*This review includes spoilers*
JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION – Showing how ‘giving people what they want’ doesn’t give people what they want.
I found this insulting obvious when Trevorrow directed Jurassic
World in 2015; it was blockbuster popcorn fodder and not a lot else. I don’t
believe it tried to be any more than this. I think it should have, but
that’s a whole different review. Some people I know generously deemed Jurassic
World as ‘satirical’: a comment on consumerism and our vacuous privilege. A
bold and plain old ‘wrong’ statement, to my eye, since it literally followed
the blueprint for Jurassic Park from 22 years before. How could it make
any more of a satirical comment than the ethos it was directly copying? They may
have had interactive CD-roms and souvenir pyjama sets for consumers in 1993,
while Jurassic World had shiny holograms and overpriced Coca-Cola, but
the message was still the same – what Malcolm called ‘the lack of humility
before nature’ (1993). Sadly, I don’t
see how this film can be considered satirical. The words Ian Malcolm said to
John Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993) were the same words that the
creative team should have been discussing when they made Jurassic World;
“You stood on the
shoulders on geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before
you even knew what you had, you’ve patented it and packaged it and slapped it
on a plastic lunchbox and now – you’re selling it, you wanna sell it”
Am I meant to believe that the film makers were deliberately
trying to satirise themselves? Because their own movie is the only satire I see
here.
Jump forward to 2022, and we are at the end of the Jurassic
World trilogy, and nothing has changed. And I mean nothing. I didn’t believe
at the time that there was any reason to make Jurassic World, and at the
end of the three movie latch-on trilogy, I still don’t see the point in why any
of the three films even exist. Other than, painfully transparently, to make
money. Because that’s all Jurassic World: Dominion has shown itself to
be.
Now, I know that The Movies are a business, and business exists
to exist, and sell itself. But I mean that this is all this movie is. It
is a very shiny film. It is, yet again, a blockbuster popcorn fodder action
movie. With no depth. No plot. No stakes. No fear. And no point.
Now, I want to explain that I am an absolute die-hard Jurassic
Park fan, and staunch defender of The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Jurassic
Park 3. I had such high hopes for the Jurassic World films, with understandable
reservations; why they felt the need to mess with a good thing, for a start. I
really wanted them to do well, and despite not being impressed with Jurassic
World (2015), and not too much more enamoured with Jurassic World:
Fallen Kingdom (2018), I did hope that Jurassic World: Dominion would
have shown the evolution of the series from ‘give the people what they want’
blockbuster hollowness into a gritty action movie. Dare I say, even an action
thriller. Just something with more depth than the first one. But it didn’t even
manage that. In fact, Dominion proves itself to be the weakest of the
three.
In a nutshell, here are my issues with this film.
Firstly, it is lazy: there is no real plot – there is
certainly no plot arc; there is no real conflict for the characters to engage
in. The conflict they try to present to us, when broken down, reveals itself
not to be a conflict at all (SPOILERS: Biosyn, the genetics company, wants
Maisy, the cloned girl, and Beta, Blue’s baby, in order to fix the genetic
issues with their monster locust creations. Claire and Owen want Maisy and Beta
back. Ellie Satler and Alan Grant want to stop Biosyn’s monster locust creation
due to the genetics issue they have. Don’t all parties really want the shame
thing? Why doesn’t Maisy turn around and offer some of her blood in order to
solve the whole problem? Wouldn’t this eliminate all the issues? Since the good
guys and the bad guys actually want the same thing: ‘to fix the fuck up’. I’m
not saying kidnapping the person you want to help you is a good idea, but there
was no need for a 2hr 27min non-stop action-yet-with-no-stakes movie just to have
that be the only real conflict.
The script is sloppy, and the blatantly transparent set-ups are
insulting and childish. Frankly, my big toe knows more about suspense than the
writers on this movie.
The beauty and genius of Jurassic Park was that
Spielberg made magic with little – he created more high-stakes tension with three
raptors, a T-Rex and a Dilophosaurus than any of the Jurassic World films
managed with their many ‘big bad’s. Jurassic Park was character
based, and the performances of genuine alarm, tension, terror, and fearing for
ones life are incredible, even when a dinosaur can’t be seen. Even by the
character. The sound of the raptor’s claws clicking or its breath
were enough to strike fear into the hearts of the characters. The sheer ripples
in a glass of water on a dashboard where enough to tell us that shit was
going down. No dinosaurs needed in frame.
I didn’t believe the fear in Jurassic World: Dominion. I
understand that dinosaurs are now moving amongst humans, and humans are
supposedly now more exposed to them at least. But that does not take away the fear
of a great, big, fuck-off dinosaur that could and will eat you at the first
given moment. Even the Vegetarian ones can stand on you. You would not be so
numb to the fear of these wild creatures. I’m pretty sure people living in Alaska
aren’t unafraid of bears. Or, if they are, can the same be said if they met a
great, big, unnaturally massive type of bear, brought back from some prehistoric
period, that they know nothing about? You would be scared!
Now, is this a satirical comment? Is this film trying to
show us how we desensitise to the marvel of nature because we minimise its
enormity with our ignorance and so disregard and disrespect it? Not when every
character, protagonist and antagonist alike, does it. That’s just a sloppy film,
and a sloppy director who is not getting the right performances out of his
actors and/or isn’t prioritising the truth of their characters.
As for the lazy set-ups… Steven
Spielberg, again, was a genius. In Jurassic Park, the character pool was
small, and we liked them (except Nedry). And he still killed them off. Ray
Arnold, dead. Robert Muldoon, dead. Gennaro (okay, a bit of a wet blanket),
dead. Timmy, dead and then resuscitated. Ian Malcolm, very injured. Anything could
happen! And Dr Sattler and Dr Grant? Were they a couple, or were they not, and
did it even matter? Frankly, I love the suggestion that they’re together
but it doesn’t need to be talked about, and the plot has nothing to do with it.
I also love that you see Grant soften to the children by the end (oh, so that’s
what a character arc looks like), but he doesn’t go on to have any, and Ellie
even marries and has a kid with someone else in Jurassic Park 3! Because
this isn’t a fairytale where all loose ends need to be tied up and happy. This
is a movie! An original concept for a story! Why do we need to give the people
what they want?
The Jurassic World movies tried
to do that and, in my eyes, that has been their failing. In this latest movie,
the pace is pretty relentless straight from the start and the plot and arc of
the story has been replaced with the format of ‘action, action, action, tender
moment, action, action, action, tender moment, action, action, action’.
Everything was so rammed down your throat to disguise the fact that the stakes
in the story were not high enough. And so, here, barely minutes into Jurassic
World: Dominion, we see Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant reunite. What do we
instantly learn? Her children have grown and left home and she’s divorced. How
convenient. Not like they’re going to get together by the end of this movie
then, now that we’ve neatly made some space for Grant to fill. So when they kiss
and get together at the end… is that meant to be a payoff? Is that a reveal?
This film is dotted with set-ups
and failed reveals like this and, sadly, it meant the movie left me feeling
cold. Every emotive situation was seen from a mile away, clumsily handled –
self-gratuitously handled – and then demanded rapturous applause, with a swell
in the music, and a significant look shared between lovers/friends/animals/animals
and humans, you name it.
Secondly (yes, that was all one
big point about laziness), that’s another broad issue to summarise a lot of
these points and more – the film makers clearly think they’re being clever and
they’re not.
These set-ups and failed reveals
being one thing, the heavy nodding, pointing and winking at the original film/s,
being another. There are many nods -
names, references, literal characters and even frames for shooting – to the
original film; here, the antagonist is Lewis Dodgson (a lovely nod to both Michael
Crichton’s books where Dodgson features more prominently, and Spielberg’s 1993
movie where such a minor character’s name was immortalised by Wayne Knight’s
Dennis Nedry). It's a shame they didn’t bring back Cameron Thor, but these
things happen. At least they had BD Wong. As we’ve discussed, Grant, Sattler
and Malcolm all return. Not only that, but the audience are ‘treated’ to lines,
similar phrases, costume choices and full on action sequences imitating what
went before:
Ellie Sattler wears another reddish
shirt that ties at her waist, Grant returns complete with denim, shirt and hat
(which seems to have taken on Indiana Jones levels of iconicism since Billy’s
throwaway comment about saving Grant’s hat at the end of Jurassic Park 3), Malcolm
is in all black and even seems to have the same glasses. Most jarringly though –
and you could tell Trevorrow really thought he was being clever – situations
and frames are recreated. It’s a strange, unnecessary and diminishing homage to
the iconic 1993 action thriller.
The gang (for there are what
feels like a fleet of good guys in this movie, and of course they don’t die)
are squaring off against this movie’s ‘big bad’, the Gigantosaurus. We see them
all, in a line and plainly visible, edging around the edge of a flipped
jeep and the dinosaur is looking straight at them. I actually
gesticulated in incredulity in the cinema. What were they doing? There was no
comment on ‘how does this one see?’, ‘is its vision based on movement?’, ‘can
it see us?’ – they were just shuffling around this car, in an obvious nod to
the original, but why? For whom? I can tell you now, as a massive
fan of Jurassic Park, I don’t need to see that. I don’t want to
see that. Especially not when you’re going to shit all over the moment: the action
in the action sequence is insincere, the logic doesn’t fit the plot you’ve set
up, there are no stakes, there is no tension – please, don’t bother.
Then they do it again. Malcolm
does his thing with the flare again. I don’t even need to reiterate everything
I’ve just said – it was simply unnecessary. And with a character who said in
the first movie that he ‘hates being right all the time’ about the things he
said earlier in the plot, why would Malcolm here not be meta enough to comment
on having done this before? Make it witty, make it a comedy line, I don’t care,
but at least let the character hang a light on this random bit of déjà vu.
Because otherwise, it’s just the film makers trying to be clever and gratuitous
to the audience, but it isn’t clever, it's transparent, and cheapens the action,
not to mention the characters. Suddenly, it makes a joke of their history, their
experience and their memories of these things. As an audience member, I’m meant
to believe that Ian Malcolm remembers the events of ‘Jurassic Park’ but doesn’t
remember this specific act during the events? Bullshit. That makes no sense.
The inconsistency that these film makers have with the
material and its logic is baffling. Crichton and Spielberg make it very obvious
that raptors are fast. The 1993 movie even says they run at “cheetah speed;
50/60mph if they ever got out into the open”. How, then, Bryce Dallas
Howard manages to outrun them in the Malta action sequence in Jurassic World:
Dominion is beyond me. They’re ‘out in the open’ enough to outrun a human,
and the film’s answer seems to be to show them slipping over again and again.
Because silly raptors have slippery feet. Clearly.
Again, the sequence with Malcolm and the flare (this time, a
flaming locust) – it’s amazing to see a flaming locust being shoved into a T-Rex’s
mouth, and then see the locust burst into more flames, and see the fire
streaming out of the dinosaur’s mouth. You know, because T-Rex drank petrol. Of
course.
I have so many opinions about this movie and this whole
franchise. Unlike the Director at the time of creating, it seems. Colin
Trevorrow should never have been allowed to come back and make this film. His
cheap film-making decisions have made this a poor and empty film, with a shit
load of unnecessary dinosaurs and yet no bite. His inability to consider the
intelligence of his audience shows his hand as an inexperienced director, and
he was the wrong choice for the Jurassic World franchise at all, not just at
the beginning with Jurassic World but definitely at the end with ‘Dominion’.
I was so excited at the prospect of seeing Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff
Goldblum returning, but I feel this movie made terrible use of their return.
Once again, just a transparent device to pull in old fans.
Go for the popcorn.
2/5
