Jurassic World Dominion

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

30% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 310 reviews)

Runtime: 147 minutes

Directed by: Colin Trevorrow

Starring: The main cast from Jurassic World plus the most beloved faces from the OG Jurassic Park

From: Universal

A review containing opinions that aren’t as controversial as the last time I did one of these.

It was not until a few days ago that I actually made my mind up to see Jurassic World Dominion… and by the way, as someone I follow here noted, why is there not a colon between World and Dominion? Actually, that was the least of its problems but I only saw this so I could use my AMC A-List pass often enough for the monthly fee, because I’ve watched all the others and unlike me, my late mothers dug the first two Jurassic World films and I know she would have loved to have seen Dominion. Unlike many, I thought the first JW was quite bad but at least far more agree with me that Fallen Kingdom was quite the disaster, a bizarre entry involving clone girls, dinosaur auctions in a giant mansion where their prices were preposterously low, and it had an all-time terrible ending where an inexplicable moment was done just so we had a gimmick in Dominion with dinosaurs roaming the world... which Dominion barely did anything with!

Thank heavens I had forgotten most of Fallen Kingdom in the past four years—to the point that Clone Girl speaking with a British accent was startling. I’m just presuming she DID have one in Fallen Kingdom and I’d rather not go back to confirm it myself. The entire JW universe is so stupid-Lord were there moments in Dominion that made me shake my head-that such basic assumptions can’t be made. I was not delighted that my two least favorite characters from Fallen Kingdom (Tumblr Feminist and Feckless Computer Nerd) returned here, but their roles were basically cameos so that was a relief.

While this wasn’t as infuriating as the last two entries, what I saw on Saturday night was still stump-dumb and instead of all the fun that COULD be had with dinos all around the world Raising Cain, instead they decided to dump on a Monsanto-like corporation (no comment will be coming from me concerning my thoughts on Monsanto; nothing good can come from that!) that has a rather wimpy, dopey elderly guy as a leader. Some have criticized the actor for that performance; perhaps, but I don’t know Anthony Hopkins could have made that goofball character work… what a decision to have a villain be nothing more than an elderly dips***.

It's never a good sign when several of the most popular reviews on Letterboxd have compared this to The Rise of Skywalker in the most pejorative of ways. If I ever mustered the courage to see Skywalker again I know it’d be rated far lower than I did the first time; that movie was such a mess due to how stupid The Last Jedi was and nothing could fix that but the decisions they made exacerbated the issue. Dominion did not offend me as much; it was mindless BS where not all the action was great and the same goes for the CG… even if I’ve forgotten a decent amount of it already, it did not make me as irritated as the first two JW pictures so that’s a plus. It was nice to see Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum one more time, even if “blatant nostalgia grab” is the most noteworthy aspect of those characters returning. Plus, talk about recycling moments from their past, or the JW characters also recycling moments from their past.

It is a shame that the first two sequels to Jurassic Park were only OK and the subsequent entries ranged from bad to rancid putrid garbage; yet that’s not the only franchise to recently have had a similar trajectory. I’m not the first to note that the sequels to Mission Impossible and now Top Gun made most of the others look especially bad, but it’s true. I’d like to think this is truly the end of the franchise-that’d be naïve of me, especially after seeing the box office returns. If there’s any solace for me, the few others movies I’ll likely see theatrically the rest of the summer should all be better than the ones I saw during the weekend; my choices for cinema visits should be better.