"Jurassic World: Dominion" Feature Talkback (Spoilers)

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  • *****

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  • **1/2

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  • **

    Votes: 1 50.0%
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  • Total voters
    2

Yojimbo

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It All Started Here

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Jurassic World: Dominion
Release Date:
June 10, 2022
Studio: Universal Pictures
Runtime: 146 Minutes
Directed By: Colin Trevorrow
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of action, some violence and language
Screenwriters: Derek Conolly & Colin Trevorrow (Story) and Emily Carmichael & Colin Trevorrow (Screenplay)
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Isabella Sermon, Campbell Scott, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Scott Haze, Dichen Lachman, Kristoffer Polaha, Caleb Hearon, Freya Parker

Plot Summary: Four years after Isla Nublar has been destroyed, 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.

Related Discussion
*"Jurassic Park" (Novel) by Michael Crichton Talkback
*"Jurassic Park" Film Talkback
*"The Lost World: Jurassic Park" Talkback
*"Jurassic Park III" Talkback
*"Jurassic World" Talkback
*"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" Talkback
*"Jurassic World: Battle at Big Rock" Short Talkback
*"Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous" Series Talkback
*"Jurassic World" Untitled TV Series News and Discussion Thread
*"Jurassic World: Dominion" News & Discussion Thread (Spoilers)

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Pooky

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Not a complete disaster, but I think this is easily the weakest of the lot. In some ways it's an improvement over Fallen Kingdom because it has some fresh ideas and tries some new things, some of which even work, at least briefly, but it goes on way too long and becomes something of a chore to watch. I was ready for it to end quite a while before it did.

The first World seemed to rub quite a few people the wrong way, and it was no classic but I thought it was at least a nice throwback to the 80s/90s style of blockbuster. The last two movies feel very much like modern blockbusters, and not good ones; a lot of action and noise with little structure and terrible pacing.
 

Classic Speedy

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Not a complete disaster, but I think this is easily the weakest of the lot. In some ways it's an improvement over Fallen Kingdom because it has some fresh ideas and tries some new things, some of which even work, at least briefly, but it goes on way too long and becomes something of a chore to watch. I was ready for it to end quite a while before it did.

The first World seemed to rub quite a few people the wrong way, and it was no classic but I thought it was at least a nice throwback to the 80s/90s style of blockbuster. The last two movies feel very much like modern blockbusters, and not good ones; a lot of action and noise with little structure and terrible pacing.
I still contend that the first Jurassic World is the best JP since the first one. A shame to hear this one runs long in the tooth. This is another one of those movies where you have to set aside pretty much the whole afternoon or evening, which I'm not a fan of unless it's something like Lawrence of Arabia where there's an intermission.
 

Classic Speedy

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[SPOILERS BELOW!]

So I got back from it... anyone else think the movie was ultimately pointless? The movie began with dinosaurs amidst modern society, and it ended with dinosaurs amidst modern society. The only difference is the plague locusts were presumably taken out by Wu's genetically modified one. And I'm sorry, but humans and dinosaurs learn to live with each other? Maybe that would work for the herbivores, but raptors wouldn't hunt humans for food? Really?

Another complaint: There were parts of the movie that didn't feel like Jurassic Park at all. The aforementioned locusts felt a little too far removed from dinosaurs, and some of the scenes in Milan felt like they belonged in a Bond or Bourne movie.

Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler didn't have as much chemistry as I would've liked, though it was nice to see them together again, and liked that they hooked up at the end. They really do belong together. Ian Malcolm continues the morose characterization that he's had after the first movie, which I wasn't a fan of. That said, he was responsible for the best line of the movie: "Jurassic World? ...Not a fan." It's like he was a mouthpiece for some (but as previously mentioned, not me!) in the fanbase. I can totally see that clip becoming a meme.

Lewis Dodgson reminded me of Tim Cook, just in the way he looks. His death to the dilophosaurs at the end was satisfying and was a nice callback to the first film where Nedry, whom Dodgson was working with, suffered the same fate.

New character Kayla Watts was... fine, for what she was. But I don't feel like she was developed very much as a character.

Maisie Lockwood had more to do here than in Fallen Kingdom, and I did like her learning about her past, that she's not a clone like she thought. And I did smile when she took on Owen's "stick out your hand" gesture at the raptors towards the end- she's taking after her "father".

Most importantly though, very little in terms of the action scenes wowed me. I feel like we've seen variants of the "run away from the dinos" in the other five films, and this one didn't offer anything drastically unique. And nothing caused me to jump or be on the edge of my seat. Maybe I'm just getting jaded, but I also think Steven Spielberg is simply a better director than Colin Trevorrow.

C range.
 

Pooky

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SPOILERS in response to SPOILERS
So I got back from it... anyone else think the movie was ultimately pointless? The movie began with dinosaurs amidst modern society, and it ended with dinosaurs amidst modern society.

It certainly doesn't feel like much of a conclusion to six films worth of storytelling. Last ever Jurassic film? I'm not buying it.

Another complaint: There were parts of the movie that didn't feel like Jurassic Park at all. The aforementioned locusts felt a little too far removed from dinosaurs, and some of the scenes in Milan felt like they belonged in a Bond or Bourne movie.

I knew about the locusts before I saw the film, and my reaction was "really?" And I didn't necessarily change my mind, but I will say I thought their reveal when they attacked the barn was probably the best scene in the film for me, it feel like a genuinely creepy moment from a 70s or 80s horror film. But I'm not sure it really fits in the film.
Lewis Dodgson reminded me of Tim Cook, just in the way he looks. His death to the dilophosaurs at the end was satisfying and was a nice callback to the first film where Nedry, whom Dodgson was working with, suffered the same fate.

I did like him saying "what's your story?" to one of the dilophosaurs, a funny nod to a lot of the cloying faux-empathetic corporate sloganeering we get these days. Kind of odd to get it from Hollywood who are often among the worst for such things, but there you go.
Most importantly though, very little in terms of the action scenes wowed me. I feel like we've seen variants of the "run away from the dinos" in the other five films, and this one didn't offer anything drastically unique.

I agree, and I was further distanced by what I thought was poor lighting and unappealing composition, although I haven't seen the former mentioned much so this might not be a Solo situation and might have been more of a me thing (or a the screening I went to thing).
 

wonderfly

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I overall enjoyed it.

When I saw the trailer for this, I was wondering: "Okay, they released, what, 200 dinosaurs at the end of the last film? And now we're supposed to believe they're starting to overtake the Earth? Why couldn't those 200 dinosaurs just be rounded up within a couple months?"

But they gave some good explanations: Some are being bred by poachers (I guess the genetic blueprints are all over the black markets around the world), while some are asexual (the "life finds a way" type from the original Jurassic Park). Though in the original Jurassic Park film, they said it was because they had frog DNA, now they're saying it's because Blue had Monitor Lizard DNA, which matches more recent scientific news.

Still, it's supposedly only been 4 years since the last film? And now there's THAT many dinosaurs at a black market in Malta? When we were on the verge of all dinosaurs being extinct with the explosion of the volcano on the island in the last movie? It's....not that believable. Maybe if this was 10 or 15 years later, but this is only 4 years later.

Other random thoughts:

They totally changed what we were lead to believe about Maisie (the clone girl), and I'm....okay with that. She went from "Frankenstein's monster", a creation of a lonely grandfather, to a symbol of scientific nobility (a cure for a disease), and the creation of her wise mother. I don't know why they went this path, but....I guess it worked.

On the flip side, I did NOT like that they rehabilitated Dr. Wu. HE is the reason dinosaurs are in black markets all over the world. He was breeding monsters in the last 2 movies. And he's the reason the locusts are out of control. Why, oh why, hasn't he been devoured by a velociraptor by now? Okay, fine, he found a cure for the locusts, fine, now haul his butt in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hauge for crimes against humanity!

Why did they feel the need to have the T-Rex win the battle with the other major Apex predator? (in a rehash of what we saw in Jurassic World). The other dinosaur (the name of which escapes me, EDIT: Gigantonosaurus), clearly should've been able to beat the T-Rex. That was a bit of a "recycled action clip".

Speaking of "recycled action clips", it really bothered me when I could tell up front that everyone was going to survive. The older couple, the younger couple, and all of the rest, none of them had "this person deserves to die" written on them. Which brings us to the fault of the Jurassic Park franchise: It can never be true horror, a monster movie in which people die that fill us with remorse for their loss. There was some exhilarating escapes from dinosaurs at key moments, but the "sense of disbelief" started to evaporate when they were all in the jungle and able to escape the Gigantonotosaurus without a single casualty.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the film. Unless they can turn this into a true horror franchise, I don't want to see this film franchise again. They saved the world from locusts, we got closure to Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler, we got closure for "Clone Girl". No more, I say, unless you're going to show what true horror is in a world slowly being overrun by dinosaurs.
 

Fone Bone

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Jurassic World: Dominion: Extended Version

I thought it was pretty great. There are some caveats here (aren't there always with me?) but I'm a bit puzzled by the film's generally poor reception. I wanted two things out of the movie and I got them. I wanted to see the old cast again and I wanted them all to survive. And Alan and Ellie end up together which is just icing on the cake. What specifically more did fans want? I'm wracking my brain to figure that out, and it's like the movie checked all the boxes of what I wanted.

Some will argue any movie that does that is not great cinema and doesn't challenge the viewer. Well, so what? Who says every movie has to?

I mentioned there are caveats to my praise. I saw the Extended Version first, and for all I know it fixed the problems people had with the theatrical one. The other caveat is that even knowing the theatrical version was probably much shorter, I would have found seeing this in the theater a totally unpleasant experience. Me being able to take bathroom breaks and snack breaks at my leisure, along with all of the frenetic action occurring in my apartment, a place I feel safe, rather than a theater, where I feel nervous and exposed, made the movie MUCH easier to enjoy than if I were at the theater.

I thought Alan and Ellie were just the absolute cutest together. The best part of mixing the new and old casts is watching the old cast's reaction to the new wanting to save a baby raptor, and Owen having made a promise to Blue. The audience has been through enough with Owen to understand what he's doing is not just reasonable, but noble. But I loved the old cast's reaction because just based on what they went through in the first three movies, it's idiotic. The casts of the first three movies essentially observed and ran away from dinosaurs. The casts of the second trilogy both lived with AND worked with them, for an entirely different dynamic. It was fun to see what the old-timers made of that.

I was very surprised to see a broken and repentant Henry Wu, mostly because the tie-in cartoons have been painting the dude as evil incarnate. Camp Cretaceous was VERY braggy about how much it tied itself to the Jurassic World continuity. But as far as Wu's portrayal goes, the left hand very much didn't know what the right was doing.

Let me be blunt and fair to the detractors of this movie. Wu being able to solve the ecological crisis at the end of the movie, off-screen and exactly as he planned, is not just narratively unsatisfying. It's a bit badly-written too. I understand that these movies aren't actually about fixing the ecology of the havoc caused by giant locusts. And yet, that easy resolution doesn't feel authentic or credible to the fact that the planet's entire ecosystem was in such grave danger that an extinction-level event was possible.

For the record, not a single one of the black characters got eaten or killed. Just as long as we're keeping score about that sort of thing. I was, and I fully approve of the final tally.

There were a lot fewer human deaths than the other Jurassic World movies. I think there might have been fewer human deaths than the Jurassic Park ones too. Maybe viewers felt that robbed things of some urgency? I felt like while the first Jurassic World was an action movie, and the second a horror film, I got the sense this one was a cross between a spy thriller and travelogue adventure film. Sort of like Jurassic Park meets James Bond 007 and Indiana Jones. And the body count level for those of civilians and heroes tends to be lower than action films and horror films. That's probably all that was.

The underground black market for dinosaurs is interesting because it's very difficult to actually tell who is the real monster in that scenario. Which is probably why they showed all the horrible things they did.

Lewis is a fascinating villain because he strikes me as absolutely dangerously crazy, and he did since his first scene of randomly asking Ramsey if he had a food bar on him, or if that was some other guy. He was SO crazy, it was clever of the movie to put the audience at ill-ease for his solo scenes with characters like Wu and Ramsey calling him out on his crap. Because we don't know exactly HOW crazy he is. Is he homicidally crazy? Will Ramsey push him over the brink there and cause him to murderize him? It's the fact that the guy is so unstable, which is why I'm worried about the "good guys" confronting him alone.

I'm not sure why this got negative reviews, or even if they really should only apply to the theatrical version or not. I just know that contrary to popular opinion, I'm not actually a picky viewer, and I respond well to watching a movie I can just sit down and enjoy, especially if it means revisiting some old friends. I'm silly that way. ****1/2.
 
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Classic Speedy

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^ I didn't agree with everything you said but you gave me food for thought on a few things, even if my overall opinion of the movie hasn't changed.
 

Fone Bone

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^ I didn't agree with everything you said but you gave me food for thought on a few things, even if my overall opinion of the movie hasn't changed.
I do that. I'm not merely the site's resident contrarian. My points tend to be legit, (which pisses some people off). It's nice to know my review was appreciated by someone who hated the movie.
 

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