Anyone who is even a casual reader of this blog knows quite well that I am a big fan of dinosaurs. Fossil collecting is one of my favourite pastimes and I’m always on the lookout for any news about extinct species in general and dinosaurs in particular. And that’s not just in order to have something to write about in these posts, I really am very interested in paleontology and especially dinosaurs.
So as you might guess any movie that stars dinosaurs is a must see for me. I happily admit that, as a kid I dragged my dad to see many a really bad movie simply because it had a dinosaur in it. If you’d like an example of this go to the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) and check out a film called “Dinosaurus’ from 1960.
Of course the difference now is that dinosaur movies back then were low budget “B” movies with actors no one ever heard of while today dinosaur movies are big budget blockbusters with a cast of “A” list stars. The new movie “Jurassic World: Dominion” is the latest example of this trend being the sixth in the “Jurassic Park” series and I for one am quite certain it won’t be the last.
The big draw in “Jurassic World: Dominion” is that it takes a look backward to the first movie by uniting the main characters from the first three “Jurassic Park” movies with the main characters from the latter three “Jurassic World” movies. That list includes actor Sam Neil as Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler and Jeff Goldbloom as Dr. Ian Malcolm. All three are reprising their roles from 29 years ago while Chris Platt continues his role of Owen Grady along with Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing and Isabella Sermon as Maisie Lockwood.
And really that’s the start of the problems with “Jurassic World: Dominion” because the plot is really just intended to bring these two groups together while at the same time having them be threatened by a very long list of dinosaur species. In other words having a plot that simply made any kind of sense was not a primary concern of the scriptwriters. What plot there is concerns an evil CEO of a biotech corporation trying to use dino genetics to control the world’s food supply. Really, calling the villains in “Jurassic World: Dominion” cartoonish is an insult to cartoons. Wile E. Coyote from the old Roadrunner cartoons was a more fleshed out character than any of the bad guys in this movie.
And all of the contrivances that are employed to bring our heroes together strain credulity rather severely. Really, at one point the main characters are spread out in a large nature reserve in Italy where the biotech firm has its labouratories and yet they all somehow manage to just run into each other, ‘oh hi’!! The coincidences in “Jurassic World: Dominion” are just a bit too much.
But of course the real reason to go to a Jurassic Park movie isn’t the plot or even the actors, it’s the dinosaurs and unfortunately even here “Jurassic World: Dominion” falls short. There are just too many different species, it’s as if the producers went through ‘A Field Guide to Dinosaurs’ and said, “we want one of those, one of those, and of course one of those.”
In the original “Jurassic Park” movie the main characters were really only threatened by two species, a T rex and three velociraptors. That gave the dinosaurs a chance to actually develop as characters themselves. Not so in “Jurassic World: Dominion”, there are simply so many large, predatory dinosaurs trying to gobble up our heroes that you lose track of how many there are and again the whole thing comes off as cartoonish.
Still, there are dinosaurs and, just like when I was a kid, I still enjoy seeing dinosaurs, even if they are just CGI. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is supposed to be the last in the “Jurassic Park” series but let’s be honest, if it makes enough money there will be another one, even if they have to re-boot the entire series from scratch.
And you know I’ll go to see it!