Extinction Event
Director Colin Trevorrow attempts to wrap up the Jurassic Saga Steven Spielberg began but ably demonstrates the law of diminishing returns.
Jurassic world dominion
Director: Colin Trevorrow • Writer: Emily Carmichael, Colin Trevorrow, based on characters created by Michael Crichton
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Isabella Sermon, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Campbell Scott, Justice Smith
USA • 2hrs 27mins
Opens Hong Kong June 2 • IIA
Grade: C
No, seriously, can someone please explain why this Jedi trick is suddenly A Thing in Jurassic Park? I mean, I get it, Chris Pratt’s Owen Grady is a dinosaur trainer and, now, neo-cowboy (dinoboy?) that managed to wrangle the blue ’raptor in Jurassic World, but now everyone’s doing it. There are at least half a dozen moments in returning director Colin Trevorrow’s conclusion to the second Jurassic Park trilogy when someone throws up a Force hand like they’re trying to pull an X-wing out of swamp to sooth the savage beasts. I tried it with my loud, hungry cat just now. It did jack shit to sooth him.
Jurassic World Dominion is the latest in the seemingly endless parade of franchises bringing back “legacy characters” – old favourites/originals have made appearances recently in Halloween, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Netflix’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Star Wars mainlines them – here excavating Sam Neill’s palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant and his unrequited love interest/palaeobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) to join chaos theorist and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in a overstuffed adventure that stitches together the trilogy started by Steven Spielberg in 1993 (and Michael Crichton’s crazy entertaining 1990 pulp novel) and Trevorrow’s monstrosities, Jurassic World (2015) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), most notable for its miserable eruption and wailing brontosaurus. That was legit traumatising. It’s not as bad as Jurassic Park III (“Alan!”) but it would appear the franchise is getting a little long in the tooth.
Why does it look like they’re in outer space?
It’s four years after the disaster on Isla Nublar that ended with all the dinosaurs getting out into the world (a fantastic concept that’s left to wither and die) because a Dumb Child decided to open the doors. We now live alongside our Jurassic friends, cottage industries for poaching and smuggling, underground Maltese casinos, spy hijinks (!) and dino fight clubs. Of course, there’s a shady biotech mogul, Not Tim Cook (Campbell Scott) who wants to exploit both dinosaur DNA and the lone human clone, aforementioned Dumb Child, now Dumb Teen Maisie (Isabella Sermon) for his own nefarious purposes. Malcolm is working for Not Tim Cook, and alerts Sattler and Grant that weird shit’s afoot with giant locusts – engineered by Sad Henry Wu (BD Wong, hilariously lurking in the shadows when he’s not moping in a comfy sweater). Meanwhile Owen and suddenly activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard, not in heels) are off to rescue Dumb Teen and the blue ’raptor’s offspring, hitching a ride with the most amusing newcomer, pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), the only one who makes any damn sense.
What is this?
There’s so much going on in Jurassic World Dominion – a James Bond film nearly erupts in the Malta segment, everyone seems to find time to act on missed romantic opportunities, Owen and Claire attempt good cop/bad cop parenting, corrupt biotech operators are manipulating the food supply – that Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael forgot to include what got everyone excited about this franchise to begin with: the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs should be the stars, but they’re sadly sidelined in their own story. To add insult to injury, in the nearly 30 years since the original, the visual effects haven’t found a way to add more to the conversation.
Of course that has a great deal to do with who’s in the driver’s seat. Trevorrow has managed to squeeze out one moderately interesting film during his directing career (2012’s Safety Not Guaranteed), and he simply doesn’t have the filmmaking acumen to make ripples in a cup of water one of the most white-knuckle moments ever in cinema – and then follow it with utter awe. Jurassic World Dominion is a series of set pieces, some legitimately strong (Claire swimming away from danger, Owen and Kayla being harassed by a dandy of a dino under ice, attitude from a Freddy Kruger-saurus), some lifted directly from the first film, strung together rather than a single cohesive story. Goldblum gets a couple of okay one-liners, and Dichen Lachman shows up to be a fabulous smuggler for a few minutes. It’s not somnolent, but it’s not entirely engaging. How a movie with dinosaurs can leave so little impression is anyone’s guess. It’s time to put this franchise in amber. DEK