‘Jurassic World Dominion’ restores order to franchise’s food chain
If you, like many moviegoers, have felt like the first two “Jurassic World” films were missing something but couldn’t put your finger on what, you’ll feel vindicated early on while watching “Jurassic World Dominion.”
After 2001’s “Jurassic Park III,” the franchise lay dormant until it returned in 2015 with the first “Jurassic World.” While it clearly did well enough financially to warrant two sequels, many felt that director Colin Trevorrow had prioritized spectacle over substance and lost the spirit of the original 1993 film in the process. The franchise switched hands to director J.A. Bayona for 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” but the same problem remained to an even more frustrating degree.
That brings us to “Jurassic World Dominion,” out in theaters Friday. This installment brings back the likes of Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing for more adventures in a world populated by both humans and dinosaurs. As usual, those two actors do their best with thin material and end up getting overshadowed by the computergenerated and animatronic creatures terrorizing them.
What elevates this “Jurassic World” over its predecessors, though, is the return of the main gang from the original “Jurassic Park” trilogy. Sure, bringing back Sam Neill’s Alan Grant, Laura Dern’s Ellie Sattler and Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm is a transparent nostalgia play in a filmmaking landscape obsessed with retro sentimentality. But it’s an effective one, and it proves once and for all that “Jurassic Park” just isn’t “Jurassic Park” without those three present.
After the events of “Fallen Kingdom,” dinosaurs are no longer confined to Isla Nublar. They live side by side with humans now, which has stoked fears that mankind’s reign as Earth’s most dominant species may soon be coming to an end. The emergence of genetically modified locusts decimating the planet’s food supply doesn’t bode well for homo sapiens’ sustained dominion over nature.
Ellie and Alan rejoin the story when Ellie comes to believe that a company called Biosyn may be behind the locust swarms. Their investigation into that organization’s shady schemes coincides with the simultaneous kidnappings of Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) — a genetic clone of scientist Charlotte Lockwood whom Owen and Claire had been caring for — and the young child of Blue the Velociraptor.
Anything resembling story is just an excuse to put the trio of Ellie, Alan and Ian on a collision course to eventually meet up with Owen, Claire, Maisie and newly introduced pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise). It takes a while for their storylines to intersect, but uniting the newer and older characters does create some fun dynamics and a sense of much-needed plot cohesion.
The draw of these movies remains the dinosaurs, which even to eyes jaded by three decades of ever-evolving CGI still look incredible and somehow feel like tangible parts of the environments in which they live. Having them more fully integrated into human civilization is a clever wrinkle, though it also raises a lot of internal questions that the film isn’t particularly interested in acknowledging.
Trevorrow returned to “Dominion” a clearly more mature filmmaker and screenwriter. It probably helped that little exposition was required six movies in and three to this specific “Jurassic” era, which freed Trevorrow to spend more time on character relationships and crafting set piece after set piece where it’s genuinely unclear how the humans could possibly survive this latest dinosaur onslaught. It’s thrilling stuff even if you know intellectually that they’ll probably be OK.
While every “Jurassic Park” film explores the ways our attempts at taming nature can go horribly wrong, “Dominion” is the closest to actually playing out the ecological disasters perpetrated by dinosaurs encroaching on human society. It does a decent enough job creating sympathy for both man and beast, though how it ultimately attempts to solve the inherent issues of humans coexisting with dinosaurs is unsatisfying at best, borderline laughable at worst.
Again, this film belongs to Neill, Dern and Goldblum. Neill and Dern feel like old friends who may or may not want more from each other, and they both acquit themselves well in the action sequences. Goldblum goes full Goldblum, which is never a bad thing. His Ian Malcolm can still wise crack, wax philosophical and evade certain death by dinosaur just as well as his younger counterparts.
Speaking of which, Pratt and Howard are still there too. They do a solid job showing just how desperate they are to keep Maisie safe while also occasionally getting in on the witty banter. The other major human characters are just kind of there for the ride, though shout out to Mamoudou Athie — who starred in the Pittsburgh-shot Netflix series “Archive 81” — for making his Biosyn employee Ramsay Cole feel more fleshed out than he had any right to be.
It’s still wild that the last three “Jurassic” films have done such an impressive job making audiences feel for both Blue and, to a certain extent, the ever-recurring Tyrannosaurus. Honestly, viewers couldn’t be blamed if they ended up caring what happened to those two more than some of the people fighting for humanity’s survival.
While “Jurassic World Dominion” still has its dopy moments and feels more like an amusement-park ride than a movie sometimes, it’s still exciting to watch dinosaurs do their respective things while Neill, Dern and Goldblum remind everyone how integral they were and still are to the franchise’s success. In terms of the “Jurassic Park” food chain, those three will always remain at the very top.