Reviews be damned, Jurassic World: Dominion is devouring people’s money
Despite widespread critical dismissal, Colin Trevorrow's latest dino film is on-course for the highest non-superhero opening of the pandemic era
Aux News Jurassic
Proving, once and for all, that in the long-running arms race between the power of the written word and the power of a dinosaur’s large, knife-filled mouth, the giant reptile’s gonna win, the box office returns have already started trending very positively for Jurassic World: Dominion. This, despite the film being the most poorly critically received out of the entire six-movie film Jurassic franchise, with our own write-up calling it a “deeply unsatisfying finale” and drubbing its dinosaur encounters for being “routine” and “uninspiring.”
But, you know what they say: Money printer go [insert dinosaur roar sound here]. Per Deadline, Dominion brought in $60 million in the U.S. and Canada yesterday, putting it on track for a $142 million opening weekend. That’s in addition to the international markets, where it’s been out for a week, and where it’s expected to have brought in a total of $244 million by the time Sunday rolls around.
Among other things, that makes Dominion the biggest non-superhero-focused opening of the pandemic era, topping previous record-holder Top Gun: Maverick (which pulled in $52 million on its opening Friday a few weeks back) by a not inconsiderable amount. It’s also, surprisingly, almost exactly what its predecessor, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom brought in on its opening weekend back in 2018; third installments in franchises usually dip commercially in comparison to their forerunners, so it’s a bit weird to see Dominion do so well—especially in light of those reviews.
The question now, of course, is whether the film (which is currently rocking a particularly pungent 31 percent Rotten Critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes) can maintain its unexpected lead for more than one week. Recent films—most notably Maverick—have been demonstrating unexpected staying power at the box office of late, holding on to high profits well after they usually fall off. It’ll be interesting to see if Dominion’s apparent imperviousness to critical dismissal can hold out for another week.
113 Comments
I’ma go ahead and say that Jurassic World will not hold onto it’s #1 spot next week. Next weekend’s #1 will be Lightyear, which will hold the #1 spot for two weeks. Minions will get a week on top, then Thor dominates the top spot the rest of July. It has been written, so it shall be done.
You’re probably right, but I also have a weird feeling that Lightyear isn’t going to be as big of a hit as people think it will be. It’s riding purely on name recognition, having no other real connection to the Toy Story universe, and–while I’m admittedly not in the target demo–it just doesn’t look very good. It seems like the sort of movie that should’ve gotten a D+ release. It feels cheap by Disney/Pixar standards, like one of those Eisner-era DTV sequels.
You’d be shocked how many people are going to see it just because Chris Evans is the lead.
Vaguely-resembling Chris Evans-CG, with his voice, but yeah. It’s weirdly magnetic.
I know its hard to understand how anything above a minimum wage cashier job works, but Eisner wasn’t running Walt Disney pictures….They actually have someone who runs the movie arm, who is someone totally different from the parks arm which is totally different from the CEO of the company.
The cat looks cute. But I’m not going to pay upwards of $12 just to see a cute cat. I can do that for free on YouTube.
Agreed – it looks …. awful.
You’re probably right, but missing the biggest reason why: animated family movies have absolutely struggled at the box office across the board since the pandemic. It’s a reasonable conclusion a lot of people just don’t want to bring their littlest kids to a close-quarters auditorium for an animated film they can catch on streaming in 45 days.
AVC review went up today and sounds like your take is about right. C+ rating.
That sounds like a pretty good guess.
It seems probable. Elvis comes out the week after Lightyear, and it’s possible it could take the top spot from it, but I’m really not sure. School’s out, so there’s gonna be a big uptick of kids seeing movies during the week, and so I could see Lightyear burning out quicker. But if I was a betting man, I’d say Lightyear squeaks by with the top spot. We’ll see, I suppose.
“Elvis” has had REALLY bad reviews so I think it is a flop, but my low opinion of Baz Luhrman’s skills may be biasing me.
I don’t think Gatsby was a hit either. Frankly I’m fine with Baz failing.
The movie did have a cultural impact, idk how many Gatsby theme-ish weddings I attended those summers after. But weirdly nobody was out watching the movie.
Yeah. Maybe its existence just reminded people that art deco was a thing
People remember the Leo lifting glass meme more then anything else.
I’ve never been to a Gatsby theme-ish wedding.
Gadsby weddings?? Man talk about missing the point.
Gatsby was Baz’s biggest hit, by a lot. Even if you adjusted his prior movies for inflation, they still don’t even come close to Gatsby’s take. It came at a pretty hot time for Leo in particular, where just the sight of him looking dapper got a lot of women in the door.
It’s gonna have to do really, really well to avoid being a flop. It has a $200m budget, which is more than the new Thor movie.
How the hell does a period biopic cost $200m?
Not even Rainier Wolfcastle budgets are that bloated.
Don’t see the fuss over him. It could also be because as a skating fan I’m so tired of all the skaters skating to Moulin Rouge.
I know a lot of people are saying “Who’s Lightyear even for?” And I can tell you from experience the answer is 7 year olds. My son has been counting down the days to see it since the teaser trailer came out.
I will not see JP. I will see everything else you just listed. So I’m contributing to your sooth saying.
I’d be comfy with that bet.
Bingo.
What about old, tired Brad Pitt on the train?
I’m going to sound like an absolute dickhole for saying this, and so I want to apologize up front. Nobody cares what the critics have to say about Jurassic Park. As long as it has bigass dinosaurs punishing rich hubris, people will see it because that’s what people expect to see. Let’s be real, the only JP that got any critical acclaim was the first one and that movie is………and brace yourself, almost 30 years old.
I disagree completely: Jurassic Park just came out and no I’m not old, you’re old, shut up, leave me alone, I’m going home now to take a nap because I’m still young and active.
Ummm, you do realize that Jurassic Park came out in 1993, right? Yes the new one, Jurassic World Dominion did JUST come out, but Axetwin was talking about the very first one, which did indeed come out 29 years ago 😆, where have you been?
Who dares wake me from my slumber to talk dinosaurs?zzzzzz…..
You need rest to take advantage of all that virility!
Yeah honestly… I’m gonna slip into a matinee tomorrow despite the reviews. I just want to see a few big money shots of dinosaurs roaring and shit.
Yes, we know you’re a moron.
Okay but this movie is apparently more about prehistoric locusts than even dinosaurs so *shrug*
Sure, but the punters on opening weekend didn’t know that until after they’d bought their tickets…
Most of tge reviews were some variation of “this is a bad movie that will make a ton of money.” So kinda spot-on.There has been one JP movie that was pretty OK and 5 that have been various degrees of really bad, but all have made money.
The first Jurassic World got a 71% RT rating.
I gave up after Fury Road. Meticulously crafted action and visuals. Nominated for multiple awards including Best Director and Picture at the Academy Awards. Well deserved win for Best Editing. I spent a lot of time making sure I didn’t miss a repeat screening at the Sydney iMax (biggest in the world at the time).Gets a B+ Cinemascore and likely loses money on just the global theatre gross which was … tepid to say the least.We really get what we deserve, don’t we?
I didn’t understand the cinemascore for Fury Road. That movie delivered what the trailer promised.
Speak for yourself. I for one deserve NONE of this. Don’t you DARE imply that I am an associate to the crimes of the barely sentient flith that will drag this world to oblivion.
It will make a lot of money its first week, but I’m guessing it’ll fall off pretty hard after.
Nobody cares what the critics have to say about Jurassic Park.False. I care.
Did you see it?
Fuck no.
You’re totally right, and you’re not a dickhole for stating the obvious. Your every-day working masses don’t give two craps about what a reviewer says about a movie that looks interesting. Bad movies regularly get good audience reviews because people simply go to movies to be entertained. They’re not there to be a critic.
On the other hand, those of us that thought the last movie was bollocks are happy that the critics are telling me it’s more of the same, so I don’t waste my time or money on it.
Eeeek!!! I’m getting old.
I was just talking today to a big Jurassic Park fan and his view went approx. thus: “Oh, nobody gives a *shit* about the humans in these movies or whatever the story’s supposed to be. We just want to see dinosaurs. Have you read any of the fanfic or seen fan YouTube videos or anything? It’s all about the individual dinosaurs because, again, nobody gives a *shit* about the humans.”
The new JP movie is a hit, despite the bad reviews and a silly plot about GIANT LOCUST
People are going to see a big dumb action movie with child appeal on the big screen rather than wait to see it at home? You don’t say…There are some entertaining action sequences, some interesting new dinos (anything with feathers), and we get to see what the original three are up to and make some fun at Ian Malcolm’s expense. That’s enough to satisfy most movie watchers. Personally, as long as they were going for characters from JP1, I wish they’d showed or even mentioned how Lex and Tim had grown up, even if they couldn’t get the original actors. I’m sure they could have squeezed some mentions in there somehow. lol
I was really expecting *something* about the Hammond grandkids. Ariana Richards was at the premiere, and Joseph Mazzello has had a pretty steady acting career as an adult, but no.
Just the annoying clone girl (WHO IS THE TRUE VILLIAN OF THE SERIES BECAUSE SHE RELEASED DINOSAURS INTO THE WILD SO EVERY DEATH BY DINO FROM HERE ON OUT IS ON HER HEANDS) learning that she kind of had a birth mother after all? Don’t care.
Colin Trevorrow is only allowed to helm these “last one in the franchise” movies in order to make people hate the franchise and let it die. He’s a nerd grief counselor.
I have long since accepted people are dumb. How anyone can have watched the last Jurassic World and wanted more is beyond me. But have at it hoss! You want big dumb dinosaurs, enjoy.
I’m a dinosaur lover and this movie isn’t for me. People don’t want big dumb dinosaurs; they want recognizable faces in an action flick. They’re watching this for the Pratts and Goldblums.
Nostalgia is a drug.
People watch the original for nostalgia all the time. I think new shit with old parts is a drug.
Yeah— given that I was correcting my parents on the pronunciation of Parasaurolophus before I was in kindergarten, I should be the prime demo for this movie. But I refuse to give the JP movies another dollar, and the only reason I even gave the last one any time was because I got outvoted on a family movie night.
The one person I know who’s seen every Jurassic [Noun] so far told me nobody who likes those movies cares about the humans and whatever they’re up to, they just want to see the dinosaurs.
It’s like the Transfomrers movies. People kept seeing them, then saying “ugh.” Then going back to see them again. I swear to christ my entire workplace went to see the fourth one or whatever, and most of them said some line of “well, the last one was not very good, but eh, I’ll go see this.” Then came back with “that movie was not very good.”
NO. KIDDING.
Well, everyone kept going to those Transformers movies until they suddenly weren’t. They always end up making too many trips to the well.
The fifth one is amazing. Bumblebee fighting Nazis. Stanly Tucci is Merlyn. Mark Wahlberg tries to act like he’s smart. The list goes on!
There were four of them?
At present, there are six, with another coming out next year.
oof…
there were SIX
I saw the first one, hated it, & didn’t see another one until Bumblebee, where people said “oh, hey, this one’s actually good because it’s nothing at all like the others” & they were right.
I haven’t seen Bumblebee but have heard the same. I just have so many other things I would rather watch. =)and i literally have transformers tattoos
Sorry, I wasn’t trying to convince you to watch it; I was expressing solidarity at not wanting to keep watching that series.
Hey it’s either this or people going to see military propaganda starring the leader of a anti-LGTBQ+ Cult for their cheap movie thrills.
Same could be said about the same imbeciles that keep rushing out to see MCU movie after MCU movie that all have the same formula except now they’re trying to cater to the woke crowd so they break out the diversity checklist…Its not rocket science, some people are tired of movies full of woke messaging or that have some sort of diversity checklist…You don’t have to be dumb for wanting to see something that is atleast midly entertaining and not preaching the race, sexual orientation, feel bad for being white, poor (insert race) being oppressed….I know its hard to grasp, but it should be starting to get totally obvious that the majority of people are tied of the woke, free life, entitled crowd to the point that they’re flicking their asses right out of congress…..Intelligent people who don’t give a crap about the woke utopia are done playing the stupid games.
That fuckin’ Mosasaur kills me every time, it’s like three times bigger than any Mosasaur ever was. It’s half again as big as a blue whale. Real ones would be scary in the same way as being in the water with a extra-long skinny killer whale, not this kaiju shit.
Like the one thing I ever wanted from the Jurassic series was dinosaurs (and other extinct megafauna) but all they want to serve me is monsters. There’s already monster movies! Make a dinosaur one!
This is a great point.
Gotta stop mixing mosasaur dna with genetic material from the zilla genome
“Taking nature’s greatest predators and needlessly making them even more aggressive and dangerous!”
I’d also love to know how a mosquito bites an animal that lives in the middle of the fucking ocean. Or did they recton that out in Jurassic World and I missed it? (Probably on account of my brain turning to mush at the constant dumb I was watching)
You sound like your probably that person your friends etc. all hate having around, like to the point that they either don’t invite you to things, make up reasons not to come to things they’re invited to by you and actively countdown the minutes till your gone…You sound like one of those dumb as hell hiptsters, who tells everyone how stupid something is, or how much intelligence you lost(classic sign of a dumb person) while watching something awful, cause everything should be Shakespeare…..But then you rush home to download the latest anime, in Japanese of course with subtitles so you can tell everyone how cultured you are…
Yeah, they glossed over that with the Asian guy who just “cooked up” dinosaurs in his lab by combining “things” with “other things”.
It could have washed up on the shore.
Sure. It’s no dumber than anything else they’ve tried to slip by us the last three movies.
You’re thinking way too hard about it.
It just takes DNA, not exclusively from amber-preserved mosquitos, pretend there was some way they found ocean-dwelling dinosaur DNA and they ran with it.
I don’t remember for sure but expect they hand-wave it with improved gene replication technology or some shit. The plot point needed to justify another island in the first trilogy was actually the most scientifically realistic point in those movies – most of the dinos never make it to hatching or die young, and they don’t want the tourists to see that. So the sausage making was pretty messy.
Cool story….I bet your one of those people who jerks for joy though about those amazing velociraptors, which aren’t actually velociraptors because they were the size of a chicken, but Utahraptor isn’t as cool of a name….Not that anyone knows shit about dinosaurs anyway because there were zero people alive at the time they were alive and all we have ever been doing is guessing from pieces of a skeleton, so nobody can actually be certain
Really almost every big animal was depicted as larger than it was in real life in the JP series. Even the T Rex from the original was way too big. The mosasaur really takes the cake though. The VFX artists basically said they just kept making it bigger and bigger for “dramatic effect,” science be damned. In Jurassic World they made it about 35m long. In Fallen Kingdom they made it about twice that long. By the looks of it, they greatly increased its size again for this movie. Given that doubling and animal’s size increases its mass by around eight, I can’t imagine how heavy an animal that size would be. Too heavy to exist really. Certainly without significant changes to its body plan. Not to mention we’re talking about a reptile here. I doubt it’s possible to environmentally thermoregulate at that mass.
Yeah, I remember thinking “Well at least those could just be Utahraptors or Deinonychus” because there’s usually a bigger theropod. But that mosasaur is just silly. They should have put in a nice silly looking 70 ft Leedsichthys or a Shastasaurus, but those don’t look like dragons.
It’s funny that you mention Deinonychus. That’s what Crichton modeled his Velociraptors after. They were supposed to be Deinonychus, but despite Velociraptors being the size of a chicken, he thought the name was too cool not to use. Spielberg even acknowledged that he just went with that, and the Utahraptor, which could’ve made sense, was only discovered after they had finished shooting JP and he still likely wouldn’t have changed the name anyway. I find Liopleurodon to be even more terrifying as far as marine reptiles go. One thing the JP franchise got away from is that it’s much scarier to be pursued by something closer to your own size that can outmaneuver you in every way, than some giant kaiju monster.
Word. Getting swallowed whole would definitely suck, but being torn to shreds and left bleeding out while watching my viscera get gulped down would definitely be worse.
And truly threatening, as opposed to a five ton carnivore that wouldn’t bother trying to eat a tiny human in any event and is not nearly that fast in reality. At the same time, even in the first movie, these animals are presented as movie monsters that want to kill and eat all the time, which is also not reality.That said, and ostrich sized predator, that would see a human as prey, is infinitely more scary than a T Rex.
What about that whole “new definition of pain and suffering as you’re slowly digested over a thousand years” thing?
Wouldn’t I die of thirst in three days or so, though (and that’s if I don’t suffocate)? And if the sarlacc’s digestive juices take a thousand years to work, I doubt I’ll even feel it before I succumb to other causes.
Well, whatever it is, I’m just going to hold my hand palm-outwards at it and it’s going to obey me. That’s how it works, right?
It’s a MOARsasaur
I’m an open water swimmer, and I have to admit that mosasaurs are my #1 nightmare animal, even though they are extinct and could never, ever hurt me, like, ever. Just this morning I was looking down into those weeds, in a tiny lake in Maryland, and imagining frickin’ mosasaurs. And to continue your accuracy point, mosasaurs weren’t even dinosaurs! They were aquatic reptiles from the Cretaceous period.
They named a dinosaur after Moses?
All I can think about is how much that thing would have to eat. Like, clean out the oceans amounts of food.
Star Wars provided some slight hope in showing we’re not quite at the point of being able to slap a label on absolutely everything and get away with it, given that The Rise of Skywalker might have grossed less than Joker (the fact it’s so close between the two is telling to say the least). The Star Wars movies left a lot of money on the table due to their frankly terrible execution from even just a moneymaking point of view and putting the actual quality of the script to one side (though I really wish they wouldn’t keep doing that).
I know it’s subjective but Obi Wan is giving me some hope again in that regards. I think it’s the best Disney+ Star War show so far. Only Mando season one comes close. It’s loads better then season 2 and Book of Boba Fett. Part of it is they seem to be pulling no punches. No idea how the show about an old Jedi managed to have a bigger body count, more scary bad people and more threats of child torture then the show about a bad ass Bounty Hunter
I love the Obi Wan series, but to Disney, I think it’s telling them they have to double down on the “classic” character nostalgia.
Imma disagree. I find it stilted and slow. It’s like he’s become a cranky old man, waving his lightsaber at the kids to get off his lawn, and complaining about his sciatica.
Your mom left a lot of money on the table. She said I was so good I didn’t need to pay her.
I went (in IMAX no less) despite “World” being the only JP sequel I’ve enjoyed. For all the cynicism about deploying nostalgia in entertainment, I can’t lie, they talked me into the building with the law firm of Dern, Neill, and Goldblum. To that end — and thankfully they make up half the movie — those three delivered, they still had the magic touch as they did 30 years ago. So I was willing to sit through the “CLONE GIRL, WE GOT CLONE GIRL HERE…see nobody cares!” portions of the movie for the OG Park crew.In fact, the movie almost plays like a proposed World script that was retooled into a movie featuring the original characters (the movie neatly has two different sides of the movie — the “Park” side and the “World” side — for the first 100 minutes), and that they shaved off as much as they could without pissing off Pratt’s and Howard’s agents.I would fall short of an actual recommendation because not everyone is gonna sit through 50 minutes of mediocrity (the “World” side) for the good 90 minutes with the “Park” crew, but I will say I didn’t mind seeing it the once. Or as a girl said as everyone was filing out: “I was expecting MUCH worse”
yeah I’m going to watch it anyway
Man, people are really into locusts.
Yes, Mr. DeMille.
Does that….bug you?
Unless all the main characters died, it’s not really a finale. Especially with this success.
Eh, people are going to watch what they watch. Hopefully they at least enjoy the movie, although it is kind of hilarious how the last Jurassic World film had the biggest ‘eh’ reflection on it out of all the billion dollar movies I know.
Something I’ve learned, though, from watching Dan Murrell’s excellent box office breakdowns is that it is the second weekend that usually tells the real story. It’s actually something he’s actually said several times, as that is what really decides these huge movies.
And even that second weekend metric has changed over the last decade of blockbuster films (particularly superhero films). It used to be a drop too much over 40% was a disaster. These days a drop of around 60% is the norm for blockbuster films that have massive opening weekends yet still are likely to have legs in the following weeks. Now it’s drops of 70%+ that indicate a blockbuster is drop away into nothingness quickly.
In all reality, as much as I respect the work of critics, there are plenty of examples where they are all way off the mark of what is actually enjoyable. I’ve noticed that critics seem to be skipping along, arms locked, in a world outside of the one we all live in again, lol. The critical reviews for this movie are as unoriginal and predictable as they say the movie is. I’ve seen the same one liners in every single review and I’ve also noticed that a lot of these new articles mention its 31% critic score but fail to include that it is sitting at 79% for audiences. Sometimes it feels like critics all sway to their own rhythm much like you would see with the table of mean girls at school lunch. It’s not that serious, it’s an action blockbuster dinosaur movie with characters everyone loves. Get over yourselves.
“But, you know what they say: Money printer go [insert dinosaur roar sound here].”
*chef’s kiss*
It’s not at all surprising there wasn’t a drop: Ticket prices are up. This is an ongoing problem because it’s disguising attendance drops that are, when you look at the numbers, extremely bad news for theaters. Paired with the hikes in borrowing costs, AMC in particular is a stretch of bombs away from dying off.
Word of advice to the critics – people watch movies like Jurassic Park to HAVE FUN. They could care less about the movie not dotting every “i” or crossing every “t”. Lighten up!!!
I don’t know what kind of think-piece people were expecting when this hit theaters, but leave that shit at the door. It’s a dinosaur movie, with the OG cast, and end of the franchise. Buy your popcorn (or smuggle in your snack of choice), sit back and enjoy.
Anyone overly critical of the movie is thinking WAY TO HARD about it. Do y’all think this hard about John Wick, and how he’s able to find ammo that’s scarce or somehow manages to kick ass with a gunshot wound throughout the whole movie because, pills?
My rating of the Franchise (prove me wrong):
JP > JW > JW: Dominion > JW: Fallen Kingdom > JP: Lost World > JP III