Four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, dinosaurs now live and hunt alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history's most fearsome creatures.
I was really excited to check out the new Jurassic World Dominion at the cinema, and was lucky to be able to check it out. Whilst I'm not a 'die-hard' fan, I have noticed a slight decline in the reception of the films recently and given the recent nostalgia drive from the highly successful Top Gun Maverick film, I was ready to jump in again and watch the new Jurassic World film. Here are my thoughts, broken down by category.
Characters: I liked the variety, although they individually felt very hit/miss. Some characters were great, were exciting and had a great impact on the story (Goldblum, Wise and Athie) whilst others felt borderline annoying and corny. Quite cringe inclusions such as the ‘slid into DMs’ didn’t help because it felt as though the film was trying too hard, instead of delivering on the great cast and then relaying this into the story. Whilst Goldblum, Wise and Athie were a breath of fresh air, unfortunately, I feel the gamble on nostalgia didn’t pay off. Pratt is as good as we would expect though, being a real breath of fresh air in his scenes, and feeling as though he belongs in that role, however, Fern and Neill just weren’t done as well as they could have been, unfortunately, with a minimum focus on the dinosaurs and more about themselves and the human characters around them. Additionally, hardly any of the characters felt multi-dimensional and exciting, many of them just felt a bit ‘basic’. Even Campbell Scott as the antagonist felt very linear, there wasn’t really too much to his character that felt exciting or unique, and ultimately his fate could be seen from a mile away. If I’m being honest though, it could be the result of the storyline.
Storyline: For me, the storyline is what let the film down, it was fast-paced and the action was plentiful, with some great fight scenes between both humans and dinosaurs creating some excitement, but on the whole, I felt like there was a lack of identity that the previous films have a clear sense of. Ultimately what should have provided the film with a sense of urgency - the crop shortages due to the prehistoric and modified locusts, was underplayed so much that it felt like a secondary problem to the protagonists finding and rescuing Maisie. For me, this is where the issue of identity comes in, because whilst the film has heavy involvement from dinosaurs, it feels as though the dinosaurs are prioritised second to the plot, whereby they are more of an obstacle for the characters.
The plot does indeed take the characters around the world, and the CGI to add the dinosaurs into a modern-day Earth is fantastic and delivers some genuinely breathtaking displays, however despite it feeling exciting and easy to follow, it, unfortunately, feels very recycled in its structure. It has the standard ‘child is kidnapped by an antagonist, parents rush to save them and nearly die, rescue the child (whilst saving the world) and then the antagonist dies a gruesome death’ mixture, which just felt a little lazy here for me. Similarly, whenever characters were in a sticky situation, they seemed to get an easy escape. Like it was so easy for Maisie, Ellie and Alan to escape their rooms in the Biosyn facility that it wasn’t even exciting seeing them escape, I 100% understand that realism isn’t the focus here being a dinosaur film, but the human scenes just felt so lazy and that having cheesy last-minute escapes with little/no challenge just meant there was no challenge for them, and therefore wasn’t exciting for us. Thankfully, the story does know where it wants to go, and has a direction that it stays on, with some enjoyable twists along the way. Unfortunately, though, the story falls short due to a lack of identity, a lack of real challenge for the characters and a lack of a unique feeling to it.
Verdict: The film is ok, however when matched against the franchise, on the whole, shows a sad, yet clear decline. It feels so cruel for a once-massive and groundbreaking franchise (that has some of the most iconic scenes in film history) to end like this, where there isn’t even a decent ending to say goodbye to the franchise. The film has an ‘OK’ ending, but when compared to the ending it should produce to end the franchise, it is very poor and lazy. The story is ok, has some good levels of excitement, and the action of dinosaur scenes is great (with some fantastic CGI), the characters are also very hit/miss, with some feeling as though they are only there for nostalgia, and some feeling great and fresh, but that imbalance leaves it feeling more bad than good. I was really excited about this film, and whilst I am glad to have seen it, I feel that is mainly because it is the last in the franchise, instead of because it is a good film. Overall, it’s a 6/10 from me.
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