JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION REVIEW

 *MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

It’s been nearly thirty years since Steven Spielberg wowed audiences with Jurassic Park, which brought dinosaurs to life through impressive special effects. Two sequels were released, including The Lost World, in 1997, which was also directed by Spielberg, and Jurassic Park III, which was directed by Joe Johnston. Unfortunately, while they still provided fans of the original Jurassic Park with dinosaur action, it lacked in interesting and likeable characters and an original story. After the release of Jurassic Park III in 2001, it seemed like that was the end of the franchise, however, fourteen years later, Jurassic World was released which saw the theme park being opened, with paying visitors finally getting to experience real life dinosaurs. While the film itself wasn’t as great as Jurassic Park, Jurassic World was a box office success, making over a billion dollars and becoming the second highest grossing film of 2015, behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Inevitably, a sequel was released in 2018 named Fallen Kingdom. While critics were less than impressed with the fifth addition to the Jurassic franchise, it was still successful with audiences. Now, nearly three decades after Jurassic Park and four years after Fallen Kingdom, the final film in the Jurassic franchise, Dominion, has been released. However, is it an epic conclusion to the franchise or a disappointing end?

Four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, dinosaurs now live--and hunt--alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history's most fearsome creatures in a new Era. 

Dominion should have been an epic conclusion but the ending is anti-climatic. Although it’s great seeing the return of Sam Neill’s paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern’s paleobotanist, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Jeff Goldblum’s mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm and the usually exciting dinosaur action, the plot is unnecessarily complex. For the majority of Dominion’s lengthy 147 minute runtime (making it the longest film in the Jurassic franchise), most of the characters are separated, with Alan, Ellie and Ian only meeting Chris Pratt’s velociraptor trainer Owen Grady and Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing, who was the operations manager of the Jurassic World theme park, towards the end. What should have been an exciting team up is instead forced. Whilst Ellie manages to persuade Alan to leave an archaeological dig to help her find out if a newly discovered locust species has been bred by BioSyn. After arriving at the BioSyn lab, they are reunited with Ian, who is working a philosopher. Meanwhile, since the events of Fallen Kingdom four years ago, Owen and Claire have raised Molly (Isabella Sermon), who was revealed to be a clone of her grandfather’s daughter. Now a teenager, Molly yearns for freedom, but Owen and Claire have become overprotective of her. Whilst living a secluded life in a mountain cabin, they discover that a female Velociraptor, named Blue, who Owen bonded with in Jurassic World, has managed to produce an offspring by herself. Shortly after making this discovery, both Blue’s infant and Maisie are captured and sent to BioSyn with Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong, returning from Jurassic Park, Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom) hoping to uncover the link between their DNA. This leads to Owen and Claire going on a rescue mission. 

Because there is a lot going on, it’s easy to see why it was given a runtime of over two hours. Unfortunately, neither of the storylines are compelling. Fallen Kingdom ended with a future that hinted at a world where, for the first time in history, dinosaurs and human co-existed. This should have been explored in Dominion, unfortunately, aside from a brief news reel that sees normal human life being reunited by the sudden appearance of dinosaurs, it decides to prioritise the main characters instead. This results in a film that is surprisingly lacking in dinosaur action. While there is dinosaur action (it wouldn’t be a Jurassic film), they are few and far between and lacking in tension as it’s obvious that the main characters are going to survive. That’s also why Dominion is so disappointing as the only reason why people have ever gone to see any of the Jurassic films at the cinema is for the dinosaurs. 

While I can understand why Dominion has received such a disappointing response, as the majority of the people seeing it probably saw Jurassic Park back in 1993, for me personally, because I’m 24 years old at the time of writing this review, I never grew up with any of the Jurassic Park films and had no nostalgia towards them. I think that’s why I was one of the few people who enjoyed both the newest films, Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, as I didn’t have any expectations and was just hoping for some dinosaur action and that’s what I got. While I have since seen all of the films in the Jurassic franchise, there’s no denying that Jurassic Park is one of the greatest films of all time and represented a groundbreaking point in cinema history. Unfortunately, the sequels have each failed to live up to that high standard, including Dominion which is an improvement over Jurassic Park III as it brings back the characters everyone knows and loves but fails to give them a good enough reason for their return.

Dominion has been described in the promotional material, including the poster and trailers, as the “conclusion to the Jurassic era” and it’s just as well as it’s clear that the sequels will never be able to match the high quality set by Jurassic Park and a big issue has to do with the director. Because Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and someone known for their unique vision, the directors were always going to struggle. Johnston, who directed Jurassic Park III, J. A. Bayona, who directed Fallen Kingdom and Colin Trevorrow, who directed the first Jurassic World and Dominion, aren’t visionaries like Spielberg. They’ve each struggled to get the balance between compelling human drama and thrilling dinosaur action and that’s still the case with Dominion, which is a disappointing end to the Jurassic era.

5/10