Jurassic World Dominion: And the Beasts Shall Stand in Judgement

There are movies that are made that shape and guide the future of filmmaking.  This films usually use new technology to augment and advance a rich story that touches the audience and effects them emotionally.  These movies have a type of rhythm and flow, with dialogue that rolls off the tongue like poetry and visuals that are stunning and leave the viewer in awe and wonder. The 1993 movie, Jurassic Park, was one such movie.  The special effects alone were amazing, but with strong performances by Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum people left the movie physically affected.  Unfortunately, when such films come out, studios rush to try to recapture the magic that the original provided, usually failing miserably. The five sequels aren’t necessarily bad but have never achieved the emotional reaction the original produced.  The latest foray, Jurassic World Dominion is the third movie in the Jurassic World trilogy hopefully concluding this branch of the story.  The movie brings together the three stars of the original Jurassic Park move, reprising their characters, Doctors Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and the two main characters from the Jurassic World movies, Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt).

Four years after the events in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs now walk the Earth, freely roaming, but this is causing ecological havoc. A black market for dinosaurs is also becoming a concern to authorities. Biosyn Genetics Corporation has created a dinosaur preserve in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, where they study the dinosaurs’ genetics looking for pharmacological breakthroughs.  Dr. Sattler reunites with ex-lover, Dr. Alan Grant, to investigate giant locust that are causing an extinction level threat to the farming industry.  Since these creatures are new and not some extinct species, the pair believe that human tampering for profit has occurred at the hands of Biosyn.  Clair and Owen live in a secluded cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, secretly raising Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) who is wanted by a bio genetic scientist as she is a clone of Charlotte Lockwood, a famed geneticist.  Sattler and Grant embark on a mission to get the proof they need to expose Biosyn Genetics with the help of Dr. Malcolm. At the same time, Biosyn has captured Maisie causing Owen and Claire to chase after the kidnappers, leading them on a chase through Malta and finally to the Biosyn preserve in Italy. Needless to say, chaos ensues as the whole cast is trapped in a dinosaur preserve running for their lives from giant creatures.  Who and how they survive is the rest of the movie.

The movie was entertaining on a certain level, but I found it the weakest of all six installments, when it could have been one of the best.  There is a type of cruelty towards the dinosaurs in the black-market scenes that was slightly exposed, showing dinosaurs caged, pit fighting and just the general mistreatment of the “animals” by humans.  I know this would happen in real life, but it was hard to watch. The ecological effects with dinosaurs entering the wild and the learning to coexist between species was an interesting theme and could have been explored deeper, unifying the movie.  Instead, the plot was convoluted with too many subplots vying for time and audience attention, causing the rhythm of the movie to feel off and disjointed.  The movie gets better once all the plots begin to converge, and the story becomes more unified.  But by that point, too much time has been wasted and the audience doesn’t get a chance to really connect with the characters.  It was fun seeing the old and new cast meet and interact, I only wish there was more of it.  The special effects, at least to me, didn’t look as polished as some of the other films in the series, but it was still pretty good, with an overall high production value.