“At some point you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?” That quip lobbed at Jurassic Park (the fictional place) creator John Hammond also serves as a chief concern prompted by Jurassic Park’s (the film franchise) latest entry: it fails to deliver on a straightforward premise. That’s not to say there aren’t prehistoric beasts in Jurassic World: Dominion. It’s more an observation that the human-dinosaur world collision implied in the film’s marketing—a conflict that has been teased and anticipated across this franchise’s 30-year history—is absent from any central action. If one is hoping to get various sequences resembling The Lost World’s San Diego climax, or even some of the potential chaos alluded to in Fallen Kingdom’s ending montage, they might do well to sit this one out.
A few years after J.A. Bayona’s dinosaurs-via-Victorian-horror released both the marquee creatures and human clone Maisie (Isabella Sermon) onto the world, Dominion seems to have largely skipped over any potential upheaval that may have ensued. Instead it occupies a moment—summarized in the form of a “Now This” video—wherein dinosaurs are being wrangled up by shady genetics corporation Biosyn after making their way into human civilization. We’re told that daily life has changed, but that unrest is never fully shown. There may be a brontosaurus plodding through a lumber yard, but its presence feels largely harmless. Even the promotional prologue featuring a T-Rex marauding a drive-in theater is entirely absent from the film.
Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard return, as do the original film’s beloved trio of Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum, whose presence proves more cringe-worthy than comforting. Their only respite is a reprieve from Pratt and Howard, but with the addition of several ancillary characters, Dominion threatens to lose the plot quickly. We’re only in the dino-inhabited mainland for a handful of scenes. Then simultaneous plots involving kidnapping and corporate-induced famine via—let me check my notes… genetically enhanced monster locusts—whisk our characters into globetrotting espionage.
Said espionage allows Trevorrow to crib from several places at once: a hint of Bond here, a splash of Bourne there. We’re even given a pointless Vanessa Kirby from Mission: Impossible – Fallout ripoff just in case the lack of ideas wasn’t clear enough. That this second act introduces us to DeWanda Wise as a snarky smuggler is its sole saving grace. Hers are the only quips that work, and she should frankly be the star. Too consumed by trying to make a good spy movie (which it isn’t), Dominion almost forgets to be a good Jurassic Park movie. Grasping at straws, it scurries these plot threads back into the safest choice imaginable, seemingly checking boxes along the way: a secluded research facility with dinosaurs run by a greedy capitalist.
In all of it, the thing most prominently extinct is any real sense of endangerment. Of course, any visceral excitement is bound to dwindle over decades as these creatures and their environments have become full CGI renderings rather than collaborations of both physical and digital movie magic. Though Dominion attempts a course-correction at blending some practical wizardry back into the fold, it continues the trend of these newer installments (and perhaps all the sequels, depending on your preference), of failure to capitalize on the essence of danger. You have to care about the people in peril, and this goes both ways. You have to care enough about Tim and Lex Murphy to hold your breath when they sneak around that stainless steel kitchen. You also have to care enough to hate Dennis Nedry in order to gleefully relish his subsequent blinding and demise.
Whatever hard work goes into sculpting these dinosaurs, that danger is what makes them real. This is Trevorrow’s biggest failing. Despite resorting to overt callbacks and a final act that amounts to a rehash of the original film, the prehistoric carnage the director does throw onscreen simply happens to his characters. Each sequence is thrust upon us without any real build, and thus no effective release of tension or payoff. Coupled with the fact that it’s hard to care whether or not Owen Grady is mauled by a Giganotosaurus.
Jurassic World: Dominion is at best distracted, at worst boring. Playing on the nostalgic return of key heroes and frantically attempting Spielbergian wonder, it wants you to believe it’s got a back-to-basics understanding of Jurassic Park. Instead its convoluted notions of big entertainment ignore what Spielberg understood: dinosaurs have always had a natural hold on our collective imagination. Making them fun doesn’t have to be this hard.
Jurassic World: Dominion opens June 9.