Score: 4 / 5
It's an odd hybrid of a film, to be sure, but that kind of fits with the whole Jurassic Park thing. They've always cleverly blended genre, and while this latest pushes its premise much farther, I'm glad the films are evolving a bit beyond the tried-and-true method they've perfected over five films already. When Fallen Kingdom ended, I was an absolute mess because the final sequence is everything I've wanted from the franchise since it was suggestively promised to us in the second half of The Lost World: dinosaurs freely roaming the earth again. While the film obviously needs a story, it does a really fabulous job of showing news reels and montages of this sci-fi nightmarish fantasy from the opening sequence to the finale. We don't need to imagine the Mosasaur gobbling surfers or Pteranodons perching above Columbus Circle because we can finally see it on the big screen!
Set four years after the previous installment, dinosaurs have now bred widely and are spread across the world. Sometimes it's like seeing a bear or moose in the wild; sometimes it results in chaos, wreckage, and death. But rather than explore this generally, the film's primary concerns seem to be with attempts to control or profit from this phenomenon. Enter Biosyn Genetics, a rival company of InGen (from the previous films) who have established a scientific sanctuary in Italy to study dino DNA and, hopefully, find medical and agricultural breakthroughs. Unfortunately, the company is headed by Lewis Dodgson (who we might remember from the first film as Dennis Nedry's accomplice in stealing from Hammond), whose criminality is put on display when a plague of prehistoric locusts is unleashed on the world, bred to devour all crops not genetically linked to Biosyn (get it? "Bio"logical "sin"s are sort of their MO). Fallout from this ecological disaster spurs the plot of Dominion, and thankfully allows for the return of some familiar faces.
Paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), in researching the suspect crops, approaches paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt), raising the cloned Maisie Lockwood in the Sierra Nevada, are brought out of relative isolation when Biosyn captures the Velociraptor Blue's asexually produced offspring and Maisie in one shocking raid. When the heroes approach Biosyn, they meet up with a friendly face in the form of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), now working as a sort of corporate ethicist for Dodgson. Weird, sure, but it's a lot of fun to see the whole gang together.
I'd have preferred a less plot-forced approach. We skip around the world so many times, from snowcapped North American mountains to rooftops in the Mediterranean, that it feels more like a Marvel movie than a Park movie; then again, there's a reason this trilogy changed its title to World, and this is exactly that reason. We aren't given ample time, yet again, to really know Maisie or understand her character. She's mostly a MacGuffin, one whose thematic implications are fascinating but never really developed or explored in this trilogy. There are also two new characters including a pilot who feels more like a mercenary (DeWanda Wise) and the disillusioned head of Biosyn communications (Mamoudou Athie) who aren't developed at all and who seem merely to set up whatever comes next from the franchise. (What's the bet it'll be a limited series exclusively for streaming?)
Thankfully, we get a bit more development of Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) here, who is arguably the real villain of the franchise, and Dodgson (Campbell Scott) is actually a pretty great villain for this episode because he links it all back to the beginning. Scott himself delivers an unnervingly effective performance to undermine what could easily have been a rote character, much like Goldblum, using odd words and phrasing, unexpected tonal shifts, and even distinctly uncomfortable body language to suggest the weirdness of his character; one imagines he studied Musk, Jobs, or Zuckerberg quite a lot for the role.
If it wasn't clear already, there is a lot going on in this film. I wish it took the careful time to explore all its ideas like the first Jurassic World did: glass spheres for prairie strolls, kayaks on a dino river, a petting zoo are all genius and well-presented. But here, we're given mere seconds to take in all the information from a dinosaur black market, dino meat street vendors, dino fighting pits. These scenes dissipate much too quickly and without -- I think this is the significant bit so I'll repeat -- without caring enough to make the scenes believable and therefore tense. All five previous films are keenly aware that every single moment has to have the dread or tension that death is actively nearby. This one ratchets up the action and spectacle, but there's never really the worry that Owen or Alan will get eaten or squashed. And that's a difficult failing to overlook. But, if the franchise continues (and I hope it does), then perhaps this film will be remembered more fondly as the launching pad for some really interesting and exciting work. As it is, it probably ties with the third film as my least favorite of the franchise, which admittedly isn't saying much because I can hardly wait to watch this one again!
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