Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

PG-13 for dinosaurs-eatin'-folk.  Like, if there's a dinosaur on screen, there's a good chance he gonna eat someone.  And he's going to scream, real loud.  If you aren't a fan of jump scares, which my kids apparently aren't, maybe this isn't the movie for you.  I'd also like to put out there that there's some casual swearing that I've grown far too comfortable with.  But I don't think my kids even picked up on it because I'm a bad dad who takes them to PG-13 movies.  

DIRECTOR: Colin Trevorrow

It's set in Italy!  I haven't really broken my rule about watching movies that weren't set in Italy.  Sure, I got really lucky with that reveal.  And sure, there is very little reference to the fact that they are in Italy because it all takes place in an underground secret lab in Italy where everything is in English and everyone speaks English.  But it still counts.  Heck, it probably counts more than The Italian Job because there was at least a long section of the movie in Italy.  I wanted to also take credit for the stuff that happens in Malta because it is so close to Italy and it feels like Italy, but I don't have that kind of power. 

First of all, this might have been the loudest movie that I've ever seen.  For a guy who writes about movies so much, you'd think I would know more about how movie theaters operated.  Does the studio tell them how loud to play the movie?  Does the projectionist even have control over the volume output of the film?  Or was this some cowboy who just keeps setting all of the stuff to full and assumes that no one is going to fight it. My kids had their hands over their ears the entire time.  Even my mother, who joined us for this late night excursion that got the kids into bed just shy of midnight, found the sound a bit much and her hearing is failing her.  This probably didn't help.  She also probably thought that I was a monster taking my kids to such a scary film.  But I would like to point out that she took me to Jurassic Park in 1993, when I was the same age as Olivia.  Trust me, when my kids jumped, I quickly did the math to defend myself on the way home.

But the big thing I want to touch on is me.  Why do I feel the need to defend movies that get slammed.  I mean, I knew that Dominion would never be the best Jurassic movie.  But I also saw that trailer and knew that it looked more rad than Fallen Kingdom.  I also knew that even the worst Jurassic movie was still going to be a good time.  Hence, my thoughts on Jurassic Park III, which is barely a movie yet is still pretty watchable.  And you know what?  Not only was the movie better than people made it out to be.  I'm going to put it on the "Good Jurassic movie list".  There's not that many on that list.  I would like to lock the following blasphemy into the record:  Jurassic World: Dominion is the third best Jurassic movie.  The order of the top three?  Jurassic Park (an absolute masterpiece that has never had even close to a peer out there), Jurassic World, and then Jurassic World: Dominion.  Let chaos reign.

Here's why I think that Dominion is a better movie than people give it credit for.  Do you know what Dominion absolutely fails to do?  It fails to close a trilogy.  Trevorrow kept coming out with the statement that this is the end of this trilogy.  He's sure that Universal will do something with this franchise. After all, they're the only real players with dinosaurs in the game.  (That's a weird thing because dinosaurs are public domain and everyone else is terrified to try to capitalize on that.) But in terms of ending the story that has been their version of the Skywalker Saga (I apologize to Trevorrow for the sensitive allusion), it is just a somewhat new Jurassic film.  Sure, it has a lot of the touchstones of the Jurassic franchise.  It has your characters from both trilogies, which screams The Rise of Skywalker.  ​The bad guys, unsurprisingly, are a mega-corporation who try to capitalize on nature.  That's all par for the course.  There's running from dinosaurs.  But I will say this:  I like the new directions that Dominion took.

Some of you might think it's a step back.  I debated that for a while in this movie because it does seem to come out of nowhere.  These evil genetics corporations have been bad guys for trying to market dinosaurs as military weapons for so many movies that it is odd to see the GMO aspect get a lot of play here.  I hate summarizing movies, but I also know that some people are going to skip this entry in the franchise because of the negative reviews.  (The movie just came out and there were only four showings at our theater.) Dodgson, the guy from the first movie who is now played by a new actor, is the head of a major genetics research company.  He seems to be this altruistic savior of humanity, offering shelter to dinosaurs in his sanctuary post-the events of Fallen Kingdom. (I hope I remember to talk about that.) But he also uses his new dino-technology to genetically engineer super locusts that eat up all crops that aren't seeded with his company's GMOs.  It's pretty evil.  But I will say, making the movie where the presence of dinosaurs is incidental is kind of genius.  There's this normality to the world being infested with dinosaurs and they aren't even the problem of the film: It's still humanity.

That's what I think makes a Jurassic movie interesting.  Yeah, our heroes need to be on the run from mega-super scary dinosaurs the entire time.  (I will spoil that, once again, the T-Rex comes in for the final battle to save our heroes.  My least favorite Jurassic trope.)  But the bad guys need to be the people who don't respect nature.  Using nature to make a buck is the moral of the story and that's what it has always been.  The fact that it looks a little bit different is almost a testament to the fact that we never learn from our mistakes.  As someone who has very little hope for humanity left, I applaud that.  Yeah, I'm sure that dinosaurs will be used by the military.  But I also like that we're making all new mistakes.  That's a very Ian Malcolm thing to comment on and I adore it.

But I did have an epiphany.  I'm not sure if I've had this epiphany before.  I may have.  But who has time to read old blog entries, especially considering that I hate the author of those blog entries?  My epiphany is that, as much as the motifs of nature and the themes of respecting nature are constantly thrown at an audience, there's something really anti-environmental about the films. There was this debate in Fallen Kingdom about whether or not mankind should save the dinosaurs on the collapsing Isla Nublar or should they be removed from the island and taken care of in a new facility.  Malcolm, who hates being right all the time, stresses that saving the dinosaurs is a terrible idea.  And do you know what?  He's right.  He advocates active extinction for a new dominant species and that concept is ignored by the protagonists.  It's funny, because Claire's character arc over the course of these films is from cold-hearted corporate stooge to eco-terrorist. (Okay, revolutionary.  I'm still kind of on her side in these movies. It's a complicated issue!) 

But every time that the protagonists side with the dinosaurs (which is every time) there are insane consequences that the same protagonists have almost no regret over.  Remember, it was Owen and Claire that got the dinosaurs off of Isla Nublar.  Sure, they didn't know that they would instantly be put up for auction.  But Maisie decides to release the dinosaurs into the wild, where they reproduce like maniacs.  (I don't know why they made Blue special.  I acknowledge that it is a kind of dumb absurd plot point.)  And then the movie starts with an absolutely charming "Now This" video showing the increase in dinosaur related deaths, yet humanity isn't wiping out the dinosaurs left and right?  I'm not talking about black market poachers.  No, I can see dinosaurs avoiding extinction from these people.  But the world just decided to live with the notion that dinosaurs are totally going to kill us at any moment, yet we haven't professionally hunted them down? We just accept that dinosaurs are ruining everything and are doing nothing about it?  It is kind of silly that the protagonists are the people protecting these dinosaurs, despite the fact that the same dinosaurs are constantly trying to kill them.  People get ripped apart, but God forbid that we do something about the problem we created.

I mean, I get it.  Despite the fact that I'm not particularly an animal person, slaughtering the dinosaurs is a pretty unsympathetic approach.  I thought that maybe the movie would take the position of an overburdened military, similar to what we see in Dawn of the Dead.  But no.  But who honestly cares?  (Besides me, who overthinks movie franchises to the point where I needed to write it down so someone would listen.)  (Also, if I die for any reason, make a book out of this crap.   Fix the typos.) 

But I stand by my position: this is a good Jurassic movie.  It doesn't do anything to wrap up the franchise. It simply seems like a problem that is kind of new to be dealing with coupled with the notion that the setting has changed in a fun way.  I also really applaud that it made all of the in-between sequels canon.  There was talk that maybe Jurassic World was a direct sequel to Jurassic Park, but they threw down enough references to other films that everything is fair game.  Sure, there's no real reason to connect the old crew and the new crew together, but it was fun.  Am I crazy though or did Sam Neill have a hard time finding his old Alan Grant voice?  It felt like he was doing a generic American accent, not Alan Grant?  Just me?  I don't know.  Either way, it was fun.  Also, poor Ellie.  She divorced Mark?  I mean, I thought it was weird that Alan and Ellie didn't work out after the first movie, but she still deserved to have a healthy relationship with the father of her kids.  But it was worth seeing Alan and Ellie pick up where they left off.

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