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Ridley Coote

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022) Dir: Colin Trevorrow

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The Jurassic Park/World films belong to an iconic, if turbulent, franchise, which has spanned decades, and made dinosaur fans of us all. I enjoyed the first of the 'World' films, but the second one disappointed me greatly. When this third and final film, directed by Colin Trevorrow, arrived in cinemas, reviews were damning - as such, I felt it best to leave it until I could watch it on a streaming service.


I knew this was going to be bad from the very first scene, which was a horribly written monologue of eye-roll-worthy exposition, accompanied by a series of shots, which looked like mediocre series of A.I. shots from TikTok. I appreciate the idea behind it, but it looked crumby.


What I found really disappointing was how secondary the dinosaurs felt. For a film that proudly boasts "it's not about us" from one of the key human characters, they sure did make the dinosaurs and prehistoric animals feel like an afterthought, or worse, a tool. Even the times the dinosaurs interacted with one another felt either pointless or purely for cinematic effect.


Rarely have I witnessed such horrendous dialogue in a film. I mean seriously, how was it this bad? I could write a first draft better than some of these scenes. There were points where characters would state the most obvious or dumb things - it was honestly infuriating, from a screenwriting perspective.


The most frustrating thing of all, though, was the plot full of absurd conveniences, annoying characters and, quite simply, stupid developments. It was the kind of bad that isn't even enjoyable in a "so bad it's good" way - it was just awful. I kept hoping for some improvement, but none came. It was a dumpster fire of a story.


You could almost see in the eyes of the actors that they knew this was bad. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard tried to bring their characters back to life from a truly dead script, but there was only so much they could do. For what it's worth, I personally felt that Howard gave the best performance of anyone in the film.


The trio of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum returned to the franchise, in what were unfortunately some pretty disappointing appearances. That said, the reason they underwhelmed was not by fault of the actors; their characters were just not needed for the plot. It was clearly done for fan service. If anything, they cluttered up an already convoluted film.


DeWanda Wise and Mamoudou Athie gave the franchise some new blood, and while their characters showed promise, much like the three returning legacy characters, ultimately these two ended up cluttering up the film even more. It was hard enough to care about the many pre-established characters, let alone these new ones on top of that.


Isabella Sermon played a very annoying character, which did her no favours. Her acting wasn't terrible, but what she had to do for the role was really bad. It made her character feel both pretentious and irritating. I felt bad for her, honestly - she never stood much of a chance.


Campbell Scott was such a Zuckerberg of a villain, which, while pretty relevant to real world happenings, sucked from an entertainment point of view. He was so dry and dull, I just couldn't wait for him to be off my screen again.


There were some adequate, if nothing else, performances from some of those with smaller, or less significant, roles. Those who most warranted mentions were BD Wong, Omar Sy, Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda.


Overall, I was hoping that I could find some joy in this sixth film - like I had done with some of the other weaker films - but there was so little to like about it. I would honestly rather was 'The Lost World', hell, even 'The Fallen Kingdom' was better than this. It marks a sorry end to a franchise full of so many amazing moments. I'll stick to the original trilogy now, thanks.



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