Reel Review Roundup

Jurassic World Dominion (M)

Directed by: Colin Trevorrow

Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum

Review by: Julian Wright

The second trilogy in the Jurassic Park series comes to a deeply unsatisfying close despite plenty of promise and the return and reunion of favourite legacy characters.

Humans and dinosaurs have been living side by side for four years since the events of Fallen Kingdom, but swarms of genetically modified locusts threaten to destroy the ecological balance even faster than the once extinct creatures.

Turns out evil conglomerate Biosyn, headed by Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) is behind the locusts and have kidnapped human clone Maisie (Isabela Sermon), who has been living in hiding with former dino trainer Owen (Chris Pratt) and dino theme park boss Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard).

Meanwhile, Elle Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill) head to Biosyn HQ, where Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) now lectures, for proof of the locust tampering.

Remember when Jurassic Park was just about deadly dinos escaping their compounds and terrorising a handful of humans on an island, with some food for thought about the ethics surrounding cloning and several white knuckle encounters?

Six films later we are promised what was only flirted with in The Lost World: Jurassic Park during its climactic final third – what would happen if dinos ran amok on the mainland?

And what a compelling concept!

Alas, despite that being the natural evolutionary direction of this series, all Dominion does is frustratingly dangle the carrot then continue to repeat what we have seen in every other entry.

In fact, Dominion spends its two and a half hours exploring the least interesting possible scenarios that could come out of the idea of dinos existing in 2022.

Dominion does give its legacy characters plenty of screen time but it turns out to be quantity over quality as they slowly lurch through each scene trapped in a dull sub-plot before throwing them into the thick of the action, but having them basically repeat their Jurassic Park sequences.

Nostalgia has a lot of answer for here – so does the ongoing spectacle of impressively rendered dinos on the big screen.

For all its talk of evolution, this series is seemingly stuck in the Jurassic era, resulting in a frustratingly familiar (anti) climax.

This entry was posted on June 8, 2022 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.