Review: Jurassic World: Dominion

 I'm sick of these fucking movies.

Where do I even start with this franchise?  How about the original Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies of all-time.  Was it perfect?  No.  But it is beloved by many.  It's one of the best book to film adaptations ever made if you ask me.  Because as someone who read the original novel, the film captures the magic of a dinosaur based park ten thousand times better than the author Michael Crichton could ever put on paper; no disrespect.  It is one of the best movies of Steven Spielberg's career as well as he absolutely nailed it.  Honestly, I could go on and on about how revolutionary this movie was to summer blockbusters.  Ahead of its time graphics, great acting, a compelling story, interesting characters, and DINOSAURS!  This movie is pretty damn legendary.

And of course, it earned a ton of money, which means we need sequels.  Tons and tons of sequels.  None of which have been able to recreate the magic that was Jurassic Park, nor challenge the franchise to grow into even more.  I mean I get why they don't.  Because the selling point is the dinosaurs, as it should be.  But you know what would make it sell even more?  A good movie.  Which if we are being totally honest, all the sequels have not been well received.  That doesn't mean I don't find them good.  The Lost World, the very first sequel, is a mindlessly dumb popcorn flick that entertains me.  But it doesn't hold a candle to Jurassic Park.  The exact same can be said for Jurassic World.  I thought that was ridiculously stupid, but has some of the most compelling action sequences of the entire series.  And Jurassic Park 3 and Fallen Kingdom are....movies...

Look what I'm trying to say is that the more things stay the same, the less and less I start to give a shit about these movies.  And this new movie, Dominion definitely challenges for the title of the worst of the series.  I might need some more time to mull whether it is the absolute worst because Fallen Kingdom currently holds that title for me personally.  Which let's talk about the end of that movie for a minute because I feel absolutely lied to.  At the very end of that movie, we were promised an actual Jurassic WORLD for once.  Not "have all the dinosaurs placed in one location".  No; an actual world full of dinosaurs.  Which absolutely suckered me in to thinking that we were finally going to try something new and not be given the same old shit.

And to the SURPRISE of no one, that's what we got.  If you consider that a spoiler, then I'm sorry but let's be honest by now.  If you have been following this franchise for as long as I have, then you would know by now to have zero expectations that these sequels would actually want to try and switch up the formula.  

Okay well that's not all true.  We have the main trio coming back of Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Satler (Laura Dern), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to do some B-plot that Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) could have done.  Same goes the other way too.  That's the thing about these characters.  They don't evolve whatsoever.  A Owen line could have been an Alan line.  Or an Ellie line could have been a Claire line.  These characters are so generic and interchangeable.  Well not all of them.  Jeff Goldblum's acting is kind of a caricature of himself to the point that he had me cracking up so many times whether it was intentional or not.

That being said, it feels like the creative team cares more about the humans and their utterly nonsensical subplots for quite some time now.  When in reality, the people came to see the dinosaurs.  Is that so selfish of me to think?  Especially since this is the best the dinosaurs have ever looked in these movies.  CGI has come such a long way since 1993 and while the 1993 CGI was far ahead of its time, the dinosaurs here look so much better than they have ever been.  But no, the dinosaurs are probably in like 30-35% of the movie.  Which sucks because we have to listen to such garbage plot points...oh and that reminds me.  You'll never guess who the villain of this movie is.  It is such a bafflingly out of left field choice that no one will ever guess in a million years.  I'm not going to spoil it for you because I cracked up when I found out that this person was the villain of this movie.

But yeah, outside of some impressive CGI and two to three fun scenes, it doesn't make up for arguably the shittiest movie of the entire series.  I'm still inclined to say that Fallen Kingdom was technically the worst movie of the bunch, but Dominion is hands down the most disappointing of the series.  And isn't that far behind Fallen Kingdom in quality.  If Universal is going to continue this series, and they probably will since this franchise makes way too much money to call it quits; they desperately need to focus on the quality because the more things stay the same, the less people turn out to your movies.  It happened to Star Wars, it happened to Fantastic Beasts, and with the way this franchise is headed, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens to Jurassic Park.

Final Grade: D

D stands for Dumbminion.  What did you guys think?  Was I being too harsh?  Do you find these movies to continually disappoint?  Are we going to see more Jurassic Park properties regardless of the quality?  Let me know in the comments below.  Until next time, thanks for reading and take care!