Bigger isn’t always better. Case in point; ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’.
This is a big movie with big stars and really, really big dinosaurs. It’s big. But, paired against the original (’cause there have been way too many sequels to play the comparison game with all chapters here), it sure ain’t better.
Not by a long shot.
‘Dominion’ is set four years after the events of the last film in the series, ‘Forbidden Kingdom’, which ended with dinosaurs breaking out a facility. Now, they’re roaming all corners of the earth, trying to co-exist, but experiencing a few growing pains along the way; hey, they ARE dinosaurs after all, and we ARE a tasty snack, sooooo…
Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) have gone off the grid, living in the backwoods with their adopted daughter Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the cloned child from the previous sequel (and whom, if you’re following along closely with the narrative of this soap-opera-sauras, has ties with the first film way back in 1993), as well as that lovable pet raptor, Blue. Anyway, Blue goes ahead and has a baby….which Blue shouldn’t be able to do, ’cause y’know, the cloning thing. And my friends, that’s the just the FIRST of a string a sub-plots that pelt us with the ferocity of a T-Rex with a parking ticket.
Elsewhere, Doctors Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill)….remember them?…..well, they reunite to investigate a plague of mutated locusts who are putting the world’s food supply at risk. The best character this franchise has ever spawned, Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm? Yup, he’s back too, doing contract work at an obviously villainous corporation called BioSyn, which is where the whole gang eventually winds up to duck and dodge every kind of prehistoric critter under the sun.
Obviously, there’s a lot going on in ‘Dominion’, a tactic most likely employed by the script writers to have some kind of escape from characters simply running away from vicious dinosaurs OR dodging cartoonish bad guys like BioSyn’s creepy CEO, played by Campbell Scott. Mind you, with a running time of almost two and a half hours, ‘Dominion’ STILL spends an inordinate chunk of the clock in monster movie land, and while the dinosaurs have never looked better, we’re six ‘Jurassic’ films in now……face it guys, there are only so many ways you can scream, sprint or try to go one-on-one with overgrown reptiles. Director Colin Trevorrow’s big fresh idea appears to be occasionally veering ‘Dominion’ into horror territory by A) constantly separating the characters (never a good idea), and B) having things with sharp teeth jump out of the shadows at the cast. The ‘boo!’ moments become so consistent, you might just wonder who’s going to emerge next to try and kill Chris Pratt….a dilophosaurus or Freddy Krueger.
What’s missing here is the wonderment that Steven Spielberg captured almost thirty years ago. The visual effects are now off the charts, yes. But the human element in telling the tale has somehow dwindled into that of a video game.
Now, nitpicking aside, ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ DOES serve the nostalgia vibes…..it IS cool to see the original gang re-assemble for this last (?) hurrah – shoot, even B.D. Wong’s timid scientist is back. And even though there’s another sequel playing down the hall in the Cineplex about a certain fighter pilot that does this ‘return to glory’ dance a WHOLE lot better, ‘Dominion’ likely won’t be much of a disappointment to the true fans. Why? Because this movie has a budget. They ARE dinosaurs after all, and we ARE sometimes easily entertained, soooooo…