Jurassic World: Dominion
BFF & I went to see Jurassic World: Dominion last night. Oy vey. Review with spoilers ahead:
-First of all, there are almost no plot surprises in JWD. You can correctly guess as soon as a character pops up on screen "I bet he / she will do X in this scene, then Y later on." So I'm going to skip over most of the minutia and subplots here. If you've read my past reviews of Jurassic World (2015) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), you've basically already watched JWD & can save yourself the price of a ticket. Congrats!
-JWD is very self-congratulatory & referential, to the point of sounding like corny fan fiction. Characters say to each other "Oh, I know you / or I've heard about you. You're so-and-so." At one point Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) said to Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) "You were at Jurassic World, right ? Not a big fan of it."
-There's too many cutaways to various locations around the world. The point of those are to show you where all the Jurassic characters are currently working + the many dinosaurs that have taken over the planet. But it made me feel like "Oh my god, can we get to the point of this movie ? I sat through a half hour of movie previews that were less boring than this."
-During the pivitol "gotta climb this tower" scene, I got distracted with my phone. I looked up long enough to realize I still hadn't missed anything important yet.
-One of my complaints with Jurassic World (2015) was that Barry Sembène (Omar Sy) was barely noticeable by the end of the movie. They did my man Barry wrong again. He's only in the beginning of JWD. And then everyone else runs off to continue the global search for Maisie. Sigh.
-A big gripe I have is how the three most visible black characters get relegated to the Magic Black People trope. Barry Sembène (Omar Sy), Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) & Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) get treated as The Helpers (to borrow from a Mister Rogers quote). I see ONE movie poster on Amazon where DeWanda Wise's face is discretely tucked into it; Omar & Mamoudou are not shown.
-Since it's Pride Month, JWD throws a tiny bone to the LGBT audience. Kayla Watts says (about Owen & Claire) "I get it, I have a thing for redheads, too." At the end of the movie, Kayla brags to a cute woman with reddish-brown hair "They practically owe me a new plane." I guess that solves JWD's problem of "We don't want homophobic countries cockblocking our distributation. She's maybe bi or a lesbian, but only in your heart if you want to imagine her like that."
-Ostentatiously, this is the last Jurassic movie and all the characters' stories have been neatly tied up. Except there seems to be some gaping holes. Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman)'s final scene was where she still had a laser pointer which secretly alerted dinosaurs to "This is the person you should fixate on to kill."
-I hated how much emphasis was on "Maisie is a clone. Maisie is special. We must capture her / protect her / study her." Yawn.
-The one scene that was really well done (albeit predictable) was Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) in the hyperloop tunnel.
-Raise your hand if you also want BD Wong to continue to let his hair go gray ?
-JWD was toyetic even earlier than & to a heavier extent than Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Now you know why.
-Jeff Goldblum was his Jeff Goldblum-iest ever in JWD. Which is saying a lot.
-Did you spot the open toilet and beaded curtains in the black market scene ? Did you wonder "Oh my god, did Kayla pee in front of Claire ? 0_0 Where's the men's room ? Is this a unisex bathroom ?!" Does it matter ? Not really. But it will haunt you.
-I was annoyed with how many people brought children to our 7:30 PM showing. The movie isn't (entirely) inappropriate for children, to be clear. It's just that we had to constantly hear giggling toddlers. Plus the children in front us wanted to move seats & talk whenever they did. I was really close to standing up to holler "You down there with the toddlers, take them outside now!"
Jurassic World: Dominion was a C- at best. The multiple location shots, big dinosaurs in wacky settings and OG cast members don't make up for the fact this is a weak rehash of past Jurassic films. It's a good thing I had free tickets, because otherwise I would have been disappointed at wasting my own money on this dinosaur version of Galaxy Quest.
-First of all, there are almost no plot surprises in JWD. You can correctly guess as soon as a character pops up on screen "I bet he / she will do X in this scene, then Y later on." So I'm going to skip over most of the minutia and subplots here. If you've read my past reviews of Jurassic World (2015) and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), you've basically already watched JWD & can save yourself the price of a ticket. Congrats!
-JWD is very self-congratulatory & referential, to the point of sounding like corny fan fiction. Characters say to each other "Oh, I know you / or I've heard about you. You're so-and-so." At one point Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) said to Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) "You were at Jurassic World, right ? Not a big fan of it."
-There's too many cutaways to various locations around the world. The point of those are to show you where all the Jurassic characters are currently working + the many dinosaurs that have taken over the planet. But it made me feel like "Oh my god, can we get to the point of this movie ? I sat through a half hour of movie previews that were less boring than this."
-During the pivitol "gotta climb this tower" scene, I got distracted with my phone. I looked up long enough to realize I still hadn't missed anything important yet.
-One of my complaints with Jurassic World (2015) was that Barry Sembène (Omar Sy) was barely noticeable by the end of the movie. They did my man Barry wrong again. He's only in the beginning of JWD. And then everyone else runs off to continue the global search for Maisie. Sigh.
-A big gripe I have is how the three most visible black characters get relegated to the Magic Black People trope. Barry Sembène (Omar Sy), Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) & Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) get treated as The Helpers (to borrow from a Mister Rogers quote). I see ONE movie poster on Amazon where DeWanda Wise's face is discretely tucked into it; Omar & Mamoudou are not shown.
-Since it's Pride Month, JWD throws a tiny bone to the LGBT audience. Kayla Watts says (about Owen & Claire) "I get it, I have a thing for redheads, too." At the end of the movie, Kayla brags to a cute woman with reddish-brown hair "They practically owe me a new plane." I guess that solves JWD's problem of "We don't want homophobic countries cockblocking our distributation. She's maybe bi or a lesbian, but only in your heart if you want to imagine her like that."
-Ostentatiously, this is the last Jurassic movie and all the characters' stories have been neatly tied up. Except there seems to be some gaping holes. Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman)'s final scene was where she still had a laser pointer which secretly alerted dinosaurs to "This is the person you should fixate on to kill."
-I hated how much emphasis was on "Maisie is a clone. Maisie is special. We must capture her / protect her / study her." Yawn.
-The one scene that was really well done (albeit predictable) was Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) in the hyperloop tunnel.
-Raise your hand if you also want BD Wong to continue to let his hair go gray ?
-JWD was toyetic even earlier than & to a heavier extent than Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Now you know why.
-Jeff Goldblum was his Jeff Goldblum-iest ever in JWD. Which is saying a lot.
-Did you spot the open toilet and beaded curtains in the black market scene ? Did you wonder "Oh my god, did Kayla pee in front of Claire ? 0_0 Where's the men's room ? Is this a unisex bathroom ?!" Does it matter ? Not really. But it will haunt you.
-I was annoyed with how many people brought children to our 7:30 PM showing. The movie isn't (entirely) inappropriate for children, to be clear. It's just that we had to constantly hear giggling toddlers. Plus the children in front us wanted to move seats & talk whenever they did. I was really close to standing up to holler "You down there with the toddlers, take them outside now!"
Jurassic World: Dominion was a C- at best. The multiple location shots, big dinosaurs in wacky settings and OG cast members don't make up for the fact this is a weak rehash of past Jurassic films. It's a good thing I had free tickets, because otherwise I would have been disappointed at wasting my own money on this dinosaur version of Galaxy Quest.