching the movie, “WHY ARE THEY EVEN HERE?” What is there purpose?!
There were just dropped into the movie to be in the movie for the writers to say, “Look what we just accomplished.” And the answer is pretty straight-forward: nothing. Trying to describe this narrative for the viewer is so complicated because even I couldn’t understand it fully. Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are still living in seclusion, but they have a daughter or so the audience is made to think that. Her name is Maisie (Isabelle Sermon), who isn’t actually their daughter, but the genetic result of some science mastermind and she is the descendant of daughter of Benjamin Lockwood.
Maisie is some sort of prized possession that everyone is looking for and she has this DNA that is important for creating dinosaurs. No people I am not making this up. There are weird creatures manufactured in a lab that become a threat, but are also an ally in a convoluted way; it’s a jumbled mess involving locusts. Of course there are a variety of dinosaurs throughout the story to reconnect Owen and Claire with Maisie, while also preventing more chaos because of genetic testing and dinosaurs taking place.
I was so disappointed watching “Jurassic World: Dominion” because I expected more, I expected better from the writers who claimed this was the end of this new trilogy. It seems everyone loves to craft a trilogy nowadays, something that used to be so rare in the world of cinema, but has become so popular as of late.
For those not in the know, a true trilogy is supposed to be the buildup of something so big and game changing it shifts the entire dynamic of that movie franchise as you know it. That has NOT been happening as of late, and it absolutely does not happen for this latest entry in the “Jurassic World” franchise. This is the final curtain call for the franchise in my opinion. It is really bad as a viewer when you care more about the dinosaurs, their plight and how they are being treated over the human characters who give us actual dialogue.
