Reviewing Jurassic World: Dominion (**)
Just what this franchise needed – giant bugs.
This should have been the Jurassic franchise’s finest hour – its biggest hit since the original. This should have been a fulfillment of the ominous themes established in 1993, but instead – we got giant bugs and little else. Honestly, I’m not sure how they messed this up. You had everything you needed to tell an impactful story, and you had the cast and budget to do it in blockbuster fashion. Seriously – how did they mess this up?
The whole point of this entire franchise has been that mankind’s pride and arrogance has led us to meddling with things we can’t possibly hope to understand or control. Check out these quotes from each prior film to drive that home.
Jurassic Park: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. – Ian Malcolm
The Lost World: Oooh, ahhh, that’s how it always starts. Then later there’s running, and screaming. – Ian Malcolm
Jurassic Park III: Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best intentions. – Alan Grant
Jurassic World: Monster is a relative term. To a canary, a cat is a monster. We’re just used to being the cat. – Henry Wu
Fallen Kingdom: How many times do you have to see the evidence? How many times must the point be made? We're causing our own extinction. – Ian Malcolm
I can’t state this clearly enough. The point of the franchise is that we never should have brought dinosaurs back to life. It’s the same idea that Mary Shelley put forth in Frankenstein – when you play god, you suffer hellish consequences. So then why on earth are we ending the franchise with a world where dinosaurs and humans seem to happily coexist?
Whether you liked Fallen Kingdom or not, I think we can agree that it ended with an exciting premise – a world where dinosaurs were on the loose in our time. That’s the kind of story we haven’t seen before. This film should have been about the ramifications of that shift, but instead we spent a significant chunk of the film in a secret laboratory next to a dinosaur-infested jungle – or in other words, the same location we’ve always been. Now, don’t get me wrong – there were cool moments in this movie that followed up on the promise of the previous film. The scene in Malta with a dino black market and a chase through the city was a blast, as were the opening seconds that showed us average ordinary people encountering dinosaurs. But that’s what the whole film should’ve been about. It should’ve been about Jurassic World – how to survive in a world filled with dinosaurs. Not a world where a corporation has created bugs to eat the competition’s food.
Like seriously, whose idea was that? Nobody came to this franchise for bugs.
Here’s the problem with the ending. When the movie ends, the giant bugs are defeated, and people just kind of get used to living with dinosaurs. In other words, it turns out that every single quote that I listed from the previous films didn’t really hold any water. Sure, a couple people got eaten along the way, but it seems humanity is totally capable of tampering with matters beyond its control. With a bit of course-correction, there’s really nothing to worry about. And that’s so frustrating to me because it’s a complete thematic betrayal of the rest of the franchise. Heck, it’s a betrayal of just the previous film, written by the exact same guys who did this one!
I don’t usually do this, but here’s how the movie ought to have ended. The growing number of asexually reproducing dinosaurs turns out to have drastic consequences on the planet. Dinosaurs displace other animals and take over ecosystems, driving some species we know and love to the brink of extinction. Just like Jurassic World indicated, governments start using carnivorous dinosaurs in military operations, with disastrous results. And while the world is going nuts with dino problems, the growing number of dinos leads to some sort of bio disaster. Maybe a dino virus starts spreading across the globe (although it may be too soon for a story of that nature). Maybe dinosaurs inadvertently trigger massive power outages and nuclear meltdowns by destroying something or other. Whatever the case, the proliferation of dinosaurs ultimately results in humanity being sent back to the stone age. The world goes dark and governments collapse as once more, dinosaurs rule the earth.
That would have been a fulfillment of the ideas that Michael Crichton put down in the novel that inspired the first film. Not only that, but you’d end up with a world that looks fundamentally different from anything we’ve seen before in the franchise. Imagine the sequels that could follow that! Picture The Walking Dead but with dinosaurs, or any other post-apocalyptic story – but with dinosaurs. Now that would be a fresh start for the franchise. Instead, what would the next Jurassic film even look like with the ending we’ve been given? It seemed to tie things up with a bow. Everyone’s more or less happy. But does this franchise deserve a happy ending? I think not!
One more thing I need to complain about – the stupid final battle with the T-Rex. Let’s start by looking back at previous ‘final dino battle’ moments in the series. In Jurassic Park, our heroes are miraculously saved from being eaten by Velociraptors when the T-Rex comes in and eats the raptors. The point there is that humans were saved by total fluke – not on their own strength, but by the strength of this kick-butt dinosaur. In Jurassic World, the T-Rex beats the Indominus with the help of some other dinosaurs to prove the point that you can’t outdo the original. It’s a brilliant moment of cinema because it’s so multilayered. They’re saying that Jurassic Park will always be the best, but also that mankind can’t outdo nature. It wasn’t a battle of dinosaurs, but of ideas. Fallen Kingdom’s final battle was between Blue and the Indoraptor – or in other words, between love and chaos. Blue had a relationship with Owen, but the Indoraptor was a psychopath. It wasn’t really the most spectacular fight, but there was some thematic significance to it. The point through all of these is that the fight is more than a fight – it’s a moment that sums up an important idea of the film.
Okay, now let’s look at the fight between the T-Rex and the Giganotosaurus in Dominion. The Giganotosaurus gets beaten by the T-Rex with the help of a Therizinosaurus. But why? What’s the point? Why would these two dinos team up? In Jurassic World, Blue and the T-Rex teamed up in theory because the Indominus was a threat to the entire island. More than that, he wasn’t a dinosaur – he was just a monster. It’s a bit of a stretch to have the dinos team up, but there was enough purpose behind it to get us on board. Here, why is the Giganotosaurus such a problem? He’s a dinosaur the same as anyone else. What’s villainous or dangerous about him that would make the Therizinosaurus decide to help the T-Rex out? There’s no thematic significance to the fight, which makes it just a shallow moment of empty spectacle.
There’s a deleted segment in the extended edition that was released on YouTube months before the film came to theatres that sets this battle up a bit better. In the deleted bit, the Giganotosaurus and the T-Rex are shown to be rivals 65 million years ago. If this had been left in the film, it would have gave a bit more purpose to the final fight because it’s essentially a rematch between the two dinos. But even if it had stayed, it still doesn’t explain the Therizinosaurus’ role. It’s a cheap knockoff of the Jurassic World final fight. Where that battle made me want to leap out of my seat and cheer, this made me want to roll my eyes.
I’ve ranted and raved a while here, so let’s wrap up by focusing on some of the good stuff. The original cast coming back was great – particularly Jeff Goldblum. The Malta scenes were fun. And we got to see lots of dinosaurs. But apart from that, this was a thoroughly stupid film, and an embarrassing way to conclude the franchise. I really wish this had been different.