Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

User Review

• 

  d_riptide

  3 / 10

  I only caved into seeing “Jurassic World: Dominion” because I’ve seen the previous two movies of the sequel trilogy (First one was fine, second was very messy) and as defeatist as that sounds, I never really cared about the Jurassic Park series outside the first movie.
  
  A few emotional moments aside, this movie REALLY highlighted that lack of ‘give a shit’.
  
  
  To give Dominion some credit, it starts off with some promise. At least as far as the pacing and structure is concerned, it does hold your attention for the first third. The plot has an admittedly heavy handed climate change angle that, in the benefit of hindsight, felt like a natural enough progression for what the story gave us before; the metaphor is appropriately urgent and the set-up along with the release of the dinosaurs was kinda rich. Acting is fine for what was given, cinematography gave us some interesting shots framed nicely, it doesn’t drag on too much with its pacing and it’s not short on carrying some sweet moments.
  
  
  Emphasis on SOME. Short bursts of interest in a sea of mediocrity matters little when the entirety of the project feels so damn inconsistent. The lack of a central theme or ideology tying all these narratives together betrays Colin Trevrrow’s almost fraught attempt to mask the scattered direction.
  
  Long gone is the lightning in a bottle spectacle of mixing practical with CG effects to bring the dinosaurs to life; as CG has become the less expensive option, the existence of any dinosaur comes off so tame nowadays en with a few cool designs. How the action sequences barely burrow out any tension is slightly more off-putting to me, either overhashed by poor editing or handicapped by the lighting. Production design feels more aloof than it should, it can’t keep a constant tone to save its life, jokes all fall flat, they reduced every character to a bland cipher defined by just their positioning and while it’s refreshing to see the original cast interact with the new one, the absence of any chemistry or meaningful interaction between them was soul-destroying.
  
  Not to mention you REALLY could’ve sliced off a few minutes off that runtime; it did not need to be that long. Yes, it didn’t go overboard with the time but the stakes here have never felt lower so you feel literally every minute of this runtime. It always comes off like it’s on to something but then doesn’t bother to wrap it up. It felt like it was on autopilot the entire time; you know those marble desk toys where you watch them clank into each other blankly for an undisclosed amount of time? This is the less fun version of that.
  
  
  
  The first Jurassic Park movie, may I remind you, taught us an endearing lesson that greed is bad and old things should be left alone. This entire sequel trilogy proves we haven’t learned a single damn thing. Another uneven franchise that just goes in one ear and pops out the other with an inconclusive conclusion to boot; not the worst, not insulting, just….bad.

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