"Jurassic World Dominion" review — Dinosaur adventure a fading glimpse of former glory

“It’s always darkest just before eternal nothingness.”

“An adventure 65 million years in the making” promised the original tagline for Steven Speilberg’s iconic, era-defining Jurassic Park (1993), a sci-fi cautionary tale that enchanted audiences with its revolutionary special effects and elegant filmmaking. The original cast of Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill remain forever icons of cinema. The film is full of endearing scenes and individual moments from the terrifying kitchen scene to the corporate exec getting eaten by the T. rex in the outhouse. John Williams’ sweeping score is rivalled only by the very best of his own work. It truly is a perfect movie. Now, twenty-nine years later, that adventure is finally coming to an end. Unfortunately, in the sixth installment of the now tiresome franchise, the wonder, excitement, and dedication to the craft of cinema that the original holds so dearly onto has been replaced by a soulless, artless husk of former glory. 

Jurassic World Dominion, a title inexplicably spelt without a colon between “world” and “dominion,” is the third entry in the Jurassic World series, following Jurassic World (2015) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, a sequel series to the original Jurassic Park trilogy. The film is directed by Colin Trevorrow, who previously helmed the 2015 film. If Jurassic World was already a life-less but palatable retread of familiar territory, Trevorrow manages to one-up himself with a film so incredibly stupid and completely devoid of life. Squandering every piece of potential that the franchise has built to, Jurassic World Dominion is bewilderingly frustrating and, worst of all, mind-numbingly boring.

Fallen Kingdom ended on a promise: the promise of dinosaurs in the real world. They had escaped captivity and were now ready to run rampant over the planet. Dominion, set four years later, begins with a boat on the sea suddenly overwhelmed by a Mosasaurus. Of course, because the film is artless and wasteful, the scene establishes no drama or tension and instead leads directly into the prehistoric creature attacking the boat. This scene immediately cuts into a NowThis video, of all things, conveniently recapping the first two films. The audience is told that dinosaurs are on the loose and that they pose a serious ecological threat but we don’t get to see much of it. There are montages, sure, of a herd of Parasaurolophus running alongside horses and Pterosaurs flying with birds, but this intriguing premise is somehow not linked to the film’s central premise. Instead, we’re given a new Jurassic Park and the film’s world-ending threat, because heaven forbid a blockbuster to have stakes that don’t involve the end of the world, is a swarm of genetically engineered locusts.

Locust? The best you could do was recycle material from the Book of Exodus?

Image: Universal/Amblin.

For the film’s first two acts, the film is split into two parallel lines of action. In the first, Owen Grady and Claire Dearing (played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard reprising their roles from the first two Jurassic World movies) are sent on a would-be globe-trotting adventure to rescue their adoptive daughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) and juvenile Velociraptor Beta, both clones of their respective mothers and valuable assets to the film’s big bad corporation Biosyn. At a pitstop in Malta, they investigate a dinosaur black market, fight off genetically modified killer Atrociraptors, and meet a sympathetic pilot (DeWanda Wise). The inclusion of the modified raptors and the brief shot of two Allosauruses stomping around Malta show the promise of a more interesting movie, but, again, the plot driver of the film is not dinosaurs.

The second of the film’s two main plotlines focuses on the much-anticipated return of Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Sam Neill as Doctors Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm, and Alan Grant, the first time the three characters have been in the same film since the 1993 original. Until now, the World series has kept a respectful distance from the Park films, with the exception of a small cameo by Goldblum in Fallen Kingdom, but Dominion serves to bridge the two generations. In this story, Sattler recruits Grant, at the behest of Malcolm, to investigate the mysterious goings-on of Biosyn, the company Malcolm now works for, at their laboratory and dinosaur enclosure in the Italian Dolomite mountains. Eventually, the two groups cross paths in the jungles of Biosyn’s reserve as they try to survive a collection of fresh and familiar prehistoric faces.

In terms of quality, the performances are all over the place. Pratt and Howard give less than stellar performances. Crisp Ratt, drained of all the charm that he’s known for in films like Guardians of the Galaxy, feels like a caricature of an action star, playing every line with melodramatic seriousness that makes him completely unbelievable. Laura Dern is the best of the returning original cast and manages to be pretty genuine despite having little to work with. Jeff Goldblum is given a few tantalizing moments of his signature chaotic Goldblum energy, but their so few and far between. Sam Neill’s tired, footdragging performance sees him just going through the motions. Campbell Scott might just give the strangest performance with his Tim Cook-like role as Lewis Dodgson, a side character from the 1993 film now turned into the main antagonist. He hams it up enough, especially in the third act, to make him just a little bit more than your average corporate overlord villain archetype.

Chris Pratt in Jurassic World Dominion. Photo: Universal/Amblin.

It doesn’t help when the characters are written as thinly as they are. The characters never seem to have any conflict with one another. When the two groups unite in the second act, the most genuine interaction they’re given is a vague acknowledgement that they know who the other people are. “I read your book,” Grady says to Dr. Grant. And that’s the most meaningful interaction they ever have. Wise’s character is given no depth nor development. Her inclusion in the film boils down to Dominion needing a way to get its main characters in and out of the park. It’s further remarkable how small-scale the film feels despite how big it wants the stakes to be. Aside from the brief excursion to Malta, the film confines itself far too much to the Biosyn environment. There are a few too many awkward logical camps and story beats that are given far too little time. It’s too small scale with stakes too large, characters without personalities, and a narrative that’s overcrowded.

Trevorrow’s filmmaking is less than spectacular. Jurassic World Dominion’s bread and butter are cheap, meaningless homages to the original films to stir some sense of nostalgia beaten to death by a film that can’t wield it well. Moments are lazily added to make the audience light up with a sudden “I recognize that thing!” without exploring what that thing means. In too many ways, Jurassic World Dominion is the Rise of Skywalker of the Jurassic era. John Schwartzman’s cinematography is occasionally interesting — there is a particularly well-shot sequence in which Dearing hides from a Therizinosaurus — but mostly resigns itself to being unfortunately run-of-the-mill. The nighttime action is frequently underlit and muddily shot. It’s a travesty knowing the heights from which this film has fallen.

By the time Steven Speilberg’s executive producer credit appears on screen, it’s hard to not feel deeply depressed by what has unfolded over the excruciating two-and-a-half-hour runtime. Maybe it’s time for this series to put the dinosaurs back in the Earth where they found them.

“Jurassic World? Not a fan,” says Ian Malcolm part way through the film. Me too, Ian. Me too.

Jurassic World Dominion is now playing in theatres.

Jurassic World Dominion information
Directed by Colin Trevorrow
Written by Emily Carmichael, Colin Trevorrow
Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, Isabella Sermon, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy, and Campbell Scott
Released 10 June 2022
146 minutes