Too many damned characters!
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Written by: Emily Carmichael, Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Isabella Sermon
Swift shot: Just stick with a cameo! Once you get past the umpteen, uninteresting, uninspired, crammed in characters and can look past the thirty minutes of exposition, to include technical science that even STEM teachers would say, ok, I get it, this isn’t the line at Universal, it’s a freakin’ movie, so let’s MOVE IT ALONG, and can get past the more than ten locations in the same amount of time, you get a decent action movie that unfortunately we’ve seen a hundred times before.
Chris Pratt envisioned wanting to “… see a kid riding on the back of a triceratops like they would on the back of an elephant.” Dude, that would have been cool! In short, that was the movie I was hoping to see. What we get instead was a few of those scenes, watered down to a level that felt like breadcrumbs tossed to that idea.
Worse still, we get some ridiculous James Bond/Indiana Jones hybrid movie with legacy characters that let their egos dictate a PETA/climate change agenda that has been beaten to death! And while I appreciate some good fan service, at some point, it becomes laughable and lackadaisical.
So, rather than allowing the film to focus on one story and one set of characters, we get tacked on involvement of geriatric characters that are past their extinction, trying to slide back into a franchise that has moved past them . . . decades ago. Oversaturating a story is the surest way to lose any audience. And unfortunately, that will be the downfall of Jurassic World Dominion.
There’s really two movies I need to discuss here, let’s call one “Jurassic Jones” and the other “Ellie-grant Bond.” In “Jurassic Jones,” you have a plot centered around retrieving Maisie (Sermon), the kidnapped “daughter” of Owen (Pratt) and Claire (Howard).
Jurassic Jones
“Jurassic Jones” was a cool story, and it starts out with some light interaction with the dinosaurs and humans, where we meet a new daughter for Blue, a tiny raptor (well, four feet) called Beta. Beta was a nice touch to the film, but underused, again, because the movie had to compete with a whole other movie happening adjacent to this one.
Seems Biosyn is up to their genetic dirty tricks, as usual. The new CEO, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) orchestrates the retrieval of Maisie and Beta from her new parents, and Owen and Claire go on an international dino/daughter hunt to find her. There’s some compelling stuff in there about how far parents will go to protect their kids.
With the help of some CIA insiders who are loyal to the dinosaur equivalent of PETA, Owen and Claire head to Malta to try to get Maisie and Beta back.
You get some great action sequences in Malta, showing a kind of Mos Eisley Cantina scene, where there’s underground dinosaur fights and Owen and Claire have to escape a leggy lady (Dichen Lachman) who can control a pack of raptors with a cat laser dot. There’s a great chase through the streets, with Owen making a daring escape on a motorcycle.
Meanwhile, Claire has made the acquaintance of a strong lesbian pilot, inspired no doubt by Han Solo. Though, I wouldn’t know her name without IMDb, Watts (DeWanda Wise) feels guilty about some shady business involving Biosyn, and she agrees to fly Owen and Claire to the vast dinosaur-infested compound.
What could possibly happen there?
On the way to the compound, things get bumpy, and they all get separated and have to survive some pretty tense dinosaur encounters, including one harrowing encounter with Claire harkening back to the original Jurassic Park, which was good fan service.
Owen and Watts also encounter a new dinosaur threat on their way to the compound which was a really tense, fun scene, that you could easily immerse yourself in. (That will be funny once you see the movie).
Ellie-grant Bond
Now let’s talk about “Ellie-grant Bond.” This movie was compelling, and a bit poignant, as it explores the dangers of messing around with the food sources that humans rely on, namely . . . grain. Not like there are a lot of people who are currently concerned that Bill Gates (and others) are creating synthetic food sources whilst simultaneously buying up vast fields of grain in our real world, but, yea, there are.
So, a swarm of genetically engineered locusts is wreaking havoc on grain fields across North America, and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Dern) is called in to investigate. Quickly she figures out that these locusts are not eating the synthetic seeds created by Biosyn. Shocking, right? But she needs more concrete proof . . . than say a living locust that she has captured.
She’s determined that the only way to expose Biosyn is to get the source material from their compound, and apparently she needs Dr. Allen Grant (Neill), for reasons that defy any basic logic.
In fact, neither of them were needed to expose this, as it is revealed that there was an insider at the compound who had access to all of the material and evidence the entire time! But, I guess this insider felt that more credibility was needed, so he enlists the help of Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) and Grant and Sattler.
What we get is Lewis Dodgson giving them a guided tour of the compound a la Dr. Evil, and Grant and Sattler inexplicably infiltrating the heavily secured facility in the lamest way possible. They literally just walk through the doors.
They are looking for source information that will lead to proof of Biosyn creating a famine to gain control of the masses. What is more James Bond than that?
Now, these two movies converge in the final act, when the two groups run into each other escaping a plot-hole that defies basic science. Apparently, super-genius Dodgson doesn’t believe in quality control, as he accidentally releases a flaming horde of insects across the island fortress . . . that is somehow too much for this incredibly secure facility to bear. But, hey, nobody is perfect, right?
In the end, not much happens. The biggest conflict, if you can call it that, is the emotionless chemistry which is forced onto Grant and Sattler. Will they finally become a couple? Do you care? I certainly didn’t, 29 years later!
Look, I may sound like I didn’t like this movie, and that isn’t true, for the most part.
I appreciated the effects and action sequences and the rare times where dinosaurs were shown amongst us. Some of them were really cool, and the dinosaur combat scenes were beautiful. And I hope that kids who see this one will fall in love with dinosaurs and will keep the passion for that science alive, but I think they’ll get bored with a lot of the intrigue in the beginning of the movie.
I don’t think this is the last Jurassic movie that we will get, as there’s a universe where lots of great content is still waiting to be created.
I have enjoyed the Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous series on Netflix, and I hear that the short film “Battle at Big Rock” is what landed Emily Carmichael writing credit on Dominion. So, there’s hope that we will continue to get more out of this franchise.
Overall, though, I was left disappointed in how the whole Jurassic World trilogy wrapped up. And, I am reminded of these words by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice.” You’ll understand what I mean once you’ve seen the film.
