Last week, I took a look back at the (mostly) lackluster Jurassic Park trilogy. Despite the first film’s critical success and lasting legacy as a modern classic, its sequels pale in comparison according to most cinephiles. But, since they all made money and since Hollywood cannot leave well enough alone, the franchise was given a “soft reboot” in 2015 with the release of Jurassic World. Directed by Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World went on to gross over one-and-a-half billion dollars (as of today, it is still in the top-ten highest-grossing movies of all time). Even its sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, earned over one billion dollars despite not being as well received by critics or audiences. Thus, to complete a new trilogy, this weekend saw the release of Jurassic World: Dominion which reunites the three leads from the original film for the first time. How was it? Before I get to that, let’s dissect the pros and cons of the first two Jurassic World movies and then we can put a bow on this franchise (hopefully for good) with a final ranking of all six films. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED! Jurassic World (2015) Maybe I’m biased, but I really enjoy Jurassic World. I remember seeing it in the theaters with my cousin and friends opening weekend fresh out of high school. At nineteen years old, I had not yet exposed myself to the “finer tastes” of the world of cinema and thus was just looking for a good time at the movies. Which made me all the more nervous to ever rewatching it because I knew that initial theatrical experience could not be replicated. But every time I rewatch Jurassic World, I enjoy it for what it is: a turn-your-brain-off blockbuster where you get to see dinosaurs eat and kill people and badass people figure out a way to stop them. So, what exactly do I think helps this movie work on this level? For starters, the film does a surprisingly effective job at acknowledging and embracing the inherent silliness of a movie franchise where the central plot rests on humans genetically cloning dinosaurs for all to see. Whether it’s going all in on the first film’s foreshadowing of a dinosaur theme park or somehow forcing us to buy into the fact that parents would just send their kids to such a park without any actual supervision, the film doesn’t try to convince you to buy into its realism because it offers (mostly) none. Instead, it ups the zany factor (especially in the second half) that comes off as thoroughly more entertaining than Jurassic Park III (let alone The Lost World). Despite upping the wacky antics with genetic hybrid dinosaur clones and watching Navy marine Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) hunt down prey with a pack of Velociraptors while riding a motorcycle, Jurassic World has a refreshingly poignant metacommentary infused into its main plot. The premise of this film is that a dinosaur theme park has been open for over two decades on the island where John Hammond’s original park was supposed to be built. However, according to the park’s operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), shareholders want something bigger and badder because apparently kids are no longer interested in just genetic clones of dinosaurs. On its face, this concept is absurd. I mean, how in any reality remotely close to our own would anyone (no matter their age) get bored going to see dinosaurs eat, breathe, and walk around in their presence?! Especially if you consider the two Jurassic Park sequels to be canon with the universe of Jurassic World, how the hell would anybody want to financially support a theme park filled with man-eating beasts after seeing what happened in San Diego in The Lost World? But, after seeing this film three times, I give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt by choosing to believe that this is actual their way of telling Jurassic Park fans to abide the inherent excesses and leaps in logic of the plot in order to sit back and enjoy it. This works for me because, as I said in my original Jurassic Park blog, that first film certainly has some logical inconsistencies that take away the enjoyment factor for me. At the end of the day, it’s a dinosaur movie so just enjoy the ride! Otherwise, what’s the point? 😊 Aside from these quasi-fourth-wall breaks, I do think there are some pretty good aspects of Jurassic World as just a film on its own terms. While I can understand some people’s criticisms of Pratt and Howard as the movie’s leads, I appreciate their chemistry as equally stubborn co-workers whose personalities often clash but grow together and help each other over the course of the film to survive and help those they care about most. While I personally didn’t need the whole romance backstory-to-subplot that took up too much screentime, I found them to be the strongest leading pair in the entire Jurassic franchise since the first film. Howard, in particular, pulls off a pretty unlikeable character in Claire who’s a near-monstrous epitome of corporate excess and emotional detachment who comes to care for the dinosaurs after seeing them through Owen’s eyes. It’s not easy to endear an audience to that kind of character by the end, but I think Howard manages to evoke enough sympathy (and pulls it out in the climax with that flare 😊) so as to counterbalance Pratt’s hypermasculine charm and badassery. Admittedly, Pratt doesn’t have much of a character arc in the movie but doesn’t really need one. He’s basically the smartest person in the park with the most foresight to tell everyone (including Claire) what should be done regarding the Indominus rex from the outset. Which gets to another criticism of the plot of this movie: the park’s utter lack of preparedness for emergency situations regarding their “assets.” Simply put, we see a pretty clear procedure play out when the Indominus rex escapes its pen. First, Claire prepares to close off the nearby section of the park before realizing that the creature tricked her and Owen in order to actually escape. Once it really escapes, Claire and her boss Simon Masrani (Iffran Khan) dispatch a group of the Asset Containment Unit (ACU) armed with non-lethal weapons because Masrani doesn’t want the tens of millions of dollars invested in the dinosaur put to waste by killing it. But once the Indominus kills all of their best guys, Claire relocates all the guests to the main entrance and plaza while Masrani (who does not have a pilot’s license) has a minigun attached to a helicopter and flies it to the Indominus and tries to shoot it down but ends up being killed in the process. And then everything just goes to shit. I get that one of the central themes of this film and the Jurassic franchise overall is the negative impact of humanity’s hubris and overconfidence can have on the planet. That being said, a dinosaur-filled theme park that’s supposedly been running successfully for more than twenty years should not only have a more streamlined process for dealing with an “asset out of containment” but also have way more people and weapons on staff ready to kill any dinosaur if necessary. Sorry about your money, Masrani, but if you want to have a dinosaur theme park you have to be willing to lose the money invested in the animal by ending its life for the safety and security of your guests. But I digress. Much of the problems of Jurassic World can be largely forgiven, because they occur in the first half. Once the Indominus is out and shit hits the fan, this movie becomes a well-paced and tense thriller involving some great set pieces. These start with Masrani’s helicopter crashing in the aviary which allows a bunch of flying dinosaurs to escape and attack the guests. With the park on the verge of utter destruction, the movie gets even crazier when Owen is finally being convinced by InGen’s head of security Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) to let loose his four-member Velociraptor squad, led by the badass beta raptor Blue, to help him and the soldiers hunt down the Indominus. These are two standout action sequences that (in my humble opinion) exceed anything in any of the other films in the franchise. Somehow, it gets even better. The climax of Jurassic World is easily the superior ending to any of the films in the franchise that came before it. Why? I think the answer’s simple: the story focuses on the dinosaurs, who should ultimately be the focal point of all of the action in these flicks. Honestly, watching Blue work with the T-rex from the original Jurassic Park to take down the Indominus evoked similar feelings when I saw the final battle of Godzilla vs. Kong involving Mechagodzilla. It’s such a classic “cheer in the theater” moment from the last decade of blockbuster cinema that works on its own terms, but especially when compared to the contrived San Diego stampede in The Lost World or the anticlimactic resolution in Jurassic Park III. Despite all of these strengths that help make Jurassic World a solidly entertaining summer movie, it certainly has more problems than the ones I’ve already mentioned. While we’ve seen D’Onofrio turn in some great performances, like in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, but he unfortunately feels underutilized here and comes off like he’s phoning it in a tad. (Side note: I recently started watching the Daredevil series, formerly of Netflix, and think D’Onofrio is killing it thus far as Wilson Fisk/Kingpin). When it comes to supporting characters in this movie, I found B.D. Wong’s inclusion to be less of a revamping of a tertiary role from the original Jurassic Park film than just a way of justifying this movie’s absurd plot device of a functioning dinosaur theme park. Essentially, they each come off as subpar versions of other characters from the franchise which is sad considering the lack of quality of the many side characters of this franchise. In addition, Jurassic World continues to insist relying on the tired plot device of these movies of having children for the leads to protect. While brothers Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray Mitchell (Ty Simpkins) are not as bad as Tim and Lex from the first Jurassic Park movie, I simply do not get why the filmmakers and studio executives behind this franchise feel the need to keep including children in the main cast to do nothing more than be protected and saved. Also, the whole divorce subplot involving the Mitchells’ parents was another waste of screentime that could’ve slimmed the movie’s runtime down just a bit to improve it that much more. Finally, while I do enjoy Jurassic World overall, I do think the one thing it does the worst out of any of the original Jurassic Park trilogy is its integration of animatronics and practical effects. Given the fact that it came out in 2015, I understand the reliance on CGI to create the dinosaurs for the big screen. That being said, part of the charm of these movies is knowing that the actors are interacting with something that looks like a dinosaur in real life (without question, one of the better moments in this movie is seeing Owen and Claire comfort the head of the dying Brachiosaurus). I do wish that there would be a more concerted effort to remind us why, when done right, practical effects aided with the right touch and amount of CGI can help movies feel like magic at work. Clearly, Jurassic World has plenty of issues and is by no means a perfect movie. All that being said, however, not only do I enjoy it more than the first film in the series but I also think how it updates the original movie’s themes to apply to corporate excess and the military-industrial complex getting in the way of scientific discovery makes it a (slightly) superior think piece for a modern audience. In other words, maybe Jurassic World isn’t a better movie than Jurassic Park but I enjoy watching it more. Fight me. 😊 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) In many ways, the 2018 sequel to Jurassic World is similar to the 2018 sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. They both are sequels to movies that serve as continuations of beloved franchises (albeit in different ways), and they both pale in comparison to their immediate predecessor. And if we’re getting really specific, they have a lot of the same problems: too many side characters that we don’t care about, a contrived plot that builds up to a lackluster finale, and excessive focus on convoluted backstories that feel forced and unnecessary to the main narrative. All that being said, I do think that Fallen Kingdom is a better sequel than The Crimes of Grindelwald because its strengths do a relatively better job at making the movie bearable to watch. What are those strengths? Fortunately, there are several of them. Despite the second half of Fallen Kingdom largely falling flat, its first half is a decently entertaining part of the story centered on the volcanic destruction of Isla Nublar. While the plot contrivance needed to get the characters there is silly, it is an enjoyable, but ultimately tragic, collection of scenes showing Owen, Claire and their crew barely escaping the island as it burns up while the dinosaurs are also trying to flee. And once our main characters get to safety, the shot of a Brachiosaurus wailing as it’s consumed by fire, lava, and volcanic ash is genuinely heartbreaking. I just wish the emotional weight of these creatures suffering because of human arrogance carried through to the credits. With regards to our characters, I was surprised on a rewatch of this movie how much Claire had something akin to a character arc. While not always the most fun character to watch, I think she has clearly reflected and learned a lot from her time running a dinosaur theme park. Her core motivation in the movie—to save the dinosaurs from extinction—is purely charitable and comes from a place of genuine concern for these animals (which she clearly lacked in much of the first film). When it comes to the climax of Fallen Kingdom, I wrongly remembered Claire being the one to let the dinosaurs loose onto the world but, to my surprise, she actually restrains herself. To be fair, this does contradict her character on the surface. However, I choose to view her decision as one of maturity and accepting the reality of the world that she lives in which is one that will be utterly unforgiving of these animals who probably shouldn’t even be alive in the first place. Say what you will about Howard’s performance in either of these movies, I actually think that her character is decently written for what could’ve easily been a helpless damsel-in-distress in both flicks. Our other lead character, Owen, doesn’t really have an arc like Claire but once again doesn’t really need one. Instead, Fallen Kingdom dives deeper into his connection to and admiration for the dinosaurs (particularly Blue, the sole surviving Velociraptor on Isla Nublar) that supports one of this trilogy’s overarching themes of the need to respect life in all of its forms. By seeing how Blue’s relationship with Owen has changed from her younger years to now, she actually feels like one of the movie’s central characters that communicates her emotional state and outlook without ever speaking. This could be very silly, but actually comes off to me as endearing (if only Blue ever looked anything close to a practical effect, but I digress). But perhaps the biggest strength of the movie is what it teases for the third installment in the Jurassic World trilogy: the fact that Earth is now home to wild dinosaurs, and humans must learn to co-exist with them. One of the only things that Jeff Goldblum gets to do for his cameo in this movie is announce to the world that this reality is not only inevitable but has actually come true. Hopefully Jurassic World: Dominion fulfills on the fun-as-hell potential of this concept. 😊 Unfortunately, that is where the positive aspects of Fallen Kingdom end. So, let’s delve into the weaknesses (some of which I’ve already hinted at). To begin with, the sorry excuse for an inciting event of this plot that is Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the “silent partner” of John Hammond who helped create the technology to clone dinosaurs. Was this character even mentioned or even hinted at in any of the previous films? No, but the plot of this movie demanded the need for a source of money to fund Owen and Claire’s trip to Isla Nublar while also having a good enough reason for doing so. Thus, we get Lockwood and his treacherous assistant Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) who comes off as such a bland, uninspired, and ultimately forgettable antagonist in this franchise. He’s essentially as bad as Riz Ahmed in 2018’s Venom, who somehow comes off as slightly more memorable than this character despite being essentially the same symbol of corporate greed without limits. Somehow, Mills pales in comparison to the even adequate villains Roland from The Lost World and Hoskins from Jurassic World (let alone Wayne Knight’s iconic antagonist Nedry from the original Jurassic Park movie). But easily the element of this Lockwood subplot that feels the most forced into this movie is Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who is a clone of Lockwood’s daughter and the catalyst for Hammond cutting ties with his former partner. No disrespect to the actress, but this character is so bad for multiple reasons. First off, her inclusion shows that the filmmakers here felt a need to offer some sort of explanation as to why Hammond cut ties with Lockwood prior to Jurassic Park. Couldn’t it have just been that one wanted to have the park isolated from the mainland whereas Lockwood wanted the dinosaurs to be closer to home? Or, better yet, does it really matter why their friendship ended? In my humble opinion, no it doesn’t. However, this can be somewhat forgiven if not for the incredibly pivotal role that Maisie plays in the climax. After Claire ultimately decides to not let the dinosaurs go free, Maisie (a child who apparently is not being supervised by the four adults in the room with her at the time) pushes the button to release them from Lockwood’s mansion. Again, this is such a missed opportunity from a writing standpoint. If the director’s goal is to end this movie with dinosaurs let free in the wild, than why not allow “chaos theory” to play a role by including one small disruption earlier in the film built to a much more drastic problem later on that leads to this same outcome? Wouldn’t that be a more thematically relevant and resonant move to make than including this cloned child who we do not care about whatsoever to do this?! It just feels lazy, and that the writers ran out of time developing the screenplay and thus went with the first draft of his pivotal scene. To be clear, I don’t think movies about dinosaurs need to have the best writing ever. But they should at least make some semblance of sense, but maybe my expectations are just too high for this franchise this late in the game. So, let’s wrap up Fallen Kingdom with the other blatant weaknesses which bring us back to the whole reason we go to these movies in the first place: the dinosaurs. Somehow, this film managed to create an even more derivative dinosaur antagonist than the Indominus rex in Jurassic World with the weaponized Indoraptor. Without a doubt, this creature seems like a better idea on paper than in practice and doesn’t hold a candle to virtually any of the other iconic dinosaurs in any of the previous flicks (except maybe the Spinosaurus 😊). Finally, I want to reiterate that I think the Jurassic World movies’ biggest misfire is largely shunning the animatronics and practical effects that define the heritage and roots of this franchise. Easily, the scene where Owen and Claire draw blood from a sleeping T-rex is one of the standout mini-set pieces in Fallen Kingdom. Which makes it all the more disappointing that it’s the only one of its kind in the film, and while I hope that Dominion fixes this recurring travesty, I lack any faith that it’s going to happen. So, is Fallen Kingdom the worst sequel ever made? Certainly not. However, it’s one of the weaker films in the Jurassic franchise which is an accomplishment given how much I find these movies to be nothing close to great. Will the end of this trilogy (and the “grand finale” of the Jurassic franchise) supersede both of its predecessors? Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
[NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for “Jurassic World: Dominion.” You have been warned.] After nearly two-and-a-half hours being (mostly) bored sitting in the theater, my audience who just watched Jurassic World: Dominion with me clapped and cheered when the credits began to roll. My first thought was: “Did we watch the same movie?” My second thought was: “Are you f***ing kidding me?!?” I truly didn’t think that it would get worse than Fallen Kingdom. But, I suppose I underestimated the piss-poor writing talents of Colin Trevorrow (thank God he didn’t end up writing and directing Star Wars: Episode IX or else that movie might’ve ended up worse than it already turned out). Without a doubt in my mind, Dominion is one of the worst big-budget blockbuster scripts I have ever seen adapted for the big screen. Not only is it far too boring for a two-hour-plus action movie involving dinosaurs, but every scene is dripping with conveniences, plot holes, and convoluted circumstances for these characters. Unfortunately, I can’t detail all of them here but I’ll try to condense the major ones from here on out. Now, are there some good things about Dominion? They are few and far between, but yes. Simply put, any positive thing that I have to say about the movie has to do with the dinosaurs. The sequence involving the chase scene through the streets of Malta is the standout action scene of the movie, namely because it gets closest to the promise of the trailers for this movie being “Fast and Furious meets Jurassic Park.” That’s really all I wanted from Dominion, so when we finally get it (nearly an hour into the runtime! ☹), it gave me momentary relief and a spark of hope that the movie could be salvaged in the latter half. A more personal action sequence—involving the entire main cast fending off the Giganotosaurus in the third act—is also a standout suspenseful scene because it’s the ONLY time in the film that I was genuinely concerned for the characters’ lives. Furthermore, the use of a practical dinosaur for a portion of this sequence helped lend it some gravitas that echoed scenes in the first two Jurassic Park flicks. Which gets to the only other real strength of Dominion: its use of practical effects. While there’s obviously still tons of CGI dinosaurs, I appreciated how much Trevorrow injected puppeteering and animatronics in multiple scenes. Does it redeem this trilogy’s relative lack of practical effects? Nope, nor does it redeem this movie. But, it was a nice touch on a pile of flaming-hot garbage. That’s basically the only nice stuff I can say about Dominion. In almost every sense of the word “filmmaking,” this movie flops and flounders its way to a whimper of a climax after dragging the audience along like nails on a chalkboard with how boring and stupid it all is. For starters, all three main human plots lack any emotional weight, thematic resonance, or engaging suspense because I never have been all that invested in any of these characters to begin with. I simply don’t get why Trevorrow and his team felt the need to bring back the clone kid Maisie Lockwood. No disrespect to the actress (who has some decent line deliveries), but this plot revolving around Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) wanting to redeem himself for setting a bunch of Cretaceous locusts onto the Earth by studying Maisie’s DNA to repeat the scientific breakthroughs of her mother Charlotte (Elva Trill) is both confounding and sleep-inducing. Of course, Trevorrow meant for the other two human-driven plots to thrust the story forward. They do only because the script demands it, but neither Owen and Claire’s globe-trotting search for Maisie nor Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) investigating Biosyn with the help of Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are very engaging storylines either. Only when there’s dinosaur-centric action is involved, which I remind you is sparse considering a movie with the premise that dinosaurs have spent four years unleashed into the wild of planet Earth. These plotlines lacking any drive or engaging threads of character development cause the pacing of Dominion to transcend inadequate and become straight-up insulting to paying customers who gave up their precious time and money to see this pathetic excuse for a summer blockbuster. On top of that, the number of times in the screenplay that characters should die but don’t ends up being so degrading to anybody with half a brain. I cannot stress enough that the premise for this movie had so much potential to be “dumb fun” like Fast and Furious or the first Jurassic World movie. Instead, Dominion fails to achieve even that low standard. At this point, you may be asking yourself: “But what about the actors? Even if the writing is terrible, certainly the actors do their best to make the film watchable?” Unfortunately, you’d be wrong again. While Laura Dern does her damnedest to have fun returning to the role of Sattler, the other two legacy actors fall far below that standard. Whereas Sam Neill simply doesn’t try to be any kind of interesting to watch, Jeff Goldblum resorts to his familiar bag of tricks that—despite giving me some chuckles—is simply not enough to save the movie. But what about the veteran Jurassic World cast? Surely, they try. Well, Bryce Dallas Howard tries too hard and ends up overacting much of the time while Chris Pratt seems to have given up on the franchise entirely and thus holds back any sliver of charisma that he displayed in the first two Jurassic World flicks (let alone in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies). And the new cast, while doing their best to have some screen presence, don’t do enough to stand out. Whether it’s former Air Force pilot-turned-smuggler Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) or the Biosyn corporate underling-turned-spy Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), they try well enough but they can’t make Dominion anything more than bad. However, it is the actor that tries and fails miserably that ends up making the biggest impression. Campbell Scott, who plays this movie’s corporate villain—Dr. Lewis Dodgson, the CEO of Biosyn—somehow does an even worse job than Arliss Howard in The Lost World or Rafe Spall in Fallen Kingdom at the “quirky, evil billionaire” trope. His line delivery is inappropriately awkward and unfittingly off-putting. Honestly, I didn’t think you could do worse than this franchise’s previous corporate psychos, but Scott pulled it off. Good for him, I guess?!? ☹ Even on a technical level, Dominion fails in more ways than one. While the CGI that is used is mostly pretty good, the editing is incredibly off here. There are multiple scenes (particularly the action-heavy ones) that evidently had necessary shots cut out of it which ended up breaking the continuity within a scene. One obvious example is the main cast facing off with the Giganotosaurus in the third act. After a great shot of Maisie running up a caged-in ladder to safety, she is quickly followed behind by Claire while the carnivore is busy spitting out the metal cage. Now, a normal movie with good editing would show how the other several characters still on the ground manage to climb this ladder before the Giganotosaurus can get at them. But Dominion isn’t edited well. Instead, after seeing the dinosaur spit out the cage we cut to the walkway above the ground and everyone has somehow, within a matter of seconds, joined Sattler, Maisie, and Claire. That kind of piss-poor editing happens so many times that it easily takes you out of the experience regardless of the quality of the scene surrounding it. All of these traits make it clear that I didn’t like Dominion, but probably its biggest flaw (in my humble opinion) is just how little stakes there are. No character of note, sans Dodgson and his kidnapping lacky Rainn Delacourt (Scott Haze), are killed. Of course, I didn’t expect the three legacy characters to die, but maybe Owen sacrifices himself to save Maisie or Claire does so in order for Owen to get the baby Velociraptor home to its mother. But no; instead, the few action scenes there are lack genuine thrills or stakes because I’m rarely ever afraid for these characters’ lives. And one more thing—this movie COMPLETELY shafts Blue! The only interesting dinosaur character in the Jurassic World trilogy gets NOTHING to do in this movie. Although, I liked Dr. Grant and Owen working together to catch her baby in the third act. BUT STILL! Dominion loses a whole point because of how Blue is treated. Overall, what are my thoughts on the Jurassic World trilogy? Despite the first movie being mildly entertaining, its two sequels range from pretty bad to atrociously awful. Thus, I feel about this trilogy in much the same way that I feel about the original Jurassic Park trilogy. Not only do I not like these movies, but I will largely never think about them fondly as they are forgettable blockbuster flicks that (for the most part) don’t deserve anyone’s time or energy to watch them. With all that being said, here is my ranking of the six films in the Jurassic Park/Jurassic World franchise:
What is your favorite film in this dinosaur-centric series? How would you like the story of Jurassic Park to continue, if at all? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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