‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Review: An Extra Nail to the Wobbly Coffins of Trilogies

Jurassic World: Dominion is the sixth movie in the Jurassic Cinematic Universe. This world explores Dinosaur species that once roamed the earth millions of years ago. Nearly 30 years since the inception of Jurassic World by Steven Spielberg in 1993, Jurassic World: Dominion will likely mark the final chapter in the franchise. But with the inconsistencies that plague the previous movies in the franchise, one can only hope that a new awakening in the franchise will revitalize the failures of the previous ones as Dominion marks the end of this trilogy.

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Jurassic World: Dominion is set four years after the destructive events in The Fallen Kingdom. In this new installment, Dinosaurs now coexist with humans, but this has created an imbalance in the food chain and they are likely to be a threat to humans and knock them off as the apex predators. In light of this, an evil corporation, Biosyn, emerges and seeks to control the world’s food supply. They kidnap Maisie (Isabelle Sermon) and Blue’s child to study their DNA and clone it for their subject. However, Maisie’s surrogate parents, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bruce Dallas Howard), would have none of that, so they set off to rescue their daughter. Meanwhile, some original characters from the original Jurassic Park, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neil), learned of Biosyn’s sinister plot to merge the DNA of an insect with a dinosaur to wipe out crops that aren’t grown with Biosyn products. The overstuffed story involves a human clone, worried parents, an evil corporation and some old characters from the original movie. 

The sci-fi movie has a good story, but it has shortcomings. The first thing to note is that the movie moves along at a pretty fast pace. The film keeps things moving along quickly and does not have much time to process what happened before moving on to the next bit. There’s little character development and a lack of detail on how some events or people decide to do things (and they don’t spend much time on this) since these relate directly to their final decision. It’s hard to say if this was done on purpose or if the writers didn’t have time to explain everything nicely or didn’t know where to go with it, probably because of time constraints. For example, the involvement of Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a pilot and a dealer in the black market who, out of her good heart, decides to go on a dangerous cruise to save Maisie, wasn’t convincing. I guess good people still exist, even if they have always been involved in shady underworld business. 

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This supposedly last installment of the Jurassic franchise fails to conjure up anything new than what we have already seen in the previous installments. Jurassic World: Dominion breathes life into a few scenes and leaves the viewers to struggle with the remaining bland narrative. The bike chase between Owen and the raptors is one of those scenes coupled with the ice-rink dinosaur chase. This new installment introduces a brilliant plot; humans now live with dinosaurs and are gradually becoming a threat as they want to knock them off the food chain. So, what next? The question the movie sets out to answer is left unattended. What change would the dinosaurs bring to the world as they coexist with humans apart from the apparent reality that the carnivores would end up eating humans? And what did the movie do about it? 

The movie’s opening scenes ask these questions with funny montages, but we never get the answer to them till the end of the film. It was like the director/scriptwriter got away with murder because why propose a question if it isn’t answered at the end of the movie. Dominion sets out to smash in a different order dissimilar to what we are used to but doesn’t quite reach that peak. Its failure is only one more nail to the coffin that some movies would always live in the shadow of the original no matter how many ploys, parades or antics they introduce to the exhibition.

Rating: 6/10

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Side Musings

• For many reasons, from the sequels to the original movie, there is just one excellent movie in the entire franchise.
• I quite liked seeing Blue and her kid, but their arch wasn’t explored. Not like there was any way to go about it, considering the overstuffed plot.
• We love the franchise for so many reasons, primarily because of the array of fictional creatures, but enough is enough– I’ve had enough.
• We hardly even see the dinosaurs interacting with the real world after their release to the outside world, which was quite a bummer. So much emphasis was laid on how they coexist with humans; however, most of the good deals out of the lot were locked up in a sanctuary. What a drag!

Jurassic World: Dominion is in cinemas.