Jurassic World: Dominion proves that the once-beloved franchise is ready for extinction
Director Colin Trevorrow repeats the mistakes of previous Jurassic films in a deeply unsatisfying finale
Film Reviews Jurassic World
After three decades and six Jurassic Park movies, audiences have been treated to all kinds of adventures—good, bad, brisk, repetitive, you name it. Until Jurassic World: Dominion, I would never have expected one that’s utterly boring. Back in 2015, Jurassic World asked the question: What would happen if dinosaurs became so commonplace that they were no longer exciting? Dominion answers by making even the most unique dinosaur encounters so routine and uninspiring that even the people involved cannot muster the enthusiasm to be frightened.
Colin Trevorrow returns to the director’s chair for the finale of the Jurassic World trilogy, and he seems to have learned nothing—not from the failures and many glaring and legitimate criticisms of the first two, much less from the narrative arc that began with Jurassic Park. Consequently, long-abused fans of the franchise are treated to a meandering retread of the earlier installments’ greatest hits, along with a handful of Spielberg homages peppered in as a vivid reminder of exactly who Trevorrow isn’t as a filmmaker. Meanwhile, the casts of both trilogies unite here to rectify the same lessons about science-run-amuck and indefatigable corporate greed that kickstarted the series back in 1993.
After Fallen Kingdom ended on the same note as The Lost World did in 1997—with dinosaurs escaping to the mainland—Dominion begins with an update on their status: While world governments attempt to contain the beasts, altruistic CEO Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) secured the rights for his company, Biosyn, to capture and protect dinosaurs, and of course protect humanity from them. When swarms of overgrown locusts begin destroying America’s Breadbasket, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) reaches out to Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to help obtain evidence that Biosyn is responsible for creating the voracious insects—and further, may be using prehistoric DNA for more nefarious purposes. They get their chance to find that evidence when Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), working as a thought leader for the company, invites the duo to tour Biosyn’s high-tech facility, which doubles as a sanctuary for the animals the company has recaptured.
In the meantime, Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) are living in the Pacific Northwest, raising teenager Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) in secret after she was identified as a clone of Charlotte Lockwood, the daughter of John Hammond’s late business partner Benjamin Lockwood. When poachers capture the offspring of Blue, the velociraptor that Owen successfully trained at Jurassic World, he vows to help recover the animal; but during his pursuit, Maisie is captured as well and taken to Biosyn’s facility. With the help of a roguish pilot named Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), Owen and Claire make their way to Biosyn, where they hope to save both Maisie and Blue’s baby, encountering dangerous opposition—human and dinosaur—along the way.
In other words, Dominion is the story of people going to an animal preserve—or, essentially, another park—and running into dinosaurs at every turn. This may seem familiar to viewers of previous Jurassic films. Determining how Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael missed one of the easiest lay-ups in modern blockbuster history is a mystery that may never be solved, but the fact that they did does not come as a surprise after two mostly awful predecessors. Literally all they needed to do was put dinosaurs in urban environments and then film what happened. The brief vignettes that actually do this are provocative and interesting, such as when a pack of brachiosaurs interrupt a lumber mill and the workers have to figure out how to lure them away without hurting them (or themselves). Instead, there’s a solid hour of plot about oversized locusts which inevitably leads back to the numbing two-pronged (re-)discovery that Corporations Are Evil, a fact that’s only confirmed after some of the dopiest acts of detective work by the most conspicuous individuals you have ever seen.
Trevorrow’s biggest and yet most baffling accomplishment with the film is to simultaneously express zero confidence in moviegoers’ ability to appreciate the awe-inspiring majesty or fearsomeness of dinosaurs, and then create zero suspense or excitement as he and Carmichael throw the kitchen sink into set piece after set piece. Rumor has it that Spielberg once wanted a Jurassic film to build to scenes involving dinosaurs strapped with rockets, running into battle; Trevorrow doesn’t choose this (quite frankly dumb) option, but there are birdlike dinosaurs that swim in water, velociraptors that can be directed by a laser pointer and, inevitably, an even bigger predator than ever before, this time the Giganotosaurus, which is even more powerful and menacing than the quaint old T-Rex that was so impressive back in 1993.
Trevorrow tries to recreate that T-Rex scene from Jurassic Park with the Giganotosaurus, more potential victims, and more imminent danger; but even when the beast’s jaws are literally chomping down around someone, there is not one second of fear or worry that any of these people in the credit block will meet a deadly fate. I never would have imagined that I’d tire of watching the most photo-realistic dinosaur face offs that money can buy, but the level of human thoughtlessness—on screen and behind the scenes—is so oppressive that the final super-predator showdown feels less like an obstacle to the characters’ escape than it does to the audience’s.
Pratt and Howard possess only slightly more personality on screen than Sermon as Maisie Lockwood, who’s less of a real character than a plot device that would be better served on, say, a television series about dinosaurs and genetic engineering instead of this movie series. Although their collective arc focuses on restoring their family—and in the process, Blue’s—you never particularly get the sense that they care much about one another, much less develop a reason to care about them. Dern, meanwhile, carries the same fire of thoughtful indignation that made Sattler so appealing and essential in the first film, while her character sparks heat with Neill’s that’s missing from Claire and Owen’s relationship.
As clumsily as Trevorrow and Carmichael execute the rekindling of Ellie and Alan’s understated romance from Jurassic Park, Neill embraces the notion of Alan Grant risking becoming a fossil himself, and the duo’s reflections on 30 years of choices—good and bad—unfold with a bittersweetness the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to. Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm, on the other hand, continues to embrace the actor’s late-stage edge-of-self-parody performances, playing his own hits by offering comical doomsday predictions that somehow always sound funny even when they’re heralding the worst possible outcomes.
DeWanda Wise gets good mileage out of her role as a conscience-struck soldier of fortune, but she, Mamoudou Athie, and BD Wong all occupy a lazy, not fully thought-out liminal space in the story working at odds with, and in service of, the established hero characters. Each of them gets a different, “Oh, they’re a good guy now?” moment that occurs so plainly that the audience can’t help but mistrust them all. Then again, it’s important to remember who made the film; the filmmakers’ capacity for misdirection is as meager as their other storytelling skills. Even so, the notion that Wong’s Dr. Wu could earn anyone’s trust at the end of three decades of genetic engineering debacles is laughable—and yet, it’s treated as a profound emotional moment.
And so, Jurassic World: Dominion (hopefully) concludes the Jurassic Park series with, ironically, the exact kind of plodding disaster that its human characters have been helpless to prevent. To reunite the core cast members of both trilogies, now presumably full of insights and wisdom (either or both as actors or characters), and then give the final, introspective voiceover to a character not a single audience member has ever seen except in “archival footage,” offers a final insult to moviegoers who have been decreasingly mesmerized by these films. There are four or five “so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” jokes to make here that would suffice as a perfect encapsulation not only of this film, but of the totality of the franchise, but suffice it to say you would be better served by going outside and using your imagination to explore dinosaur-themed ideas than watching how these people spent the hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal to use theirs.
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I don’t know why but it seems like there was more than 6 of these.
Aside from the first one they all kind of blur together. I do remember after JP2 realizing for the first time that when ostensibly intelligent characters do uncharacteristically stupid shit for no reason, it’s because the filmmakers fucked up in some way.
I think one of the AV Clubbers said “There was one good Jurassic movie and it came out in ‘93.”
Yeah there’s one good one and the rest vary from so so to utter trash.
‘Tis true. The others can be entertaining, but there’s only one Jurassic Park. Fortunately the herd of sequels and sequels upon sequels doesn’t make the original any less awesome.
Yup!
‘the lost world’ definitely solidified to me that you never know if you’re going to like a movie until after you’ve seen the movie.
Deep.
I know I’ve seen JP2, I believe I’ve seen all of at least one other and at least part of at least a fourth, but I couldn’t name them or give a plot description beyond “so there are dinosaurs…”.
I’m just hoping this movie contains the line, “Somehow, Alan Grant has returned.”
“The old speak (and collect a paycheck)! Theaters are showing a new film, an UNNECESSARY SEQUEL with anvils of nostalgia from DR. ALAN GRANT and vapid charm from WHOEVER CHRIS PRATT IS PLAYING.DR. IAN MALCOLM returns to be both sexy and weird, while ELLIE SATLER arrives to make you wish you were watching Laura Dern in another DAVID LYNCH movie instead.Meanwhile, STUDIO EXECUTIVES watch and begin calculating how long they’ll have to wait until the stink from this pile of TRICERATOPS dung wears off enough to resurrect the franchise yet again…”
Oh you just know this whole goddamn thing will restart in a few years, when some new Sundance discovery will be tapped to direct the bigger, grittier remake of the first Jurassic Park.
Coming soon: Paleozoic Park. A thrilling trilogy in which Chris Pratt must save humanity from being mildly inconvenienced by genetically engineered trilobites.
Precambrian Park: “Dad, these bubbling pools smell funny.”“That’s the sulfurous emissions, son.”That’s the entire film. It will cost 150 million dollars.
You’ve got to admit, a movie about the Hadean era could be kinda trippy in a planetary-scale lava lamp sort of way. This discussion leaves me trying in vain to think of a 70s sci-fi novel whose premise is that we’ve abolished the death penalty but developed (one-way) time travel, so the authorities deposit criminals late enough in geological history for a suitably oxygenated atmosphere (but before predators evolved), and occasionally throw some supplies in the hole, allowing the legal fiction that they’re alive. Complications ensue.
It sort of reminds me of that episode of the Twilight Zone, where a guy convicted of a crime is imprisoned on a deserted planet, and he occasionally gets supplies and things to keep him occupied like books and kits to built.
Man that’s cheap.
We’re vying for some Independent Spirit awards.
They turn into slime monsters. Starring Denise Crosby
The big baddie in this is the Dimetrodon
And they’ll drag Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum out of The Actors’ Old Age Home to reappear as Jurassic Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm.
Laura Dern will pass because she’s doing a porno directed by David Lynch.
At the risk of bastardizing a line from the original film: Trevorrow will find a way.
Y’know, I have some hope that Spielberg movies aren’t going to be remade too much, give or take how much you credit him for Poltergeist.
Geez, Mr. F. You dropped more names in that post than the film! Although you DO make a valid point.
A lot of coke ago in a studio boardroom far, far away…
“ELLIE SATLER arrives to make you wish you were watching Laura Dern…”If I watch this, that’ll be the reason (I’m not made of stone either).
The only way I’ll accept another Jurassic Park movie is if David Lynch directs it and is given full creative control. I’ll assume that includes bringing in the usual suspects, including her.
[Fade up on:]VELOCIRAPTOR: Alan!
I read this with the Jurassic Park theme thundering in my head. It was great!
Sam Neill needs a new house. I’m not judging too harshly I’m not made of stone.
I think they just have him in silhouette as the words “A new challenger appears” shows on the screen.
I forget, is it D+ or D- that’s considered “The Gentleman’s F?”
The miss of time have caught up with me as well old friend, as I cannot recall either….
“The Miss of Time”, President Zod?I’m not sure whether to pedantically correct you, or applaud you for a Jolly Good Pun.
Scott Tobias himself said it was a D-:
https://www.avclub.com/the-gentleman-s-f-and-the-scourge-of-deliberate-medio-1798235981
Anyone know where Dikachu went? They dropped a lot of gold on those old articles. Just in general I’m curious where a lot of the normal commentariat from back there went. Like is there something better than this version of the AV Club out there?
Yeah, a few years ago an exodus of commentariat created The Avocado. It’s basically just a community site, not an actual news site like the AV Club is (was), but Dikachu and tons of other old-timers hang out there. I post there occasionally but mostly just lurk.
https://the-avocado.org/
egad!
I love lurking! That’s how this all began!
Yeah, but it was crushed under the weight of Kinja.
Dik is sorely missed.
There was something called the Avacodo which was a Disqus forum of a lot of the pre-Kinja commentariat.
Grass. The smiles of playing children. Hot crispy pepperoni on a pizza.
Welcome to the club I’ve been here since the early 2000s. I periodically ask “where did Dikachu go?” every couple of years. For awhile Laserface was holding the fort but he got hustled outta here by toxic commentators. I think Dr. Lizardo is still around although there’s a fake poster that uses that name now too.
I often wonder why I’m still here. But yah it’s been years since Dikachu.
If you find out where Dikachu went I’d love to know so I too can make the jump outta this dumpster fire.
Much like an A- is considered “The Whore’s B+.”
I wrote a book review junior year of high school, and I got a D—-! She said she couldn’t give me an F because it was clear that I had read the book, no matter how much I hated it and trashed it. I don’t remember what the damn book was, but the main character became born again, and I didn’t think it made the slightest bit of sense for him to be born again, because the people in his life that were, well, they were all rotten aholes, every one of them.
FOUR minuses? Just because you didn’t like the book?
I didn’t like (to put it mildly), one of her favorite books. I mean like top 3 books. Her being religious didn’t help me much. I found her totally by accident online about 30 years after I graduated HS. I was online looking for some electronic components, and I put in a name of a store I had bought stuff from in the past, and it turned out there was a college with a really similar name, and in the results for that college, her name was there. I emailed her and she said she was just going through some stuff and thought about my D—-, and wondered whatever happened to me. She was shocked to learn that one of my best friends, who she had real problems with, was married, had 3 kids, and owns a jewelry store. She thought he would wind up in prison. Now he’s on the City Council, and I would bet a future mayor. I just remembered the book, “Go Tell It On The Mountain”. I haven’t changed my opinion. It’s only in second place as far as books I hated, #1 goes to “Catcher In The Rye”, which I had to read both freshman and Junior year. The same teacher who gave me the D—- had no problems with my hatred of “Catcher”. Funny thing how that worked.
I mean, I understand from the Giz review that that the effects are really good. I’d guess that would be enough to elevate it from F to D+.
It’s the AA Dowd B-. Remember him? When this site had actual movie critics and not just guys who can tap out blog posts on their phones?
“velociraptors that can be directed by a laser pointer” aw, like my kitty-cat!
Yep. Pretty much.
I want to see THIS movie now.Jurassic Owlkitty: Dominion.
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
And just like your kitty when the Raptor is done having his tummy rubbed he will bite you hand off and run away
Yeah, our girl is kinda bitey.
And all you need is to point it ONCE at your target. Like guided smart missiles. And for God’s sake don’t point at the wall by mistake. My thoughts while watching this movie.
Strapping rockets to the dinosaurs has been done:
I had that T-Rex. It was awesome!
Same! And the Barchiosaurus, I thought they were great!
I had every one except trex. My friend had trex, tho and I was very jealous
It roared and walked! I lost the armor and cannon bits but I still have the dino. 8 year old me was very happy!
Also lost all the armor but still have the dinos in a big box in mom’s attic.
We lost all the armor bc it broke! The armor pieces were really cheap, fragile pieces of plastic that broke easily. It’s bc the dino figures where originally sold separately as just highly detailed dino models. The “Dino Ridder” concept was applied later to the figures to make them sell better with an action cartoon. Unfortunately, they went with really crappy plastic for the new add-ons. Even my friend’s trex armor was taped up in places, so it wasn’t just me.
THIS should be a property that gets resurrected
Was it a cartoon? I’m hazy on this.
OH yeah it was a short lived cartoon (1 series, 14 eps) but a super awesome toy line as well. The cool ideas just flow off the page looking at this ad. I wish someone would get the rights and bring it back.
This combined with Dinosaucers because of that rad theme song alone
I can’t remember that. I’ll have to check for it.
Then listen to the Denver the last Dinosaur theme and ponder what it means when they say “He’s our friend and a whole lot more”. A really head scratcher similar to Donatello “doing” machines
Well, Denver also played guitar. So “bandmate”counts as “more”, but maybe doesn’t justify “whole lot”.
Coincidentally, Pat Fraley voiced Denver AND Krang, Casey Jones, and Baxter Stockman.Also, I watched that show maybe 3 times when I was 8 and that stupid song still gets stuck in my head 30 years later.
Yes, but has it been done as CGI with live action? I think not.
Finally put that “good dinosaur with a mounted laser gun” theory to the test!
Because the only thing that’ll stop bad guys with guns is dinosaurs with death rays!
I had almost all of those pictured (except the Brontosaurus) – the T-Rex was motorized so it could walk – but it didn’t work very well 🙁
This was like Dinosaur Train for slightly older kids. Combine two things that 7 year-old boys are fascinated by, dinosaurs and laser guns, and voila! Can’t miss!
OMG, my oldest son loved these!
god damn it’s rare you see io9 and av club united in opinion but boy-o this sounds as awful as everyone thought it was.also notable that this was the biggest ‘we aren’t shutting down during covid’ production and it’s just so funny to risk your health and add like 30% to your budget for jurassic park 6. do we think top gun 2 beats this at the box office overall?
This could be directed by Ed Wood and it still will make a shit ton of money.
Correct! This is exactly the type of thing that (seemingly) the majority of people will want to see. Dinosaurs! Pretty people! Nostalgia! Action! Family! The algorithm overlords could hardly have spat out a more fitting creation. That their human underlings ballsed it up (apparently) in the production is of secondary concern. The algorithm has spoken! The money deluge will now begin.
i think you’re underestimating things a little (though i still think we’re looking at like 600 million)this isn’t some franchise that people feel like they’re on a ‘team’ like dc or marvel, in general people didn’t really like the last one, pratt’s star has fallen considerably, and frankly there doesn’t seem to be a ton of heat.the biggest factor i’m curious about is that this will get a china release, unlike many big hollywood blockbusters recently.
You know it’s bad when even Germain Lussier can’t find joy in it. Last time I saw this was with Rise of Skywalker.
Lussier gave a negative review to a franchise film??? I would have thought that physically impossible.
Or quite frankly, any film. I had to watch more than a few not-great movies on the enthusiastic recommendation of Germain Lussier to realize ‘Hey – maybe this guy likes everything a little too much to trust with reviews’. So for him to call anything really bad – it’s gotta suck like the drain at the bottom of the Marianas trench.
I found it better than Rise of Skywalker. I could check out of scenes rather than feel exhausted by them.
Yeah, I fully understand that TGM will be a better movie and this will suck but I like dinosaurs wayyyyyyyyyy more than jets, so I’m gonna go to the dinosaur movie.
Jesus Christ this movie sounds like a mess.
“Literally all they needed to do was put dinosaurs in urban environments and then film what happened.”This is all I’ve wanted in a Jurassic Park sequel since 1993, and it baffles me that we still haven’t gotten it. I want raptor packs hunting in back alleys, T-rexes stomping through shopping centers and underground clubs where they bet on Pachycephalasaur fights. I don’t want whatever this convoluted disaster is.
Geez, yes!Somebody call up Corman and/or The Asylum, get them right on that.
The movie is bookended by such scenes, but without the alpha predators. Those only show up when our heroes are in peril.
“Literally all they needed to do was put dinosaurs in urban environments and then film what happened.”Though this does remind me a bit of that celebrity who said Jurassic Park was so amazing because she “couldn’t tell where the animatronics stop and the real live dinosaurs begin.”I forget who it was who said it. My brain is telling me Shirley Bassey but I quickly realised I meant Shirley McClaine but even then I’m not sure that’s right… it played as a clip on the Clive James Show, I remember that.
“raptor packs hunting in back alleys”Coyotes have colonized most American cities. Imagine how terrifying it would be if velociraptors did the same!
Best we get is raptors chasing people on vehicles in Malta(?)
I wonder if we’d have gotten more urban dinos if they’d known and been prepared for COVID making cities nearly empty in 2020.
Lost World kind of did it with the San Diego scene. As dumb as the plot of that movie is, I could enjoy the spectacle.
Agent: “how would you like to direct one of the biggest franchises ever? It’s about dinosaurs.”Colin: “Great! I want the focus to be on bugs. But they’re, like, bigger than normal.”
“Rumor has it that Spielberg once wanted a Jurassic film to build to scenes involving dinosaurs strapped with rockets, running into battle”1000x more interested in seeing the “fuck it” inherent in that whole concept on-screen than watch Chris Pratt mug in front of a green screen. Again.
The most impressive thing, to me, is somehow making special effects that look worse than the original movie. You gotta work hard for shit to look that lousy these days.
The visual effects are good, but the dinosaurs created via CGI for Prehistoric Planet are much better.
Richard Attenborough appeared with the earliest realistic dinosaurs (which still look pretty decent) and now his brother David appears with the latest oh-my-freakin’gawd incredible dinos (in Prehistoric Planet). The Attenborough-Dinosaur circle is complete. May David never die.
Amen to that.
Even now, that T-Rex chasing the jeep in the original looks real as shit. They cheated by the benefit of it being at night and in the rain, but damn that was impressive CGI work for nearly 30 years ago.
There’s an entry on “The Films That Made Us” about Jurassic Park and the special effects teams. It’s very good.
I felt the same way, all the scenes with dinosaurs in human settings were so cartoony it took me out of the film. I think the first JP worked so well because of the use of practical effects for up close and the minimalism where they were obscured by dark or vegetation. Also adds to the scare factor. Very few scenes in the JW series felt tense in any way.
Does everybody hate Chris Pratt now? I guess not, since they keep letting him star in movies, but it just seems like it. I still have warm memories from Everwood and Parks and Recreation, so I try not to think about his religious shit.
I actually don’t know anything about his religious stuff, nor would I care about it. I just mean it’s the same schtick on-screen every time.
The thing with Chris Pratt is that he’s really only done four things for the past decade: Star-Lord (who is fine), Emmet from the Lego series (who is good but a bit anonymous), Owen from the Jurassic movies (who is cinematic Ambien), and random assorted garbage. The last non-franchise thing he was in that was any good was Her in 2013, and he was barely in it.And hey, granted, that’s true for a lot of MCU mainstays. It pays enough, and shoots often enough, to be worth leaning on by itself. But he’s one of those actors who leans heavily on his own charm, so when that starts to fade for people… what’s left? The boyish puppy thing has an upper limit, regardless of whether or not the religious stuff accelerated it a bit.
he’s barely even doing the boyish puppy thing now. the tomorrow war was basically played completely straight despite the fact that he loaded the cast up with comedy ringers.that’s the thing, i wouldn’t mind if he was actually trying to be charming or playing off his ‘thing’ but he’s not even doing that anymore. he’s just become a straightforward action guy…which is very boring!(though his next 3 projects will have him as star lord so at least there might be some jokes)
I forgot about the Lego series, that was good fun, but also the entire cast was stacked and as you mentioned Emmet was just kind of a well-meaning everyman and not really as memorable as his character of Andy from Parks and Rec. Other than that, as you mentioned, he’s just doing the same thing over and again, and his characters from Jurassic World or Tom Clancy are just cut from the same dickish, self-assured cloth as Star-Lord, which was fine at first but then was the exact same character in the sequel and in the other Avengers films. So I guess the complaints about Pratt’s acting are that he only has two modes, dopey but kind or cocky and blase’
Just seems to me that Pratt is limited in range. Like, outside of Andy from “Parks and Rec” his recent characters have all just been cocky, smarmy bros who are way too into themselves. I also have warm memories of Andy, so it is kind of sad seeing him play jerk after jerk now.
There was also a script for Jurassic Park 4 where Dinosaurs are bred with human DNA and learn to use machine guns. At this point going full B movie schlock sounds more fun.
+1 on that for sure.
Speilberg once wanted to make a film where kids discover pirate treasure in America but like plausible mainland America so he set it on the Oregon coast and to make it plausible that the kids would go looking for pirate treasure he had one of their dads be a museum curator who had to store excess stuff in the attic so it would be plausible that a pirate map just happened to be in their attic, and of course that map would be in Spanish so to make it plausible that the kids could understand it, one of them had to speak Spanish so to make that not just seem like a lazy plot convenience, that kid had to do an amusing Spanish-language scene earlier on in the film where he terrorises a maid, but to make it plausible that this family on the Oregon Coast would have a Spanish-speaking maid, she had to be a temp sent by accident, but to make it plausible they have a temporary maid, one of the kid’s mother has a broken arm, and to make the audience notice her plaster cast, she enters immediately after the kids knock a plaster statue of Michelangelo’s David onto the floor and break its dick off, whereupon one of the kids delivers the immortal line: “That’s my mom’s favourite piece!” Dinosaurs with rockets sounds dumb, but Spielberg would have built just the most delightful puzzle box of a setup to make them 100% plausible.
The problem with Chris Pratt is that his charisma is entirely wrapped up in him being a “labrador in the shape of a human” goofball. When he tries to do “serious action star” he comes off as a dick.
Chris Evans used to have that type of charm/typecasting but he’s actually been in some good movies where he showed he’s got more than just “large retriever dog merged with a human” and whenever Pratt tries to shed that image he just comes off as a dick like you said.
Funny you say that, for YEARS before Captain America Chris Evans’ sweet spot was playing arrogant fuckwads. At the time, playing the ultra-sincere Steve Rogers was a huge departure.
I was trying not to bring up him being Human Torch in those FF movies. But you made me do it. Though he was a self-effacing arrogant jerk in “Not Another Teen Movie” which was the only good film of its ilk besides the first two Scary Movies. Anyway, he was also a badass in the Snowpiercer film, and looks good in his upcoming one, so maybe that balances his resume. And Steve Rogers is an arrogant fuckwad (in the comics) but Evans found a way to level him out and I liked the film version of Captain America a lot more than most comic iterations. However, him deciding to start an international fight because he doesn’t like UN regulations and also because him and his best friend committed a bunch of war crimes, not a great look, but that’s hardly Evans’s fault.
Snowpiercer came out maybe a year after the first Captain America film, so I still count it as a departure from his norm, and before he got huge (in the films, obviously he’s been jacked for years)
velociraptors that can be directed by a laser pointer
So, just like with Fallen Kingdom’s big scary threat of dinosaurs that attack things when you point a gun at their target and pull the trigger, we must once again ask the basic question: If you have your target sufficiently in your sights enough to point an aiming device at them and engage a trigger, why are you spending untold millions per weaponized dinosaur when guns already exist?
I think its supposed to be like a laser designator for a guided bomb, but it’s just sort of dumb.
‘Alright men, we’re going deep into enemy territory – time to load out! On the one hand, you could take this standard-issue assault rifle. On the other hand, you can carry this laser-pointer of equivalent size plus this vicious ten-foot carnivorous beast that a) you’ll have to drag around in a cage, b) might get killed by the enemy, and c) will eat you and your whole platoon the second it gets a chance. Choose carefully!’
There is not a single scene in which a dinosaur is killed by a person using a firearm. There are brief shots of dinosaurs (an hour into the movie) attacking and eating people, but no blood and no gore and no closeups. Dinosaurs are NOT bulletproof. Humans are always running into the predators rather than the vegetarian dinosaurs. And yeah, the movie starts with a short documentary, which I disliked.
I think the good cap’n is asking why you wouldn’t just point a gun at your target rather than pointing what’s basically a laser pointer that sends a dinosaur over to eat your target, not whether or not dinosaurs are bulletproof.
Wow. I get that for whatever reason this is apparently some sort of unwritten rule/tradition for the franchise but taking Dinosaurs off the island and STILL sticking to this is downright infuriating.
Plausible deniability? “I didn’t kill that guy – I was just playing with my laser pointer and then all of a sudden a pack of Raptors ate him.”
This whole “we need to explore the military-industrial implications of cloned dinosaurs!” subplot is beyond baffling. Like, we already have apex predators around without spending millions to clone extinct animals (and then basically mash together kitbashed versions of those extinct animals), but there’s reasons the US military hasn’t weaponised lions, you know?
The US government only wants you to think they haven’t trained lions for combat
If the US military had trained lions for combat, they would be telling showing that off to everyone at every possible opportunity, because I would be showing that off to everyone at every possible opportunity.
Well you’re not as secretive as the US military, it was actually war lions that killed Bin Laden.
Nah, that was clearly all down to the reverse vampires.Or have they gotten to you, too?
I remember a story out of the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2014. The Ukrainian Navy had been training dolphins in Crimea to work for them specifically for demining ops and some special operations stuff. The Russians wanted to get the dolphins to work for them. The dolphins realizing these new guys were not their handlers nor friends all committed suicide.
I mean, if I woke up and found myself in the Russian military, I’d kill myself.You know. Unless I’d already been raped to death by an officer.
I would have thought that their mutual love of rape would have made dolphins and the Russian military a perfect match for each other.
Fair point.
Quite possibly the most insane film ever made. It’s a miracle no-one was killed.
Fun fact, they did try to weaponize dolphins however.
Well, we use dogs in war. Not really as weapons, though.
They spent three movies on a subplot about the military using Dinosaurs and I’m dumbfounded that left the first draft of Jurassic World. Good heavens.
The writers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
‘Entertainment-Arts Things To Do Los Angeles Classic movies in SoCal: “Priscilla,” “Pink Flamingos,” “Long Kiss Goodnight” and more ‘The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ Two drag queens (Hugo Weaving, Guy Pearce) and a transgender woman (Terence Stamp) take a ride through the Outback in the titular tour bus in this 1994 road comedy. Alamo Drafthouse, 700 W. 7th St., downtown L.A. 12.25 p.m.’ – latimes.com the 12.25 p.m. is the clue that there is something wrong with this is that 12.25 p.m. as in 25 minutes past midnight or 12.25 p.m. as in 25 minutes into p.m. 25 minutes past midday Zero Dark Twenty Five the summary is the bus explosion in the crowd in the remake of Dawn of the Dead the crowd is the crowd of immigrants at a East European border crossing from the Syria emigration at night 12.25 p.m. is turned night into day day for night darkness at noon Outback bus Desert is the bus in the Mad Max sequel used to block the gate to the oil well oil refinery encampment in the Mad Max sequel in the desert the bus is improvised hillbilly Iraq war Hajii armor on a Islamic State suicide bomb bus in the Syrian civil war Stamp is leadfoot the bullet farm anti semetic bloated capitalist plutocrat caricature commander owner leader the fat country squire mafia mob local boss in Sicily in a black Fiat saloon in The Godfather fat Clemenza with the thirty eight with a bobbed hammer gunsmith trigger work seventies spark erosion ported barrel teflon tape wrapped round a Pachmayr grip the nineteen fourties black and white film noir about cutthroat farm produce truck drivers in nightime San Francisco nineteen seventies country trash articulated truck cab Bonnie and Clyde automobile cab in Fury Road two drag queens is lynching and dragging blacks push starting the armored Hajii bus with a piece of heavy earth moving equipment tracked blade wheeled digger the hooded couple tied to the front of the truck in the Mad Max sequel the leather queer the gunsel couple The Maltese Falcon on the motorcycle in the Mad Max sequel one of the Federales motorcycle outriders in Sicario a Argentinian motorcycle cop a Spanish Guardia Civil motorcyclist in Franco’s Spain the French State motorcycle rider who picks up the tourist’s passports at hotels in the original movie of Day of the Jackal Alamo is a civilian location San Antonio Sicario El Paso bus station new arrivals in Los Angeles Gangster Squad Dennis Weaver Duel multiplate truck hunting a woman in a automobile Janet Leigh Psycho in the desert mountains north east of Los Angeles desert mountain road New Mexico Drafthouse is a motorcycle cop staying in the blind spot on the edge of the view of a rear view mirror on the right trailing a truck with a drop pistol already out in his left hand resting on his thigh Psycho house L.A. craftsman architecture house single storey bungalow nineteen thirties Pasadena Topanga starlet kept woman house the aluminium on the gate bus in the Mad Max sequel is the white painted flat metal drive gate on the rented house in Kabul in Zero Dark Thirty the murderers in the cheap dirty Mexican four door saloon automobile use AK-47s H&K MP5s Mexican Secret Service Argentinian Colombian Turkish East Europeans ex Yugoslavians Albanians the Greek mob Greek communist terrorist partisans the nineteen seventies the cook in the Blade Runner storyboard picture your friendly local restaurant owner bodega delivery boy Mila Kunis shot in the head with a thirty eight as she gets a cup of coffee outside her New York apartment the sweaty ill meth head who gets out of the cheap Mexican saloon automobile with a pistol in his hand by his side almost hidden in traffic at the border crossing from Juarez to El Paso malpaso Carmel in Sicario the summary is the newspaper television guide description of Dorothy the psychotic Colombian hit girl with a heroin habit in the Wizard of Oz tens of thousands of people have already read this on latimes.com hundreds of thousands maybe even millions of people all over the world if it is in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times hit men reading the paper in Bogotá I love L.A wet work Harsh Fucking Times contractors military Iraq Afghanistan Africa the Zetas they wish disfuckingorganised crime platinum watch right wrist white girl straight short black hair white dress blue eyes red lipstick petite early twenties Los Angeles automobile white stucco hacienda wall house set back from the street green lawn sidewalk overhanging trees dappled shade place smells like bougainvillea flower blossoms moisture fresh rain oxygen old money silent movie star neighbourhood
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to read this series contained human cloning, but I was. Perhaps that was from the previous film, which I didn’t see even though I think J. A. Bayona is a decent director (better than Trevorrow, as far as I’m aware).
That was indeed from the prior film.
> the filmmakers’ capacity for misdirection is as meager as their other storytelling skills.
And yet, he was probably paid 8 figures to make this. Oh well.
Hack Fraud Alex Kurtzman was just given $160M to continue to shit all over STAR TREK.If this is not the worst timeline, I don’t want to know which one is….
Wasn’t Dr. Sattler married to some guy in JP3? Did that not work out and now they’re trying to shoehorn in romance with Dr. Grant?
You know, he…died!Or…divorce!Or he got lost in the shuffle between movies….
Once you go Grant it’s hard to go back
+1 for the almost-rhyme
That 1 line = better the entire JP series post 1993 script catalogue.
Once you go Neill no one else makes you feel.
Once you go Grant, you just won’t recant.
100%. They bring it up pretty quickly when reunited and Ellie explains she’s happily divorced and Alan admits later his lifestyle is pretty “lonely”. The movie ain’t shy about course-correcting that JP3 detour.
God damn a D+! Wow! Wasn’t that was Texas Chainsaw masscare sequel that came out this year got? And that was one of the worst movies I’ve watched in years! I will see Jurassic world 3 when I get a chance but holy fuck this sounds awful!
That did look bad from what I saw of it when I watched Trixie and Katya recap it on their YouTube channel.
The new TCM movie at least justified its existence by being the first in the franchise (to my knowledge) to actually feature a massacre with a chainsaw.
Are they going to have a repeat of that scene where that coded-as-bitch is dunked by pterodactyls that was somehow both the worst part and the best part of the first one?
OMG just the 2 paragraph plot summary with a recap of the earlier films made me tired. What a mess.By the way, can someone spoil for me if any of the legacy characters die? I’m sure friends of mine will want to go, and honestly any interest I have in seeing this just as crap spectacle would go to zero if I know I have to watch them die so that fucking Pratt and Howard can live.
Spoilers below, beware!
Just saw it (it’s out in Germany today).
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Some more text, so it can’t be seen so easily.
The legacy characters all survive. Have fun!
I seriously expected Malcom to die if anyone. Or Grant after kissing Sattler
Sure, here’s the answer: * I* don’t* know* how* to* do* spoiler* tags* sorry* SPOILER BELOWNo, but they all feel dead inside by the end.
Clever. Good to know that you still have some blood return to your brain, Boner.
No legacy characters were harmed in the plot of this movie. There’s no blood or gore, but there are a few glimpses of dinosaurs attacking and eating humans, no closeups, an hour into the movie (Malta scenes). I always judge action movies by the way the writers/directors kill the villain(s), and I wasn’t at all impressed by how that happens in this movie.
Malta?! Clones? Giant locusts? WTF?
The first 3 Jurassic Parks really deliver with the horrible deaths. They only had one in Jurassic World and everyone got mad, so the next two felt very toothless
In this last one, not a single dinosaur is killed by a human either. It’s as if they’re bulletproof.
Yeah that was weird too, someone said that humans are very good at killing megafauna, so the dinosaurs as invasive species plot makes absolutely no sense. I’m glad they at least said they can asexually reproduce, because otherwise the population isn’t big enough to naturally grow.
For some reason, it was during the trailer for this movie that this frustration hit me with the basic premise. Not the dinosaurs roaming around, but the concept that they would be an existential threat to humanity that could just not be figured out. Like if there is one thing that humanity is really good at, it is finding out ways to kill big things, so the premise that there is now an even bigger dinosaur lurking around just doesn’t have the same impact when it’s not some island sanctuary.Although I am genuinely curious to learn how was the Gigantosaurus like Heath Ledger’s Joker in the film? What kinds of twisted games it played with the protagonists?
By the way, for anyone who might know, why are they hiding now that everyone knows that Maisie Lockwood is a clone? I mean it’s not illegal and I don’t really know what the threat to her would be? Actually, wouldn’t she be a billionaire as the sole inheritor of that estate?
She’s the MacGuffin that the BioSyn villain wants. It’s never clear why, and it doesn’t really matter.
She’s important because she’s basically got the source code for doing live patch updates on DNA. While that would be huge in general, in the immediate case it’s needed to deal with the locusts that are more resilient than expected.
Thank you, but the script never explains this clearly, even with all the footage of her Mom.
I’d say it was in Wu’s speech about why she was needed, but it may have been divided between two speeches. lol
It would make sense if she was cloned with some bio or DNA trigger (blah blah science) to kill all the dinosaurs – just in case. Like Hammond created her to be the emergency kill-switch. She has to go sneeze on a dinosaur or something. I was kind of hoping this would be the case, because I could see some interesting plot wrung out of it. But whether or not they go this way, with this giant locust angle the review mentions, it sounds like the film meanders a long way to get somewhere interesting – and probably never gets there.
Not only that, does the Gigantosaurus actually look that big? They don’t look much taller than the Velociraptors which are roughly human-sized and very fast.
Yeah, if there’s one thing we’re good at, it’s murking macrofauna. The thing about the locusts being the global threat may be the only thing that’s sort of realistic. The problem is, they keep having to raise the stakes for these movies (or at least not lower them). So while the first one can just be a bunch of mostly unarmed nerds trying not to get eaten over their long weekend, in all the new ones they have to be saving the world or something.
They should just stick with the premise from the first Jurassic Park, like they did with Jurassic World, First movie guy builds a park, dinosaurs escape and eat people. Second movie guy builds an even bigger, better park, dinosaurs escape and eat people. Third movie guy builds the super duperest park, dinosaurs escape and eat people. Eventually in sequel ten a Musk like billionaire populates an entire alien planet with dinosaurs, spaceship crashes with paying guests, the dinosaurs eat people. Hollywood, call me, we’ll talk.
dinosaurs escape and eat people.As some of my betters have pointed out, the first one was about hubris and the rest seem to be about our being slow learners. Eventually in sequel ten a Musk like billionaire populates an entire alien planet with dinosaurs, spaceship crashes with paying guests, the dinosaurs eat people. Hollywood, call me, we’ll talk.So the Jurassic franchise ought to be in a shared universe with Don’t Look Up? I’m in!
Jurassic UNIVERSE!
The Gigantosaurus is there only as the NEW T-Rex, and it’s only used for fighting the park’s hero T-Rex.
From what I’ve read of plot summaries the whole “humanity is doomed” isn’t referring to the dinos, it’s referring to the super locusts the Big Bad is making to take out the world’s food supplies.
Thank you! We’ve destroyed countless species by accident and we couldn’t deal with dinosaurs in a totally different habitat that any of them were ever originally in? Nah. (This is also my problem with zombie movies–mankind can’t deal with predators that are often slow, have little intelligence and should be quickly using their ability to move as they decay.
Yeah I can buy smaller, more human-sized (or smaller) dinosaurs being a threat, the kind that could sneak around and get you. “Clever girl” and all that.
But other than that? Shit, stuff like brachiosauruses and T.Rexes would be re-extinct before the weekend.
“See, the Gigantosaur is genetically modified to support its metabolism on just 3000 calories a day…”
“And it’s completely bulletproof”
Yea I can suspend disbelief when the people are on an island with limited resources. But now you want to say dinosaurs are going to survive against countless runs of an A-10 giving them its “bhhwaaat”.
Humanity has shown a unique ability to obliterate macrofauna. Those that survive today do so pretty much at our mercy, unfortunately.
lmao I forgot about The Joker comparison. Amazing time to bring it back up. Take your star.
Yeah turns out humanity’s real weakness is learning to deal with itty bitty tiny organisms as an existential threat.
It turns out the threat wasn’t that at all, which is a pleasant surprise. It was (SPOILER)**********************************************Locusts that Biosyn bred to eat crops that weren’t theirs. As dumb as that was it was more interesting than the dinosaurs themselves.
“Director Colin Trevorrow” Yeah first red flag there
By the way, and I know the following is petty and on a level I usually don’t stoop to with films, but I really hope that Top Gun Maverick eviscerates this film in a manner similar as Maverick taking out those enemy planes.
Yeah, I want Maverick to destroy this like Jurassic Park beat down Last Action Hero.
I really hope that Top Gun Maverick eviscerates this film in a manner similar as Maverick taking out those enemy planes.like this?:
Goddamn comics are awesome.
That looks like a Calvin & Hobbes Sunday strip. Which is a comic, of course, but when you said “comics” I assumed you meant comic books.
Calvin and Hobbes is awesome.
If only Disney bought Universal and we could’ve turned this into an MCU film with Sauron (dinosaur Sauron) working for Biosyn and turning people into dinosaurs
I want that movie.Now.
I need all the context right now.
Here’s the original strip, but I can’t seem to find the panel that pocketsander posted.Edit: It was cover art on a collection:
Which obviously begs the question – would Top Gun have been better if it were about dinosaurs going zoom in airplanes, rather than humans?
That depends. Do dinosaurs know about the Righteous Brothers?
God I miss Calvin and Hobbes.
Shit, do the kids these days not know Calvin and Hobbes?
Not with Dinosaurs, guilty as charged.
I just got back from watching Maverick and it was absolutely fantastic. Surpassed my expectations despite the hype, just a fantastic cinema experience. I don’t even have much of a connection to the original but I loved it.
The first Jurassic World film, meanwhile, is the biggest piece of shit ever and a massive letdown even given the mediocre legacy of the JP franchise.
In other words – this exactly.
IMHO, the first Jurassic World film is now the best of the second trilogy.
I like the first JW as a big dumb monster movie, but the weirdness of Fallen Kingdom did something for me. Goth dinosaurs! Clones! Illuminati dinosaur auctions! Old men being murdered with pillows! I really wanted JA Bayona to return for this one just to maintain it all, but of course Trevorrow had to come stomp all over it with his cheap Spielberging.Safety Not Guaranteed just wasn’t that good. It just wasn’t.
I want Top Gun: Maverick to crush Jurassic World: Dominion like Jurassic Park crushed Last Action Hero. Now that’s nostalgia.
They should’ve done the rockets thing.
And set it in a new environment, perhaps in the 1960s, or on the Moon.
“Until Jurassic World: Dominion, I would never have expected one that’s utterly boring.”Based on the last 2 I’m not sure why you would expect this one to not be utterly boring.
Hell, I nearly passed out during The Lost World (my least favorite Spielberg movie). The concept of a dry Jurassic Park has been around long enough to be able to rent a car.
I’ve only ever seen the first Jurassic Park but wasn’t Bryce Dallas Howard the co-lead of these movies at some point? She sure is way behind Pratt in that picture there.
Nah she has always sorta played second fiddle to him. She has been honest that she does these movies to just watch how they are made so she can apply it in her own film making. She is a great director.
I’m sure you meant to say… “how she can avoid it in her own film making,” right?
All lessons are applied, whether you’re learning what to do or what to not do.
I kinda want to see BDH in a Breen film now…
You do learn a lot by watching what not to do.
Pratt is credited first, but Howard is much better in this movie than he is. I don’t hate Pratt but you don’t care at all about his character.
“The final super-predator showdown feels less like an obstacle to the characters’ escape than it does to the audience’s.”Ok I’ll admit I chuckled sensibly at that burn.
It was mostly a huge but brief CGI distraction.
If only there were a website where we could read more of the opinions of AA Dowd
I miss “Double A” Dowd
Dowd is the best.
https://authory.com/AADowdHe seems to be reviewing a lot of stuff for Digital Trends. But there are links to reviews and articles at other sources as well. I’m about to read his Vulture article on A Simple Plan – one of my all-time favorite movies.
Id pay to see the legend himself rip it apart and give it the gentlemens F, or just an F F.
And by ‘the legend himself’, I assume you mean Ignatiy Vishnevetsky?(Not that I don’t like Dowd, but no one dumps on a bad flick better than IV.)
Oh no disagreements here, Contract to Kills review needs to be plastered onto the wall of an art museum for future generations.
I like them both, but when it comes to reading an A or B review I’ll pick Dowd and when it comes to a C- down to F then I’ll go with IV.
Is this the one with the sociopathic dinosaur?
No, that’s the Scientology guy in Top Gun: Maverick.
I’m old enough to remember when Colin Trevorrow was going to be the next Spielberg. Between this and The Book of Henry, how does he still have a career?
I love how this review really gets to the heart of the matter. Bad movie, well-written article.
“Lewis Dodgson”? An acquaintance of the famous humorist “Samuel Twain”?
I noticed that too, but apparently he’s a character in the first film too? He’s the dude who hires Nedry to steal the samples. It makes sense, because Michael Crichton is not a particularly subtle dude. Like when a reviewer named Michael Crowley from New Republic trashed his novel/anti-climate-change screed State of Fear, he put a character called Mick Crowley in his next novel who was a journalist that molested children and had a grotesquely small penis.And for a full circle moment: The dude who played Lewis Dodgson in the first film is a convicted child sex offender! What a… fun… fact… Edit: Shouldn’t his name be “Mark Clemens” instead, to follow the pattern?
Probably, but I thought mine was more obvious. You know, for the kids.
“Director Colin Trevorrow repeats the mistakes of previous Jurassic films in a deeply unsatisfying finale”Was on the fence. Definitely going now.
To me it all went downhill when Chris Pratt became the velociraptor whisperer
Yeah. I don’t hate Pratt but his character in this movie just sucks.
I feel like JW was the point where people started to turn on Pratt. His previous roles were all affable goofball schlubs- in JW his character has a real unearned smugness that started to show up in his other roles now that he was a Serious Leading Man.
Trevorrow: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if the franchise’s most terrifying antagonists were turned into pets that could be controlled by our main character? And if said main character was a hyper-competent action-hero type who was never phased or scared by anything dinosaur-related?’
I like that these movies do something new with the dinos instead of them just being horror movie villains but yeah that aspect never really worked for me. I hope Pratt eventually finds a good blockbuster movie role besides Star-Lord.
The only thing I’m grateful to the Jurassic World people for is that they put those trained velociraptors in the previews, so I was angry enough already to know that I shouldn’t waste my money seeing it in a theater.The two hours I spent watching it on HBO or whatever, though, that I can’t get back.
Pratt’s only skill is being a wisecracking doofus. Trying to make him a pursed lips rugged action star was the mistake this series never had a chance to overcome.
Agreed. I like Chris Pratt, but his charm is wrapped up in his whole “human-shaped labrador” energy. When he tries to go all “smoldering action-man” he comes off as kind of a dick.
Think of all the quotable moments from the first film, even from minor characters. Now try and think of a single memorable or remotely profound quote from Chris Pratt or any of the other characters in the Jurassic World films.
And he just uses his palm when we’ve known since Crocodile Dundee (don’t tell me Pratt’s character didn’t watch that movie a thousand times) you’ve got to use your thumb and pinkie.
Mick Dundee is a perfect example of how this kind of character used to be done well in the 80s – by making at least half of everything he says be pure bullshit, and his ‘superpowers’ based on ignorance, such as being ignorant of laws against dynamite-fishing in the East River. And whenever he swings in to save the day you can see on his face that even HE thinks he’s probably going to die.
The big mistake everyone made after Guardians was thinking it showed Chris Pratt could be a legit action hero, when it’s now clear the reason he works in that role is Quill actually isn’t anywhere near as cool as he thinks he is, and if you take that away and try to present Pratt as actually being that cool, he’s just insufferable.
Solid points! I feel that way about Quill in the comic books as well, dude is just insufferable and incredibly full of himself, even though he does the fake self-deprecating thing to seem humble.
There are a lot of amazing burns in this review, but:
“Consequently, long-abused fans of the franchise are treated to a meandering retread of the earlier installments’ greatest hits, along with a handful of Spielberg homages peppered in as a vivid reminder of exactly who Trevorrow isn’t as a filmmaker.”
I instinctively said “holy shit” out loud after reading that.
Thats the best review burn since all the original writers left.
Biosyn? Bio…syn. Well clearly this film’s greatest strength will be subtlety.
A division of Ev el Corp
to be fair, the one who came up with that was Michael Crichton.
yeah subtle. Even for a dinosaur movie.
It sounded familiar, so I looked it up and discovered Biosyn was from the original novel and movie. They’re the competing company to InGen, and their CEO Lewis Dodgson (another very unsubtle reference) is the dude who hires Nedry to steal the DNA samples. Crichton is notoriously unsubtle; see his character named “Mick Crowley” in the novel Next.
Oh I’m sure the most frequent joke people are going to make at this movie is, “Dodgson! We’ve got Dodson here! See nobody cares. Nice hat.”
Of course they had to recast Dodgson, the original actor was convicted of grooming and fucking underage girls or something, right?
Im pretty sure he’s still in prison so he couldn’t be asked to return even if anyone wanted to do that.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure if he was still in stir or not, and I don’t remember the guy’s name, and definitely didn’t feel like expending energy looking it up.
Cameron Thor. Sentenced to six years in prison in 2016 for sexual assaulting a 13 year old.
Biosyn… Ingen… they’re small potatoes. I take Biocarbon Amalgamate over both.
I was surprised it wasn’t more blatant in referencing the originals, nobody did the “we got Dodgson here!” or “must go faster!” or referencing gymnastics while fighting raptors. I expected all these things
And the fact that Ian Malcolm went over to the Dark Side.
From Nilbog Industries.
All of those paid i09 articles couldn’t save this wreck.
Jurassic World was ungodly dumb but entertaining. The sequel was ungodly dumb and boring. I’m not surprised the third one is bad too, I expected nothing else.
I had already set my expectations low given that all the trailers make it look awful, just an endless stream of fanservice and recreating shots from the older movies. But this grade almost has me excited to see just how bad it is.
Wonderful review, haha, the best I’ve read on the new AV Club, well done.
So many thoughts on this. Sorry everyone, this is my second effortpost on how much I hate this franchise (specifically JW) in week. I promise I’ll stop after this.
Todd, I believe you’re relatively new to the site and the movie reviews. But you have earned my respect for your willingness to criticize the first JW movie, which IMO has received a lot of unjustifiably charitable treatment in online spaces. I know that sounds like a very negative attitude, but Jurassic World is one of the only movies I truly hate. It displays a level of cynicism, contemptuousness, incompetence, open regressiveness and a lack of imagination that is rare to see even in Hollywood. It is the antithesis of art. I don’t just think it sucked, I think it deserves to be eviscerated on a moral and artistic level.Trevorrow’s biggest and yet most baffling accomplishment with the film
is to simultaneously express zero confidence in moviegoers’ ability to
appreciate the awe-inspiring majesty or fearsomeness of dinosaurs, and
then create zero suspense or excitement This was one of the biggest problems with Jurassic World. IDK if by the ‘zero confidence’ remark it means that Trevorrow is repeating his ‘Nobody’s impressed by a dinosaur anymore’ bullshit from JW but if he is then that is infuriating. Like, if that’s what you really think, then give the franchise to somehow else you f**king hack. Rumor has it that Spielberg once wanted a Jurassic film to build to scenes involving dinosaurs strapped with rockets, running into battle;This is interesting because apparently it was also Spielberg who came up with the idea of velociraptor training, the glass spheres and genetically-engineered super dinosaurs for JW. And while I can kind of understand Trevorrow’s reluctance to second-guess Spielberg, it’s ultimately his responsibility as director for failing to realize that these ideas all suck. You have to wonder if Spielberg was ever seriously considering these ideas or if he just tossed them off.
Determining how Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael missed one of the easiest lay-ups in modern blockbuster historySmall correction: JW was also one of the easiest lay-ups in history. ‘Jurassic Park but the park is open.’ How the fuck can you waste that concept so badly? Answer: by having the dinosaurs never interact with the park guests except for one brief 5-min sequence in the middle, about half of which is spent watching a single character die in a horrifically misjudged torture-porn sequence.Although their collective arc focuses on restoring their family—and in
the process, Blue’s—you never particularly get the sense that they care
much about one another, much less develop a reason to care about them.SMH. It just blows my mind how they’ve ended up making this abysmal, tension-ruining storyline about training velociraptors the fucking emotional core of this franchise. Of all the amazing possibilities this franchise could’ve had in its conceptual stages, the ones they’ve committed to are a zero-chemistry, zero-kelvin romance with Pratt and Dallas-Howard and the bond between a man and his pet velociraptor.Okay. I’m done.
I’ve created an account just to agree with you with every fibre of my being. When people excuse Jurassic World as being: “Just dumb fun with dinosaurs!” I weep. The first one was ALSO dumb fun with dinosaurs, but it fucking worked as a film as well. It is possible to be both!
Welcome to the cause, brother.Agree with you completely. What irks me so much about the ‘just dumb fun’ line is that it stems purely from the concept itself. People getting chased by dinosaurs – that is the dumb fun part, and it’s hardwired into the franchise. The film gets praised for doing the bare minimum it has to do as a JP film, while every single creative decision specific to this movie works against that concept, not in service of it.
There is a certain set of the population that lack the self-esteem necessary to comfortably criticize decision making in bodies of work. I’m not denigrating these people – many external factors are major contributors to whether people have developed healthy self-esteem or self-actualization – but it seems to manifest in an attitude that is quick to devalue the importance of the quality of decision making in deference to magnitude of effort (ie, spectacle). And it’s an attitude that a commodity-oriented IP industry has a vested interest in fostering.
Oh, I don’t know about that. I see just as much, if not more, totally unearned confidence in people shit-talking filmmakers. Not that there aren’t stans cuz holy shit yes there are, but there’s just as many nitpicking naysayers who just want to tear down anyone for anything. Most of whom have a passing, trivial knowledge about film but because they consume it and have access to the internet think they’re fucking experts. Get a clue, fellas (it’s almost always fucking bros): You’re not Tarantino just because you bulk buy from Barnes & Nobles Criterion sales.
yeah jurassic world’s greatest strength was timing of release.
“zero-kelvin”That’s great.I also appreciated Face/Off 2: The Face-Tricks Reloaded and Blackface/Off. Read those yesterday, but never got around to responding.
Haha appreciate it dude, thanks!
During the entire Lena Luthor death scene, I just kept thinking “Did they cut a scene where she set a bag full of puppies on fire or something? I guess they just hate women that much.”
It gets worse. Check out Trevorrow’s comment on the death where he vacillates between ‘It’s a subversion of the earned death trope,’ and ‘She deserved it for being a bridezilla.’Honestly though… I think it’s fine to have a gruesome death, or an undeserved death. My problem in this case is that the movie persistently acts like her character is completely irrelevant and unimportant and the camera constantly cuts/pans away from her even when it would be natural to focus on her. But then when she dies we leave all the action behind and just stare at her getting painfully killed. Literally, I think that death sequence doubles her character’s screen time.
I’ve seen a few of Trevorrow’s short films (a student of mine is a fan) and hoo boy is his misogyny baked in.
It’s so weird; the movie can’t be bothered to focus on Zara, but when it does, it wants you to hate her even though she… hadn’t done anything?
I reactivated an account I haven’t used to comment on this site for probably close to ten years to thank you personally.
Jurassic World is the single worst movie I have seen in my entire life, and I’m so tired of people pretending it was just simple popcorn entertainment. What was your favorite part everyone? The most disgusting mainstream torture porn ever put to film, the kid who’s only personality is “Boy, I REALLY want to cheat on my girlfriend on this vacation.” or the movies dripping venom directed at everyone watching it.
It is the only movie I’ve ever seen that felt like it was personally telling me it hated me and thought I was an idiot in every. single. scene.
Happy to oblige! Appreciate the support. And hope you stick around – are you on the Avocado, by any chance?
It is the only movie I’ve ever seen that felt like it was personally telling me it hated me and thought I was an idiot in every. single. scene. Yep. I’m gonna re-use the analogy I used in my last effortpost about this: It’s like going to McDonalds, getting a shit sandwich, and then being told that you deserve it for going to a McDonalds. It’s astonishing how the filmmakers can be so contemptuous of their audience and yet so incompetent at basic storytelling and characterization.Jurassic World is the single worst movie I have seen in my entire life,I’ve know, rationally, that I’ve seen films that are technically worse, e.g. The Room, but yeah – this is what I’d say as well. For all the above reasons and more, JW is just odious on another level.
There’s films I hate, but there’s not many that I both hate and am so disappointed that I hate. Jurassic World just has such utter contempt for its audience, so little faith in them, at all. It’s just a series of really bad ideas, moronic characters, and shameless pandering.I love Jurassic Park so much, but man it is painful to acknowledge how fast and how far the series tanks. It’s almost exponential how bad the movies get in succession. Stop for a minute and realize that Jurassic Park III is actually one of the better films in the franchise at this point.
The lack of blood and gore told me that kids are still a big target audience, because they love dinosaurs, but this movie is not about dinosaurs. There’s lots of never-before-seen species but they’re only there to scare the human characters momentarily. I never cared for any of them, and found the villain to be cartoony and two-dimensional. And you really need to turn off your logic to buy the laser pointer targeting bullshit and the huge park BioSyn has in the middle of Italy. Plus, there are like three scenes in which all the old and new cast members are there in the middle of the action, good for promotional photos.How long before Universal finds another visionary director to continue the franchise?
Two observations:First, after viewing the trailer, I’ve come to the conclusion that all one must do to fend off a dinosaur attack is hold one’s hand up, palm facing said predator. Apparently pre-historic beasts fear the ramifications associated with the “high five.”Second, when the trailer ended, an ad for Drumstix popped up with the tag line: “Eat me.” Fucking awesome.Cheers!
Don’t do the high-five gesture to a T-Rex. They see it as mocking those little arms.
I would just like to say I was both thoroughly informed and entertained by this review Todd. Top work.
I have skipped the last two of this series and I will continue on in form by skipping this thing. Sounds awful. Again.
Why is everyone standing like an action figure in its box in the top photo?
Because they are?
Is that a question?
I actually kinda liked Jurassic World but god Fallen Kingdom was miserable and this looks just as bad if not worse.
Kaiju movies with dinosaurs. That’s what subsequent Jurassic Park movies needed to be. Tyrannosaurs fucking up big cities, people being hunted by raptors in subway stations. I am amazed that this has hardly been done in this franchise, and even when it has been done it’s been barely an afterthought. There are only so many times you can question the corporate ethics of cloning while being hunted on a remote tropical island before it becomes a bit dull. Specifically, about one and a half times.
I am curious at what point studios will realize that smashing the original characters of the old films with the newer characters of the legacyquels is never “the best of both worlds” but rather the worst of them. Trotting out old characters to mine for nostalgia dollars long after their stories are over and not being able to quite commit to the new group (inferring to the audience that they are not relevant) almost never seems to work.
Maybe it’s cheating because they’re playing the same characters in a lot of cases but X-Men: Days of Future Past did it pretty well.
I was a fan of that film.
long after their stories are overYou have to give them new stories, but many legacyquels are loathe to do that.
Sure it never works to make a good movie but it works great to make beaucoup bucks. I work at a movie theater and every old fogey that walks out of one of these legacy sequels always says the same damn thing “well the movie wasn’t very good but I loved seeing the original cast!” Sorry folks but as long as people keep going to these movies they’ll keep making them. Quoth the prophet Jay Sherman: “It’s very simple: if you stop going to bad movies, they’ll stop making bad movies. If the movie used to be a TV show, just don’t go. After Roman numeral II, give it a rest. If it’s a remake of a classic, rent the classic. Tell them you want stories about people, not a hundred million dollars of stunts and explosives. People, it’s up to you. If the movie stinks, just don’t go.”
Glad I cancelled my double feature of JP1 & this plus an NFT. Saved 5 hours of my life. Thanks for helping me avoid this turd!
After having seen the original 3 times in the theater- and then watching the amazing preview for this movie many months ago, I was truly hoping it could live up to the “final film” status- suffice it to say I am really bummed by this and all the other terrible reviews. It just sucks. It sounds like the script was simply bad from the start and this can’t be blamed on Covid issues. I’ll wait to “rent” it. I’ll likely be less disappointed if I see it at home.
Fallen Kingdom was one of the worst movies I’ve paid to see in theaters. Maybe I’ll check this out when it shows up on streaming on a service I subscribe to, definitely not paying to go see it.
Fallen Kingdom was one of the worst movies I’ve paid to see in theaters. Maybe I’ll check this out when it shows up on streaming on a service I subscribe to, definitely not paying to go see it.
Does being kind of glad that this movie sucks make me a bad person or is it all the other stuff?
Other than the first Jurassic thingy and part of one of those Iron Man flicks, I’ve never watched any of these dinosaur or superhero movies.Am I missing anything?
A lot of dinosaur and superhero movies, apparently.
not to mention the super-dinosaur movies!
Oh nooooo they end on archival footage of Richard Attenborough don’t they? Ah goddamn it. This never should have been a franchise. It was one great Spielberg movie and THAT’S IT!
Spielberg couldn’t even make a good sequel
No, no Richard Attenborough. They did spare some expense.
Oh thank god, that would have been the literal kick in the teeth.
The review is referring to the source of Clone Girl’s DNA, who was a scientist at the original Jurassic Park. Todd’s frustration stems from the final words of the series (allegedly) coming from a character who’s only appeared in flashback video logs.
Ahhh I see. Yeah that’s still dumb
What about going the same way as the Planet of the Apes reboot. Have an apocalypse and the surviving humans, without all the technology of today, facing the dinosaurs?
Exclusive image from Jurassic World: Dominion:Also, LOST WORLD may not be the best JP film but at least it had the good grace to give us a young girl using gymnastics to punt a raptor out a window. It sounds like JW:D doesn’t even have anything as goofy in it 🙁
“It sounds like JW:D doesn’t even have anything as goofy in it :(“It does have a great laugh to start off the movie, with the perils of bringing doves to a wedding in a dino-infested mainland.And Jeff Goldblum is full Thor: Ragnarok mode in this one. Thats good or bad depending on how you like your Goldblum served. Me, I want maximum Goldblum helpings.
“Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard)…teenager Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon)…a clone of Charlotte Lockwood…John Hammond’s late business partner Benjamin Lockwood…”This string of names made me realize how little impact this new series has had on me. The only character name I remembered was Hammond and he’s from the original. I know Pratt and Howard, but couldn’t have guessed their character’s names if you’d given me 1,000 tries. And I have no recollection of the Lockwoods or the actors that portrayed them. Maybe that’s just me, though.
Yep. I actually kinda sorta enjoyed Dominion (for the “Park” cast) but the original three just highlighted what a dull core the new movies have had, by sanding down Pratt’s signature goofiness, asking nothing more out of BDH than to look concerned with her otherworldly eyes, and Clone Girl to just act like a young girl. The best new character of the trilogy is Blue.
The trailers looked interesting when they show …. … dinos in our real world environment. Sad that isn’t the thrust of the movie.Next stop for this beleaguered series … streaming tv show! Yaaaa?
I honestly don’t care what anyone says. I’m going to see and love the shit out of this movie.
I stand by my assessment that Jurassic World was a big, dumb, loud, fun movie and Fallen Kingdom was a big, dumb, gonzo haunted house movie where, instead of a ghost, you had raptors. Like a lot of Roland Emmerich movies, they are not good, but they are awesome.
absolute trash. Couldn’t get through it and the screening was free.
Could Colin Trevorrow please not ever make another movie again? I think we can safely say that Safety Not Guaranteed was a total fuckin fluke, given that it was a pretty fun B- movie, and everything else he’s done is unbelievable trash.
I was 9 years old when Jurassic Park came out, and imagining a sequel with the premise, “what if the dinosaurs escaped the park to the mainland” should light up my entire child brain. Impressive, that they somehow blew it that hard.Jurassic World and The Force Awakens both point to the absolute cowardice of movie studios, that a modern reboot of a classic franchise could only ever be a pale retread of the original. “Dinosaurs as an invasive species” should probably have been the point of Jurassic World from the outset. The 1993 film said everything it had to about the park, about capitalism and scientific hubris. Jurassic World just said it again, poorly.Credit to the Rupert Wyatt / Matt Reeves “Apes” movies. There’s a rebooted franchise with a clear thesis and sense of purpose, saying something different than the original, and exploring its own ideas fully. It is possible for this to happen.
“a modern reboot of a classic franchise could only ever be a pale retread of the original”That’s kind of the inherent issue with cloning as well. Maybe they’re being meta.
I did like the subtle jabs at Universal Parks where JW had a Margaritaville and Starbucks. They just weren’t savage enough to their corporate overlords. We needed a scene where a raptor gets food poisoning from Bubba Gumps and shits itself to death
I hope 9 year old you got a hold of Dinosaurs Attack! cards at some point.
‘beloved franchise’ aka ‘the one classic film everyone adores and all its super-disappointing sequels and reboots’
After the Spielberg original, is there a second even “good” movie in this franchise? Really feels like they peaked early and it’s all been downhill.
This is going to sound weird but I think if you spent enough time editing the best parts of the second and third movies, you might actually be able to make something OK.
by second/third you mean The Lost World and Jurassic Park III? There were things I liked in both, so maybe. It would be strange that the Sam Neill/Jeff Goldblum characters never interact if they’re in the same film, but it could be interesting. I remember liking JP3 when I was a kid, and I guess that’s who it was for.
The second film has enough good moments that I’ll watch it in passing. The raptors in the long grass scene justifies the whole movie. That said, I’ve never bothered to buy a physical copy.
This review is absolutely spot-on. The film is embarrassingly bad – actually, because of the glimmers of potential that shine through the dinosaurs-in-the-real-world stuff, it’s more like spitefully bad. The lumber mill scene was a great little vignette that managed to capture the vibe of the ‘93 film while still looking fresh. The Malta scenes were complete schlock but fun and there was an Indiana Jones vibe to that dinosaur black market. And then they piss away what feels like the last six hours of the film on a ridiculous, extremely badly paced greatest hits tour. The only times I perked up was when they lifted dialogue almost verbatim from the LEGO Jurassic World cartoons (my kids love them). If that was deliberate, then, well, bad call – the witty and ironic animated show easily upstages its live action counterpart. If accidental, which seems more likely, then, well, that’s about as hilarious a summation of this film as you’re ever going to get.
But is it a Beloved Franchise? The first one is above reproach, of course, but two is tolerated at best, three is pretty derided and while 4 made a ton of cash its not exactly a beloved film and five is firmly in the JPIII camp.
Why is my dinosaur movie about a locust conspiracy? And with so much emotional weight dumped on honoring a character that this movie so clumsily retconned and shoehorned into the Jurassic mythos. Charlotte Lockwood was not a mystery or something that needed further resolution, particularly not when the story purpose was to bring forth Maisie the clone as the locust messiah. Such a stupid, hollow addition that takes away from everything the audience is there to see.Speaking of hollow, that big dino showdown at the end was garbage. The T-Rex team-up was silly in JW, but it was fun. This time it was insane, unearned, and completely uninteresting. Because of the scattered, stupid storylines, Giganotosaurus never really had enough of a role to earn a big conclusion anyway.
I’ve been toying with going to see this on a big screen, but everything I’m hearing suggest that I’m better off signing up for Apple TV and watching that Prehistoric Planet show instead.
I’ve come to realize that it’s a losing battle to wage a war against legacy sequals as an OG film fan. I see all these original film fans complaining about legacy sequels but like…. they aren’t made for you. They are made for the next generation to experience a modernized version of what you experienced when you saw the original film. I’m so sick of boomer fanboys raging that their child hood is being raped when it’s not even about you anymore. Complain about Star Wars etc. all you want but these films are for our children, don’t be so greedy.
To be a beloved franchise, you have to have more than one beloved film.
I don’t think it was ever a beloved franchise, it was one beloved movie with a bunch of sequels of varying badness.
We can rightly decry Hollywood for cranking out one mindless sequel after another, but sadly the worldwide viewing audience keeps eating them up. With this clunker, the Jurassic franchise will easily surpass $2 billion. What incentive do they have to make anything better?
So, I think the D+ is a bit harsh, but I understand. Having two eras of characters meet for the first time can be a dream come true! But this works best when both casts are well liked. The film really overestimates how much we care about Owen, Claire, and Clone Kid. So we have all of them, plus the old guard, plus even MORE new people, which means a lot of jumping around the different plots making for a very overstuffed movie with too many characters. There is a LOT going on, and ultimately, I think the problem with Dominion is it’s written like a streaming series to be binged. The other big problem is, as the review states, they don’t follow through on the premise sitting right in front of them. The concept everybody wanted to see! The stuff that makes the marketing shorts and prologues teasing these ideas, more interesting than the movie itself. Man, would I have loved this series to go the Planet of the Apes route, and just lead to the end of mankind. ** Spoilers to follow:**This huge miss, opting for a plot involving giant locusts (??) along with bad action scenes- one even turning into a Jason Bourne movie- make Dominion the weakest of the Jurassic World trilogy, though I don’t know if I can say it’s the weakest in the franchise overall. That honor still may go to Jurassic Park III, where the Kirbys are arguably more annoying protagonists to spend time with, a raptor fucking talks, and it criminally trolls the Dr. Grant/Dr. Sattler ship. In fact, that’s why I don’t think Dominion is a total loss: It rights those wrongs, by bringing Allan and Ellie together at last 💗
I liked it much better than Fallen Kingdom, and especially enjoyed the scenes with Grant, Sattler and Malcom. And having new dinosaurs that weren’t some stupid hybrid. But man oh man am I tired of Chris Pratt, I did not care at all about his scenes. I’d be a bit more generous with a C or C+
I finally saw this. It was awful – definitely need more Machine Head.