'Jurassic World: Dominion' movie review: An underwhelming end to the dinosaurs

Capping off a trilogy of wasted potential, Jurassic World: Dominion never quite manages to make anything of consequence of its characters, or its dinosaurs

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill

Score: 2 stars

The whole of the Jurassic World trilogy can basically be described by Ian Malcolm's iconic sermon to John Hammond in the original Jurassic Park: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should." It's kind of sad, though, since Jurassic World: Dominion turns not only him, but most of the characters into a shadow of their former selves, never mind the dinosaurs.

It's been seven years since Jurassic World brought dinosaurs back into the big screen in a messy spectacle that tried desperately to balance the ideas the original film had -- the temptation and dangers of genetic engineering, and corporate greed, which were represented by John Hammond and Donald Gennaro. Lacking, however, the charisma of Hammond and the foolishness of Gennaro, Jurassic World and its sequel, Fallen Kingdom, tried to do it with a fresh set of characters, to rather underwhelming effect.

"Underwhelming" is the most accurate term that can describe the trilogy now that Dominion effectively closes the book on the dinosaurs. For better or worse, it offers a sort of finality on the grand scale of things that Jurassic Park III did not, but does so by fumbling on nearly every step that Jurassic Park took in telling a story and being a cautionary tale.

Taking off four years after Fallen Kingdom, Dominion wastes no time in playing catch-up in the form of a five-minute exposition dump for the viewers who have probably forgotten everything that happened before, while setting up plot threads that show potential, such as dinosaur black marketing or corporate profiteering, which prove to be ultimately sidelined as the plot lives and dies on the back of...environmental concern-espionage and a two-pronged rescue mission.

The plot, as it were, follows a rescue mission involving Maisie Lockwood and Blue's child, Beta. Their stories are strangely intertwined despite being two entirely species, and it forms the most compelling 'hook' as it were, as it explores Maisie's constant questioning of her own identity and finding a path to understanding who she is. On the other hand is a 'B' plot featuring Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, who reunite after so long with Ian Malcolm for a mundane espionage plot in an effort to expose the evils behind Biosyn, led by Lewis Dodgson, a sort of Steve Jobs-Tim Cook hybrid in appearance and mannerisms, who looks calm and intelligent on the surface but is an absolute fool in reality.

If you've not inferred it yet, the film leans heavily on nostalgia bait to drive the plot, which comes at the unfortunate expense of doing anything original or interesting. The espionage plot is just a vehicle to bring three classic characters together while doing nothing substantial with what made them tick, and the rescue mission is the only thing that amounts to anything in the midst of ever-growing dinosaurs and other creatures of prehistoric descent. It turns every party in this chaos into a caricature, a mere shadow -- relegating them to plot points, and borderline idiots in the case of Alan and Ellie, rather than treating them as people.

Speaking of dinosaurs and other creatures, the film rather follows faithfully in Jurassic Park's subtext of using them as a vehicle to speak about the dangers of unchecked genetic engineering. It echoes the path the original film took, though using a different threat this time rather than dinosaurs, it ultimately proves futile as it turns the danger into a hero, while relegating the dinosaurs to pose surface-level questions about climate and the state of the planet, but never veers into the difficult topics surrounding it. Granted, it's an action film, but having the pretence of trying to be something it's clearly not kind of ruins the atmosphere it has going for it.

That being said, it somehow does manage to cap an actual Jurassic World trilogy (despite quite a few threads left lying about at the end), something the original Jurassic Park films rather didn't succeed at. The advantages to a story arc going straight are presented well here, and while it never manages to reach the heights of Jurassic Park, or even be compelling in its own right, it will hopefully put to rest the dinosaurs on the big screen.