Jurassic World: Dominion Review

The Jurassic franchise has come to an end this past weekend. At least that’s what Universal has been claiming in their advertising of “Jurassic World: Dominion.” If you believe them in this statement, which I most certainly do not, then you can perhaps accurately say that it both went out with a bang and with a pathetic thud, depending on your point of view. Obviously opinions are a personal thing, but on the more objective financial side, it opened to a massive $145 million, only slightly down from the $148 million of “Fallen Kingdom.” It makes sense that neither sequel was quite as high as the $208 million opening of the franchise revival “Jurassic World,” but it’s still very impressive that all three movies were massive financial hits… despite the less than stellar reaction. That leads to the “pathetic thud” side of the coin. “Dominion” scored a franchise low 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, claiming that title of worst reviewed in the franchise by a large margin, below the 47 percent margin of “Fallen Kingdom.” Exiting on that level of toxicity is probably not what Universal was hoping for, but their bank accounts might not care about what the critics or audiences have said.

If you read my June movie preview, you’ll note that I thought “Dominion” was going to fall in between “Jurassic World” and “Fallen Kingdom” in regards to opening weekend, not below both. I think the best explanation is that the heavy negative buzz leading up to release, combined with the continued dominance of “Top Gun: Maverick,” contributed to a certain number of people deciding to pass on the finale, especially if they weren’t a fan of “Fallen Kingdom.” Perhaps they chose to go see “Maverick” again instead. I myself was close to not seeing this movie and only did so out of obligation rather than excitement. I’ve seen and reviewed the others. Might as well complete the set.

That said, fans of the Jurassic World movies might not really take this review seriously, claiming that I was going to hate this no matter what, perhaps accusing me of going in looking for bad things to criticize rather than trying to give it an objective look. To that potential accusation, I say… fair. I’m not going to argue that vehemently. I grudgingly went into a movie that I expected to hate and maybe that affected my experience to a degree. Although perhaps a slightly more accurate way to phrase that was that the movie had a very large hill to climb in order to win me over. I was very mixed to disappointed in “Jurassic World” and I left fuming after “Fallen Kingdom.” I put that as my worst movie of that year. And given that Collin Trevorrow, director of “Jurassic World” and “Dominion,” and writer for all three, was again on board, having been given the keys to the car by Universal to do whatever he pleased, my confidence level in him listening to the complaints of his movies and winning me over with a third one was incredibly low. Sometimes you can predict that a movie will be bad based on the filmography of the director and be right. It’s like going into a Michael Bay Transformers movie. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me… five times, shame on me if I thought the result was going to be any different.

And thus we get Collin Trevorrow. A man who does not know how to direct a movie. And I’m supposed to believe he can turn things around and match Spielberg’s epic “Jurassic Park” in this third and final movie in the Jurassic World series? I feel this was less of me being a grumpy pessimist and more of me knowing what this was going to be and not allowing myself to get disappointed once again. I’d rather be surprised that he proved me wrong rather than get my hopes up only to have my heart ripped out again.

As such, it’s been quite interesting trying to digest and analyze my specific thoughts about “Dominion” after walking out of it. When you’ve successfully not let yourself get excited for a movie over the course of the past four years and it turns out that you successfully predicted it would be an awful movie, you can’t exactly experience that feeling of disappointment. Being disappointed comes with the connotation that something did not meet your expectations or hopes. When one did not have hopes, one cannot be disappointed. Thus this movie did not disappoint me. It also did not surprise me. It was, simply, par for the course. A bad movie that I fully expected to be bad. One could say I was numb to the experience.

And thus in a strange and somewhat contradicting turn of events, my approach to this undoubtedly bad movie allowed me to have a certain degree of entertainment that I did not have with the previous two movies in this Jurassic World trilogy. I was highly amused during most of the movie and laughed quite a bit. But it was most definitely not a degree of entertainment that was intentional from the vantage point of the filmmakers. I was laughing at the movie, not with the movie. And thus I honestly think this dives into the realm of being “so bad that it’s hilarious.” A movie where you can put on with a group of friends and laugh at how atrocious the whole thing is in a “Mystery Science Theater 3000” sort of way.

And I can promise you that this was not the movie’s intentions. I genuinely got the feel that they were trying to make a good Jurassic World movie. I just found entertainment at the wrong parts.

Case in point, there is a sequence in the movie where Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard got caught in some sort of ring of scandalous dinosaur trafficking mischief. Again. And there’s a point where the generically evil people are using the laser-trained dinosaurs that “Fallen Kingdom” set up to try to kill Chris and Bryce. And thus there is a long sequence where our two heroes are running from these raptors that are trying to eat them for dinner. The theory behind this sequence is that the audience would feel a degree of tension as they worried for the lives of their beloved main characters. For me, though, when the raptors started chasing them, I was, like, “Get them!” I was definitely on Team Dino. And I found a degree of entertainment from the movie as I was hoping that these dinos would kill and eat our main characters.

There was another moment where Bryce Dallas Howard nearly plunged to her death after evacuating an airplane, only to find herself alone in the jungle with a giant bird dinosaur thing that was chasing her. She hid in the water and the dino was inches away from getting her. At this point, I found a level of morbid amusement because, instead of feeling tension similar to the original “Jurassic Park,” I gained excitement at the idea of this dino reaching down a few feet further and biting her head off.

Again, this was not the intention of the filmmakers. They were trying to make intense sequences where the audiences feared for the lives of the main characters. Instead of feeling that emotion, I gained a level of adrenaline at the idea of wanting our main characters to get eaten alive. They did such a horrible job at writing these characters over these three movies that the only level of satisfaction I would get is if their arcs ended with them becoming dinner. And you know you’ve failed miserably as a screenwriter when I’m cheering for the main characters to die. Yet their failures provided me with entertainment that I most certainly did not have after leaving the other two movies. So in a weird way this is kinda the best of the three even though it is also easily the worst of the three?

The only slight glimmer of hope that I had for this movie that I most certainly suppressed is the idea that Collin Trevorrow openly admitted that he wanted to make a movie where dinosaurs ran freely across the world and essentially treated the two movies leading up to this as a bridge movie to get to his final destination. In which case, I suppose there’s a chance that the two previous movies were bad because the writer/director literally didn’t care about them and only used them as a means to get to his desired destination. And maybe that would lead the final movie to being a good movie because it’s the movie that the Trevorrow actually cared about?

The result of this particular glimmer of hope lead to… confusion. Again, not disappointment. This movie was not eligible to disappoint me. But Trevorrow spent years of his life teasing this particular premise for this movie only to not take advantage of the premise?

Because, yeah, outside a few random shots of dinosaurs living and roaming in random places in the world, usually through cliché news footage sequences, this is not that movie. A very strong majority of this movie takes place at the headquarters of an evil massive corporation and the immediate jungle surrounding this movie. A total area that is probably smaller than the area of both Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. The whole time through this premise, I was, like, “THIS was your end game, Trevorrow?”

Not to mention, the biggest conflict of this dinosaur movie did not even involve dinosaurs. There’s a plague of giant, prehistoric locusts that are starting to swarm the Earth and deplete the planet’s food supply. These locusts are secretly released by this evil corporation, who of course via advertising are making themselves look like the good guys, so that they can gain huge financial increase by being the one source of the world’s food supply when the planet runs out. And because of this conflict, Dr. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are brought back in an attempt to stop this plan and get rid of the giant locusts.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard get roped into this because their adopted clone child from “Fallen Kingdom” gets kidnapped by this evil organization. And somehow the baby of Chris Pratt’s pet raptor also gets taken, so Pratt makes a promise to his pet raptor that he would bring the baby raptor back. Somehow they end up at a detour to this other place where they got chased by laser-trained raptors before getting rescued by DeWanda Wise’s character, meet a half dozen other characters that are brought in to do nothing, and the whole gang is united at the headquarters of the evil organization to fulfill their plans that I just talked about in these paragraphs.

And, oh yeah, they randomly run into some dinosaurs along the way.

That’s it. That’s the movie. The more I think about this specific plot, the more I am extremely confused as to how professional screenwriters wrote these plot points. Screenwriters who have dedicated their lives to the art of filmmaking and most likely spent many years of school studying these things and writing them. And this is what they came up with? Even more confusing is how the drafts of this screenplay wound up on the desks of the humans at Universal and the humans at Universal looked at this screenplay and greenlit the thing.

I’m not saying I could make a better movie. Filmmaking is not something I have ever pursued and I have mad respect for people who have. I’m just saying as one who has spent the last decade plus watching and critiquing movies as a hobby, this is just one of those movies that is extremely confusing as to how it became a thing.

What I will say is that, despite the baffling incompetence of the screenwriters of this movie, there did seem to be a lot of people involved in the technical aspects of the movie that did their job proficiently. The movie looks great. The CGI dinosaurs might not be as magical as the original Jurassic Park, but they look great, nonetheless. The movie has a great score. It’s edited just fine. The cinematography and camera work are great. And for the most part it seems like the actors involved in the movie look like they cared about performing their roles well. Chris Pratt is the one that seems like he’s bored and checked out. And bless her heart, Bryce Dallas Howard is trying. I’m a fan of hers and I think she has a great career ahead of her in both acting and directing. But her character is written atrociously, which is why I wanted her eaten. But the clone girl is great. The original trio of Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, and Laura Dern seemed like they had a lot of fun returning. DeWanda Wise and Mamoudou Athie played great side characters. Even Campbell Scott as random, evil CEO dude seemed like he was having fun, even though his character was the most generic bad guy ever.

What I’m getting at here is that there was a lot of pieces in play from professionals who were doing a great job at what they’ve been paid to do. And it’s really unfortunate that their talents were completely wasted due to the gross incompetence of the man steering the ship. This movie’s failure is 100 percent on the feet of Collin Trevorrow in my opinion. And he should feel all the shame in completely destroying one of cinema’s best franchises.

Another moment of me giving credit where credit is due is that the dinosaur sequences in the final act of the movie are genuinely the best dinosaur sequences in the entire Jurassic World trilogy. It’s again a missed opportunity that the dinosaurs were more of the side obstacles to overcome rather than the main conflict. And the specific instances of dinosaur terror were extremely random rather than being calculated incidents that the movie built towards. But nevertheless, if you isolate the individual moments and ignore the rest, those are good moments that deserve praise.

But it still doesn’t all add up to something that is worthwhile. And it’s still extremely disappointing in general that so much potential was squandered with this trilogy as a whole because Collin Trevorrow seemingly has no idea what made “Jurassic Park” so effective in the first place. It is also disappointing that Universal gratefully and willingly gave him the keys to the car and were perfectly happy with him driving that car off a cliff. This could’ve been special. But instead it’s a big waste of time and money.

My closing recommendation is that you skip this movie in theaters. Wait until it comes to streaming or until it is cheap enough to rent. Then get together with a group of friends and have fun laughing at it. Through that, entertainment can be had. But I don’t give the movie credit for that because, even though I enjoyed this movie in a weird way, the idea that the Jurassic franchise has devolved to the point where it falls into “so bad it’s good” territory is extremely depressing because that’s not what a Jurassic movie is supposed to be.

Grade: 3/10

Movie Preview: June 2022

It’s beginning to feel like normal at the box office. Sure, it’s felt like that for several months now, so this is not necessarily breaking news, but the first month of our first traditional summer movie season since 2019 definitely lived up to the hype and that’s quite refreshing. The month was bookended by two massive $100 million openings as “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” started the month off with a $187 million opening weekend, while “Top Gun: Maverick” finished the month off with a $160 million debut over the 4-day Memorial Day weekend. The latter was a new Memorial Day weekend record while the former shows the box office prowess of Marvel as that was only the seventh highest opening for an MCU film. 

June is already here and so technically this is a weekend late, but yours truly got a bit tied up in things and didn’t get this out on time. Although in this instance I don’t feel too bad as there weren’t any new wide releases in the first weekend of June. And that there is a tad bit reflective of how the June box office looks. Not a whole lot in terms of quantity, but two more massive summer blockbusters that most studios are staying clear of. 

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are subject to change.

June 3 – 5

Neon's "Crimes of the Future"

As mentioned, there weren’t any new wide releases this weekend. And by wide in this instance, I mean movies that opened in at least 1,000 theaters. Neon released the new David Cronenberg movie Crimes of the Future in 773 theaters, while IFC Midnight released the psychological thriller Watcher in 764 theaters. The two movies placed 9th and 10th at the weekend box office, pulling in $1.1 million and $826,775 respectively. Among the fans of indie filmmaking, a new Cronenberg film was definitely the buzz of the weekend. He’s most notable for his body horror films and is often seen as one of the originators of the subgenre. Perhaps his most well-known film is the 1986 remake of “The Fly,” but Cronenberg fans have been raving about his work for six decades now and they haven’t had anything since 2014, which is another reason why “Crimes of the Future” is a bit of a big deal.

The real storyline of this weekend, though, was “Top Gun: Maverick” yet again. After breaking the Memorial Day weekend record, previously held by the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie way back in 2007, it set another record in its second weekend. The smallest drop ever for a movie to open north of $100 million. If I were to post this before the weekend, I would’ve taken an educated guess of about $60-70 million for weekend 2. That would’ve been a very normal and healthy 50 percent drop. But instead it scored $90 million, a drop of just 29 percent from its 3-day opening of $126.7 million. For perspective, there have now been 71 movies to open north of $100 million. Of those 71, prior to “Maverick,” only three had dropped less than 40 percent: 2002’s “Spider-Man” (38 percent), 2004’s “Shrek 2” (33 percent), and 2019’s “Frozen 2” (33 percent). As you can see, “Maverick” is now alone as the only to drop less than 30 percent after opening above $100 million. And that specific stat is a development since the weekend estimates on Sunday, which had it at a 32 percent drop. What this really goes to show is how insanely strong the word of mouth is on this film. It’s more than just a hit. It’s become a global phenomenon and should continue to do well over the whole summer despite some… Jurassic competition in its third weekend coming up.

June 10 – 12

Universal’s "Jurassic World: Dominion"

Yes, as noted in that purposely bad pun in the end of that last paragraph, while Tom Cruise continues to soar high, dinosaurs will be taking over the world in the third and final entry in the Jurassic World franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion. I don’t need to educate anyone on the history of the Jurassic franchise as a whole. Everyone and their dog is very well aware that “Jurassic Park” is a thing that exists. In fact, that movie is so well-loved that it has now spawned five sequels over the course of the last 25 years and audiences have continued to show up in droves despite each ensuing entry having less than stellar reaction. The Jurassic World movies specifically have proven very critic proof. “Jurassic World” only scored a 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and its sequel, “Fallen Kingdom” fell negative at 47 percent. Yet nostalgia pushed “Jurassic World” in 2015 to a then opening weekend record of $208.8 million, topping 2012’s “The Avengers.” That only lasted a few months until “The Force Awakens” came out, but it’s still notable that it held that prestigious record for a period of time. And despite the aforementioned negative reviews from both critics and audiences, “Fallen Kingdom” still managed an opening of $148 million, with a finish of $417 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide. Not bad for a fairly divisive film.

So what does all of that mean for “Dominion”? One could look at the previous Jurassic Park trilogy and note that each movie had diminishing returns. Mixed reviews held “Lost World” back from topping the original, while “Jurassic Park III” plummeted even more. However, I think it’s quite possible that “Dominion” reverses course and improves upon “Fallen Kingdom.” For one, “Dominion” is advertising itself as the final movie in the franchise. Whether or not that will remain true is up for debate, but that has often been a successful marketing ploy. Fans of a popular franchise will typically show up if they think it could be the last hurrah. Also, director Colin Trevorrow has long since said he wanted to make a movie where dinosaurs run free across the whole Earth instead of just it being an isolated incident on one island. And “Dominion” is just that. That premise could be intriguing enough for people to show up, even if they didn’t like one or both of the Jurassic World movies. And finally, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern are all reprising their roles from the original “Jurassic Park,” teaming up with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard from the two Jurassic World movies, which makes this a Jurassic reunion that could also attract any fence sitters. Box Office Pro projected $180 million in their last long range forecast, but this could realistically fall anywhere on the spectrum of $150-200 million. In other words, anywhere in between the previous two.

A Jurassic movie requires a Jurassic analysis, especially with a limited number of releases this month, but there is another movie that is theoretically getting released this weekend and that’s a movie called Block Party. The poster claims that this is the first ever Juneteenth family comedy. I’ll let you decide what exactly that means and whether or not it’s accurate. Juneteenth is, of course, on June 19th, so this is targeted as a family comedy leading up to that now federally recognized holiday (as of last year). But I don’t know if awareness is high. For a movie that’s supposed to come out this week, and actually on Wednesday the 8th, an internet search will lead you to other things and I couldn’t find a trailer that had more than a couple of thousand views. Said trailer did say it’s coming in theaters on June 8th and on BET+ on June 16th, which typically reflects a smaller theatrical release, but the-numbers.com does list this as a wide release. Whether or not that’s a wide release of more than 1,000 theaters or a release in about 500-700 theaters is something that we’ll find out here in a few days. My guess is the latter. At most. But we might find that out even before some of you read this. 

June 17 – 19

Pixar’s "Lightyear"

The second massive blockbuster of the month that I referred to at the beginning of this post is Pixar’s Lightyear. As crazy as it may seem, this is the first Pixar movie to get a theatrical release since before the pandemic. “Onward” was their most recent one to get the theatrical treatment and that had the unfortunate timing of getting its run cut short by the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Since then, Disney has released both “Raya” and “Encanto” in theaters from their own animation studio, but Pixar has gotten the shaft, with “Soul,” “Luca” and this year’s “Turning Red” all going straight to Disney+. One can attribute it to Disney running out of patience and not wanting to continue to postpone their entire release, but whatever the case be, Pixar finally gets to have a traditional release and there’s no better way to get back on track in that manner than to have another movie in the Toy Story realm. In fact, “Toy Story 4” was the last Pixar movie to get released in theaters that wasn’t impacted by the pandemic, that back in Summer 2019, so it’s a bit poetic, you might say.

Now what this movie is has probably been the biggest point of confusion. It’s not a Toy Story sequel and only kinda a spin-off of the franchise. And it’s not really a prequel or Buzz Lightyear origin story, either. It’s the movie inside the Toy Story realm that Buzz Lightyear was based off of. And the easiest way to simplify that is to say it’s the movie that Andy and his Mom could’ve potentially gone to that could’ve resulted in Andy getting his own Buzz Lightyear toy in the original Toy Story, which is why Chris Evans is voicing Buzz instead of Tim Allen. And that’s a bit of an outside-the-box idea for Pixar, but reaction to the trailers has been very positive and people have proven multiple times over that if you say Toy Story, they are showing up. Even if they’re skeptic of the movie being necessary (“Toy Story 4”). To me that says they’re showing up again for “Lightyear,” even if they’re confused about what the movie is. “Toy Story 3” and “Toy Story 4” both opened above $100 million. I think “Lightyear” could do so as well, especially if reviews end up positive. And very early whispers suggest they will be.

June 24 – 26

Warner Bros.' "Elvis"

The final weekend of June has a big chance of being won by “Lightyear,” but there are two movies that will enter into the race, both of which have at least some breakout potential. Either could theoretically be the bigger of the two, but the one with the highest ceiling is Elvis, the latest in a long string of musical biopics. Starring as the King himself will be Austin Butler, who is not a complete newcomer, but this will certainly be his huge breakout role. Early reaction out of Cannes Film Festival gives his performance very high praise, with mixed but positive leaning reaction towards the rest of the movie. The movie also has director Baz Luhrmann coming out of hiding with his first directed film since “The Great Gatsby” in 2013. Luhrmann has a distinct and somewhat divisive style, but also has a very short discography and he’s very selective with his film choices, which always makes a new film from a bit of an event.

There are many potential directions that “Elvis” can take and lots to compare it to. Obviously Mr. Presley was one of the biggest music stars ever, but will that translate into box office success in the way that a “Bohemian Rhapsody” did? That opened to $51.1 million and held incredibly well, finishing with $216.3 million domestically and almost $900 million worldwide. But yet it also played during the holiday season at the end of the year. Perhaps a more comparable film will be “Rocketman,” which came out six months later in May 2019, opening with $25.7 million and finishing with $96.3 million domestically. That also had a summer release, a popular star in Elton John, and mostly positive reviews. Yet there is also the chance of a performance like “RESPECT” from last year, which, despite having Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin, only managed an $8.8 million opening and a $24.3 million total. Has fatigue set in with these musical biopics or are audiences ready to rock with Elvis?

The other film coming in is the horror film The Black Phone. Horror films are even harder to predict. They can range from completely dead on arrival to a breakout smash. The premise here is that a 13-year-old boy gets abducted by a child killer and starts receiving phone calls from the killer’s previous victims on a disconnected phone. The elephant in the room is that maybe some might not be interested in such a premise after the recent shooting at an elementary school in Texas. If that’s not an issue, another obstacle is that Jordan Peele’s “Nope” comes out just a few weeks later in July. Some horror fans might simply wait for that one. If neither of those things ends up as an issue, the positive things going for this movie is great response from the trailers as well as positive reviews out of Fantastic Fest last year when the movie premiered. It’s also directed by Scott Derrickson, who directed the first “Doctor Strange” and was set to direct the sequel from last month before dropping out. Before his Marvel turn, Derrickson was known for his horror films such as “Sinister,” “Deliver Us from Evil” and “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” so he’s going back to his roots with this film. Could that lead to an upset finish over “Elvis”? I’m not betting on it right now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened.