Jurassic World: Dominion

Let’s address the elephant in the room. I try to ignore my distaste for the artist and just accept the art. But when Chris’s Pratt rides onto screen living his best cowboy dream (which is the first scene he’s in) I wanted to punch him. In the action scenes I could happily watch him; he - more strictly his stunt double I guess - and the stunt coordinator worked well. But take him away from that and his smug face and my knowledge of his politics and the smaller but I know about his personal life (I try hard to avoid gossip masquerading as news but I’m not 100% successful) caused the urge to violence to rise again.

Anyway, on to the film.

We have an evil organisation called BioSyn. In case it’s not obvious, say it out loud, read that y as an i. There’s a megalomaniac, old, white man. Even if I hadn’t just watched EXU Calamity I’d have said hubris was his fatal flaw. We have two different stories that are meant to converge. One brings us the core characters from the Jurassic World trilogy, the other the core characters from the Jurassic Park films (they weren’t all in all of them, but there were was still a core group). It was lovely to see them, it really was, but ugh, it was bloated for characters. There’s a new one too, just for extra bloat! And some baddies… some of whom are interesting which, essentially, means they chew up enough screen time to be made interesting and that means more bloat.

Geographically they all get together; narratively, it’s clunky. Actually it’s clunky af. Some of that is me looking at the science and crying, you may not feel that way - if you aren’t crying about the dodgy science, you’re probably yawning instead. Some of it is more that the film feels bloated anyway and then we thump the two stories together and try to fuse a third from them. It’s not a harmonious marriage, it’s more like two rugby packs trying to squeeze into a lift that claims to be able to carry 16 people. You might get everyone in there but it will creak and groan, if not actually burst at the seams.

Just in case that’s not enough we squeeze in throwbacks to Jurassic Park and all the Jurassic World movies. I’ll be honest, mostly they didn’t bloat the story, they were just worked in as part of something else but - and it’s a big but - that meant they landed as a bit of a damp squib. Far too often I found myself watching what was meant to be a big, dramatic scene and feeling “oh, but they did that better in X.” If you’re going to put in a scene to make your audience reminisce about the previous movie, it needs to land well - either narratively well in this movie (there’s a scene in Top Gun Maverick that calls back to the beach volleyball that serves a story purpose in the new movie and so stands alone as a decent scene in the new one) or does better than the old one (honestly, take you pick of any of the training scenes in Top Gun Maverick - some of that is advances in the aircraft, some is advances in film technology, but they just look better). This movie, largely, fails on both tests.

If you’re a fun of dinosaurs and the action set pieces that go with them, there’s enough of that to keep you happy. If you’re after more… there’s not really enough here unless you really have strong positive feelings for the earlier movies and want a nostalgia trip. Although I find it hard to imagine you’re a huge fan of the earlier movies without being a fan of this dinosaurs to be honest. There were a few tiny bits were they call back to some of the more egregiously sexist moments of the earlier movies and give Laura Dern and Dallas Bryce Howard a strong bonding moment where the women save the day. But one minute in 147 is a lot to wait for!

Another niggle while I’m at it. Maisie had a really far back, cut crystal English accent. After four years of living with and essentially only talking to Owen and Claire, how?

There’s enough here that appealed to me, I like the dinosaurs, but this was far from the strongest film in the franchise and it’s really not a very good film, sadly, although it’s best parts are fun.

Bechdel Test: Pass. We have multiple named women. They pretty much all talk to each other. Occasionally they talk about men but they talk about palaeontology, going into town and so much more.

Ko Test: Pass. We have a new character, several actually, and two are WOC and both pass the Ko Test. One is a relatively short-duration villain but makes her five scenes, just. The other is a more major character and passes far more easily.

Russo Test: Pass. If you blink you’ll miss it, but we have a wlw character here. It’s unambiguous, and she’s core enough to pass that element. Being queer is just part of her identity, so she passes that element too. If guess it’s so minimal so they can edit it for China and so on. Honestly, this film was long enough I didn’t mind that they didn’t give her a girlfriend and the extra 10 minutes of run time that would entail. Normally I’d regard this as a cop out and I think we do need more in general but in this film this was one part that was ok.