Jurassic World Dominion

Life always finds a way but not with this franchise.

Recently saw the final installment of the Jurassic Era, Jurassic World Dominion and it was a movie that existed. Directed by Colin Trevorrow and written by Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael, the movie released on June 10, 2022, to shockingly negative reviews. What was a franchise that started in 1993 with one of the greatest movies of all time, it’s really disappointing to see this franchise literally limp to the finish line with these last two movies.

Dominion honestly isn’t a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a fun ride, even if that ride is 25 minutes too long. I thought it was better than Fallen Kingdom and it is definitely better than The Rise of Skywalker which is a movie people are comparing it to. I think the cast (some of the cast, not Campbell Scott. Might be an all-time worst performance in any movie) does a good job with what they’re given, but the script itself is bad, like very bad. Trevorrow has a habit of writing what I like to call “galaxy-brain” scripts. Best way to describe it is a relatively simple idea but with an overly-convoluted script. All three Jurassic World movies suffer from the same thing. The first one is fun, the second one is all over the place, and the last one is fun but equally all over the place like the second one.

I love the comparisons to The Rise of Skywalker because Rise Is genuinelly a bad movie. Nothing in Rise makes me smile or laugh but I found myself laughing at a few of the jokes and smiling at some of the choices that were made. I found it really endearing that Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) called Maisie (Isabella Sermon) her daughter and when she called them her parents. Everytime the original trio interacted, I also found myself smiling. It might’ve been because I had just recently watched the original movie but it was really good to see Ellie, Alan, and Ian interact. Jeff Goldblum was the most Jeff Goldblum since the first one and that was a welcome return. The Sequel Trilogy couldn’t even do that correctly.

The one thing that I just outright don’t like about this movie is the runtime. This movie clocks in at 146 minutes, making it the longest in the franchise. Two and half hours is an abysmal runtime for any movie, regardless the quality. The main characters come together and come face to face with the Giganotosaurus around the two hour mark. At that point there’s still 26 minutes left in the movie and let me tell you, those 26 minutes are a drag. Most of the movie flies by at a breakneck, Transformers: The Last Knight type pace but the ending is so slow and you will feel it.

At the end of the day, I think Dominion is a fun watch. It’s not the best movie in the franchise and its not even the best movie in the World trilogy but it’s a fun watch if you’re looking to get out of the house for a few hours.