When Steven Spielberg first released Jurassic Park in 1993, who would have imagined that it would become one of the biggest franchises keeping audiences hooked for three decades. When the first trilogy ended in 2001, Universal Studio decided to revive it for a new generation of viewers in 2015 with Jurassic World.
The premise of the new trilogy centred on a theme park of cloned dinosaurs, dubbed Jurassic World. It was an improved and supposedly safer version of the park, but as always, those safety measures couldn't contain the prehistoric beasts. At the end of the last film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), the situation had drastically changed as dinosaurs escaped out of a Northern California compound to walk the earth. Fallen Kingdom left fans of the franchise with many questions like, what would the modern world look like if dinosaurs roamed free? And was it really possible for humans and dinosaurs to coexist together?
Set four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, in Jurassic World Dominion, dinosaurs now live and hunt alongside humans around the globe. But this fragile balance causes its own problems, especially over the fact if humans can remain the apex predator as they share the planet with history's most fearsome creatures. While Colin Trevorrow's second Jurassic World effort shows some promise and has the potential to be a better film than Fallen Kingdom, especially since the new movie features a wide variety of exciting action sequences, top-notch CGI, and the return of alumni like Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum from the original movies, Dominion unfortunately suffers from repetitive plots and poorly thought out character arcs.
Since we have dinosaurs in the real world, the possibilities are endless when it comes to the style of action you can do and this movie did a nice job of incorporating it, along with chase sequences and introducing new fearsome dinosaur species such as Giganotosaurus or "Giga". So, if you're a big action and dinosaur fan, you should be satisfied with this aspect of the movie.
Despite being billed as an epic conclusion to this new trilogy, I was hoping we were going to get something different in Dominion when it comes to the story. But for the most part, it's the same old story with the main characters invited to revisit the park after many years. Naturally, somebody makes a mistake, or there's a mole hidden in the team who wants to exploit dinosaurs, and this eventually leads the creatures to break loose, and the chase begins, and Dominion is no different.
Another thing this movie suffers from is complacency. There's nothing spectacular or inspiring; it's just kind of there. The movie features plenty of star power but without any character development. New era characters such as Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard don't add anything other than running and hiding from creatures, or doing their old raptor-training pose. They are the main characters in the film, but you really don't care about their motivations as they are dull. We do get legacy characters back like Neill, Dern, Goldblum and B.D. Wong, but like the newer Jurassic World characters they're just kind of there and have nothing much to do with the story.
Overall, I just wish the story in Dominion was a bit better. It's a shame that it gets a bit messy and convoluted like many of these instalments do. And I partially think the reason is because the film is fast paced, and there is no interesting storyline to support those action sequences. However, there are some highlights that fans of the franchise might enjoy, in particular the return of the original characters, and the over the top dinosaur angle. Just don't go in expecting a well written story here.
- Jurassic World Dominion
- Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern
- Directed by Colin Trevorrow
