Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill,
BD Wong, Omar Sy, Isabella Sermon, Justice Smith, Daniella
Pineda, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Campbell Scott, Scott Haze, Dichen
Lachman
If a zombie film franchise or TV series is given enough time it will
inevitably pivot to a point where it argues that humans pose a
bigger threat than zombies. I guess an argument could be made that
living humans are scarier than dead humans, but are humans really
scarier than dinosaurs? I don’t think so. Yet here we are, five
sequels into the Jurassic Park franchise and the series' antagonists –
giant carnivorous monsters – have become so emasculated that they no
longer pose a threat. The dinosaurs of Spielberg's original film were
genuinely scary. The dinosaurs of Colin Trevorrow's Jurassic World
Dominion are like collapsing skyscrapers in a Roland Emmerich disaster
movie, mere obstacles for our heroes to drive around as they flee the
real villains – other humans.
An opening news report serves as a catch-up for those of us who didn't
want to suffer through the previous two instalments of this rebooted
series. Dinosaurs are now living among humans and we're told that the
previous year only saw 39 people lose their lives at the hands of
dinosaurs. What? More people are mauled by pitbulls in an average
year. And there we have the major issue of this sequel. It starts off
by telling us that dinosaurs are cuddly actually, which means when our
heroes face them roughly seven hours later in this 37 hour long movie,
they've lost any sense of threat. These sequels keep telling us
there's a new species that's bigger and scarier than any we've seen
before, yet they never appear any bigger, and certainly no more
imposing, than the T-Rex of Spielberg's series opener. You can't just
tell us something is bigger – you need to show us. In the Jurassic
World movies a dinosaur is constantly pissing down our backs and
telling us it's raining.
Jurassic World Dominion is one of the more egregious examples of
Hollywood desperately trying to appeal to the largest audience
possible and losing sight of why people might be attracted to the
movie in hand. We're here to see a Jurassic Park sequel, but Dominion
insists on trying to compete with every other major franchise of the
moment. There are moments straight out of Star Wars, with a cynical
smuggler/pilot (DeWanda Wise) who may as well be called Han Solo and a couple of scenes
that seem to take place aboard the Millennium Falcon. There's the
going back for the hat moment from every Indiana Jones movie. There's
the going back for the cat moment from Alien. There's the sprawling
ensemble cast of the Fast & Furious movies. There's an extended
segment in Malta that lifts scenes directly from the Jason Bourne,
James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises. Occasionally it even
nods to Jurassic Park by throwing dinosaurs into the background,
though the effect is a lot like that Twitter account where some bloke
photoshops Paddington into other movies. The dinosaurs are just
shambling around, because don’t you know it's the humans that are the
real threat now?
That human threat is led by Lewis Dodgson (somehow they managed to
get the elusive Campbell Scott into this thing), an evil CEO in the
Musk/Bezos/Gates mould who runs BioSyn, a dodgy corporation creating
giant locusts to destroy crops so Dodgson can control the world's
grain supply (If you think it's a mere coincidence that we're getting
a movie where the threat is a lack of wheat amid the Russian invasion
of Ukraine, then you might want to look into Hollywood's relationship
with the Pentagon). Dodgson lives in Cloud City, above a park filled
with dinosaurs (if only there were a name for such a thing). You might
remember his brief appearance in the first Jurassic Park movie, when he was played by Cameron Thor, who is currently serving prison time
for sexual assault.
Jeff Goldblum has yet to serve time for sexual assault and so he
returns as Dr Malcolm, now a lackey of Dodgson who discovers what he's
really up to and alerts his old buddies Ellie (Laura Dern) and Alan
Grant (Sam Neill). The three subsequently skulk around the Death Star
looking for the switch to deactivate its shields, or something.
You
might remember Owen Grady and Claire Dearing, the heroes of the
previous two instalments. No? They're played by Chris Pratt and Bryce
Dallas Howard? No, still not ringing any bells? Anyway they're now the
Uncle Ben and Aunt Beru to Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the cloned girl
from the previous movie. Don't remember her either, huh? Anyway, Maisie
gets kidnapped by Boba Fett and taken to Jabba's palace, with Owen and
Claire teaming up with Han Solo to get her back. This movie is so
derivative that at one point when Claire wakes up in the jungle your
first thought will be "Are we about to get dinosaur fucking Ewoks?"
Speaking of Claire, in the first movie she was struggling to run in
high heels but now she's a parkour expert, jumping across Maltese
rooftops like Jason Bourne.
It's hilarious how so much of Goldblum's dialogue sounds like a
self-own from the series. At one point he literally says "Jurassic
World? Not a fan." There's a real mask-dropping moment when his Dr.
Malcolm accuses Dodgson of fast-tracking promotions for his employees
to ensure their loyalty, and he might as well be talking about how
Hollywood plucks filmmakers from indie obscurity to direct these
movies.
Jurassic World Dominion may bear a title that sounds befitting of a
ride at Universal Studios. It's far from a rollercoaster ride, more
like being stuck atop a rollercoaster for two and a half hours during
a power failure. The set-pieces are sloppily constructed knockoffs of
memorable moments from other franchises, and even the site of three
giant dinosaurs battling among themselves has no impact. Halfway
through the movie a kid at my screening asked his dad if they could
leave. What on Earth has gone wrong with blockbuster filmmaking that a
kid is bored by a movie with dinosaurs? Watching Dominion in the slipstream of Top Gun: Maverick, a blockbuster that gets everything right that
this film gets wrong, is like eating your mum's fish fingers the day
after your cool aunt brought you to McDonalds.
Jurassic World Dominion is on
UK/ROI VOD now.
