Jurassic Park Retrospective #7: Jurassic World Dominion

Some day! Some day! Some day! DOMINION! Come a time! Some day! Some day! Some day! DOMINION! Some say prayers; I say mine!- The Sisters of Mercy

(Disclaimer: The following review will be based primarily on the film’s extended edition. As much as I may dislike his vision, I still want to judge Trevorrow’s work based on how he conceived it rather than the truncated theatrical version that was forced on him by executives. Besides, I feel it would make for a more interesting review.)

Despite previously stating that he wanted other directors to take over for future franchise installments after Jurassic World, Colin Trevorrow announced in March 2018 that he would be returning to the director’s chair for the third Jurassic World film. He did so because he was inspired by J.A. Bayona’s work on Fallen Kingdom and felt the urge to finish what he had started. Additionally, he’d lost his directing job on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker due to disagreements with Lucasfilm, and he felt he’d had enough experience to create the perfect finale film.

Trevorrow spent much of 2019 writing the script with Pacific Rim Uprising co-writer Emily Carmichael. He announced that the story would involve cloning technology going open source (partly because he found the idea of Dr. Henry Wu being the only one who knew how to create dinosaurs after 30 years to be ridiculous) and that he would not include dinosaurs rampaging through cities, as he felt that the idea was unrealistic. Instead, he imagined a world where “a dinosaur might run out in front of your car on a foggy backroad or invade your campground looking for food. A world where dinosaur interaction is unlikely but possible, the same way we watch out for bears or sharks. We hunt animals, we traffic them, we herd them, we breed them, we invade their territory and pay the price, but we don’t go to war with them.”

Trevorrow and Carmichael also consulted with Claire Dearing’s actor, Bryce Dallas Howard, who had composed a list of suggestions for story elements to include in the final film during her time with the previous two films. Among her ideas that appeared in the final cut were Blue’s asexually produced baby, Beta, and an underground dinosaur market in Malta, which excited Trevorrow as an opportunity to include “a wretched hive of scum and villainy” (his words, not mine).

The decision to bring back the trio of main characters from the original trilogy (Drs. Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, and Ellie Sattler) was made because they wanted a sequel where Sattler was the main lead, much in the same way Malcolm was for The Lost World and Grant was for the third movie. Trevorrow recalls striking the right balance between screentime for the old protagonists and the new as the most challenging part of the writing process. He also seemed to have difficulty finding the right way to introduce the central conflict he wanted, a global ecological crisis created by genetic engineering. After consulting with several scientists and other screenwriters (including David Koepp, the screenwriter for the first two films), he eventually settled on mutant locusts created by Lewis Dodgson and the Biosyn corporation, returning after a four-film absence.

Most of the returning characters from the original trilogy and the new were played by their original actors (Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isabella Sermon, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, etc.). The only exception was Lewis Dodgson; his original actor, Cameron Thor, had resigned in disgrace from the industry after serving a prison sentence for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 2009, and thus was replaced by Campbell Scott.

Filming began with drone shots on Vancouver Island in Canada on February 19, 2020, with principal photography commencing elsewhere in British Columbia five days later, mainly in the city of Merritt (standing in for California’s Sierra Nevada region). Production seemed to be going smoothly as production shifted to England’s Pinewood Studios later that March. But then, as the great Bo Burnham might put it, “a funny thing happened” that would make the production of Dominion something that would make the cast and crew of Jurassic Park III laugh their asses off:

We have it totally under control! It’s going to be fine!

Filming immediately came to a screeching halt and would not resume until July, four months later, and only then after the actors and crew quarantined themselves in a London hotel for two weeks. Extensive safety protocols (outlined in a 109-page manual) were implemented to minimize exposure to the virus, with the cast and crew even sealing themselves in a “bubble” in the hotel. Despite this, filming was halted twice due to crew members testing positive; first in August (right as Neill, Goldblum, and Dern had started filming their scenes) and then in October. As a result, the scenes set on Malta had to be rewritten after the island nation was particularly hard hit by an outbreak, making filming difficult.

Several actors had their scenes cut or reduced due to quarantine restrictions. For instance, Daniella Pineda’s character, Dr. Zia Rodriguez, was originally supposed to be the one who meets Grant and Sattler at the Pennsylvania airport, but was replaced by another character played by Varada Sethu. Jake Johnson’s character from Jurassic World, Lowery Cruthers, was originally going to be Claire’s CIA contact, but Johnson ended up backing out due to the endless delays and restrictions, and Justice Smith’s character, Franklin Webb, filled the role instead. Finally, Andy Buckley, who played Zach and Gray’s father in Jurassic World, stated that he had signed on to return but was cut during rewrites.

Still, there were some silver linings. The filming delays allowed the visual effects team to get a head start on the dinosaur animations, and Trevorrow recalled that the four months spent with the cast and crew in their hotel “bubble” allowed him the opportunity to make his characters more “emotionally rich.”

By the time shooting wrapped on November 7, after almost 100 days, the film had cost around $265 million. While not quite as excessive as Fallen Kingdom’s eye-watering $432 million, this still makes it the 21st most expensive movie ever made. Post-production work was mainly conducted inside a converted barn behind Trevorrow’s house in the UK. Once the film was completed, almost exactly a year later on November 6, 2021, the full runtime was 2 hours and 40 minutes. Universal Studios forced him to cut fourteen minutes out of fear that audiences wouldn’t want to stick around that long while the pandemic was still raging. Several scenes, including a five-minute prologue set during the end of the Cretaceous, were thus left on the cutting room floor and would not be reinstated until Trevorrow was able to include the extended version on home video and streaming in summer 2022. Despite this, the theatrical version is still the longest film in the franchise thus far.

The theatrical version first premiered in Mexico City on May 23, 2022 (my 27th birthday!), followed by a wide release on June 10. It ended up grossing just over $1 billion, which, although not breaking any significant box office records like Jurassic Park or Jurassic World did, still placed it as the third-highest-grossing film of 2022, behind Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water.

As for critics, they were not impressed, with the film ultimately settling on a 29% Rotten Tomatoes score and a 38% Metacritic score. Perhaps Rolling Stone’s David Fear summarized the overall critical consensus best: “Dominion feels like a contractual obligation at best, and a D.O.A. attempt to wring one less drop out of an already depleted brand at worst.” The film didn’t change many critics’ opinions that the main characters were flat and uninteresting, and the story’s central conflict with the genetically engineered locusts caused the dinosaurs to become sidelined in their own franchise, which made Trevorrow’s apparent excitement over showing dinosaurs living alongside humans appear that much more confusing. The return of Drs. Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm proved divisive, with some critics calling them welcome additions and others dismissing their return as cheap nostalgia bait that fails to elevate the material in any meaningful way.

As for me, I view this movie as being the Rise of Skywalker of the franchise. And believe me, I mean that in the most insulting way possible. Dominion shares many of the same flaws that doomed the former: nostalgia bait, a retcon that rivals “Somehow, Palpatine returned” in its eye-rolling stupidity, and a half-baked story that undermines the World trilogy’s potential artistic merit. Dominion has enough good things going for it to make me like it a lot more than Rise of Skywalker, but it’s still easily the worst thing to come out of the franchise.

Before I tear into the film’s flaws, however, let me start with one thing that this film does right…

Technical Aspects and Music

Life on earth has existed for hundreds of millions of years... and dinosaurs were only a part of that... and we're an even smaller part of that... they really put us in perspective- Charlotte Lockwood

As with every other Jurassic Park, I have few complaints about the special effects. The CG for the animals is as well-crafted as ever, with lifelike textures and very well-done feathers for some newly featured species, such as Pyroraptor, Therizinosaurus, and Moros. For all its numerous paleontological inaccuracies (which we’ll get to, believe me), the prologue sequence is exceptionally well crafted, with its beautifully rendered herds of dozens of sauropods and ceratopsians complementing the prehistoric landscape.

This film also went a bit overboard with the animatronics. With eighteen animatronics of varying sizes being constructed, from the gnarly-looking Dimorphodons in the black market sequence to the Giganotosaurus model (one of the largest ever created), Dominion features more than any other Jurassic Park film. This overabundance of practical effects has divided opinions among the fan base, with some feeling that Trevorrow prioritized quantity over quality, thereby not giving the animatronics enough attention to make their movements as lifelike as possible. Even so, there are some good ones in there. The Giganotosaurus model helps its chase scene with the main characters feel as suspenseful as it should, and Trevorrow even decided to stay true to the Dilophosaurus’ portrayal in the original film by having them portrayed entirely by animatronics, which he somehow manages to pull off even in the claustrophobic hyperloop where they corner Dodsgson and kill him.

Michael Giacchino is still bringing his A-game to the score, especially to the thriller scenes like the synth-driven “Da Plane and Da Motorcycle,” which plays over the Atrociraptor chase. I don’t have that much else to say about it, though. It never gives us any themes as memorable as the ones John Williams gives us in the original, but it’s still well-done nonetheless.

The Story

Human beings have no more right to safety or liberty than any other creature on this planet. We not only lack dominion over nature, we're subordinate to it, and now here we are - with the opportunity to rewrite life at our fingertips that, just like nuclear power, nobody knew what to expect with genetic engineering, but they pressed the button and hoped for the best, just like you are doing now- Ian Malcolm

The story, on the other hand, is what really marks this film as the weakest in the franchise. Let me provide a plot summary and see if you can identify the first major issue with this movie.

We start with Claire Dearing and Owen Grady (Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt), who are, respectively, investigating illegal dinosaur breeding operations and sabotaging them ALF-style, and relocating stray dinosaurs. They are also sheltering Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the cloned human girl from Fallen Kingdom, who is actively being hunted by groups seeking to exploit her unique genetic makeup. They also get an unexpected next-door neighbor in the form of Blue the Velociraptor, who is living in an abandoned school bus with her asexually produced hatchling, whom Maisie dubs Beta. One day, Maisie, frustrated with her secluded existence, goes into town, where she is discovered by Rainn Delacourt (Scott Haze), a poacher and personal enemy of Owen, who captures her and Beta and sells them off to Biosyn. Owen and Claire, with the help of their old friends Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and Barry Sembene (Omar Sy), and the sympathetic black market pilot Kalya Watts (DeWanda Wise), track her to Malta and the Biosyn dinosaur preserve in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.

We are also reintroduced to Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), who is investigating a plague of giant locusts that is decimating most U.S. cropfields but leaving those grown with Biosyn seeds untouched. She takes a specimen to her old friend, Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and informs him that she and Mark Degler (her husband from Jurassic Park III) have divorced. The two decide to head to the Dolomites to extract some answers from the Biosyn facility. They receive help from Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who is now working for Biosyn and has secretly been plotting behind CEO Lewis Dodgson’s (Campbell Scott) back with his communications director, Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie). They also receive some unexpected help from Claire and Owen once they arrive, as well as a conscience-stricken Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong), who believes that Maisie and Beta’s DNA is the key to stopping the locusts and the ecological disaster they will cause if Dodgson’s plan is carried out.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Wait, Preston, you barely even mentioned dinosaurs at all during that entire plot summary! I thought this was a Jurassic Park film!” And there we have the first major problem of this movie: the dinosaurs are completely sidelined in their own franchise, almost to the point where you could write them out entirely and the main plot would be almost entirely unaffected. It’s enough to make one wonder where all of Colin Trevorrow’s enthusiasm for showing a world where humans and dinosaurs have to live alongside one another went if he seems this disinterested in actually showing humans and dinosaurs interacting aside from throwing them up as obstacles in the main characters’ quest to rescue their clone children and stop Dodgson’s genetically engineered eighth plague of Egypt.

It’s likely a symptom of the ultimate fatal flaw of the screenplay: it’s trying to juggle too many different themes at once (the ethics of human cloning, dinosaurs as endangered versus invasive species, corporate greed and hubris, the hidden dangers of game-changing scientific breakthroughs, etc.) and thus does a poor job of examining any of them. This problem certainly isn’t helped by the World trilogy’s continuing problem of wanting to get to the next dinosaur action setpiece as quickly as possible. The cloning subplot is the one that suffers the most, not only because of how little time the film allows itself to explore the complex morality of Maisie’s creation, but also because of a retcon so out of left field that it almost equals “Somehow, Palpatine returned” in how groan-inducing it is.

You may remember that Fallen Kingdom established that Benjamin Lockwood created Maisie as a replacement for his daughter, who died in a car crash around the time that he and John Hammond were getting the original Jurassic Park off the ground (a disgusted Hammond cut ties with Lockwood shortly after when he found out what Lockwood was up to). In this movie, however, Trevorrow throws that all out in favor of Charlotte Lockwood being a former coworker of Dr. Wu at Jurassic Park who decided to clone a daughter for herself as a solution to her infertility, and then scrubbed all traces of a fatal genetic condition she had contracted from her daughter’s DNA.

Granted, this retcon isn’t as much of an ass-pull as what the Rise of Skywalker writers did. Trevorrow confirmed in later interviews that Maisie’s Dominion backstory was what he had planned all along, which is somewhat helped by the fact that the former story was told to us by the villainous Eli Mills, who could definitely be considered an unreliable narrator given how he doesn’t even try to hide his contempt for Maisie.

What makes this a particularly frustrating backtrack, however, is that it directly contradicts the themes of Fallen Kingdom. There, human cloning is presented as playing God to an even more horrifying extent than dinosaur cloning, as Lockwood is presented as trying to conquer death itself by figuratively bringing his daughter back from the grave in a somewhat Frankensteinian manner, another element that fed into that film’s gothic horror aesthetic. But here, Dominion tries to put a more heartwarming spin on Maisie’s origin by claiming that she was simply the product of a loving mother. This positive spin is still undermined by the fact that human cloning is considered illegal in several US states (including Maisie’s home state of California) because of its ethical and moral implications, thus condemning Maisie to a life stuck in a hellish legal liminal space. Charlotte also comes across as selfish in her video log, not only for using her daughter as a guinea pig for her experiments to cure her genetic disorder, but also for not recording her work and taking it to the grave with her. It doesn’t really come across as any less ghoulish than what Benjamin was accused of doing.

Also, adding to the legalistic limbo aspect, were there no human rights organizations that Claire and Owen could turn to so that Maisie didn’t have to spend her whole life cooped up in Owen’s cabin? Surely just because Maisie is an illegal human clone doesn’t mean she isn’t entitled to human rights like the rest of us.

The Characters

**Dodgson:** You know, I thought you might be different, but you're just like everyone else. You see what you want to see. You imagine unchecked avarice. So, that's what you find. You envision what? An evil, unbound Prometheus? So that's what I am to you.
**Malcolm:** Prometheus got gored, and so will you, you rapacious rat bastard!

As with the other films in the World trilogy, characters aren’t this film’s strong suit. Some are dull and uninteresting, while others almost manage to elevate the movie beyond its middling screenplay. But which ones are which? Let’s examine them one by one to find out.

-Owen Grady is easily the most boring he’s ever been in these movies. What little personality and charisma he possessed in the previous films has been deemphasized in favor of accentuating his stoic and fearless side in the face of danger, both prehistoric and modern-day. As many other critics have noted, this robs most scenes of his of any sort of tension, since we’re assured that he’ll find a way out of his situations without a scratch. It gets especially ridiculous when he rescues Claire from a Dilophosaurus by simply walking up to it and grabbing it by the throat! Then he shouts at its pack to clear out, and they immediately listen. I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that Owen is enough of an “alpha male” to pull something like that off.

-Claire, on the other hand, is actually allowed to react like any normal human would given the various situations she finds herself in, making her much more interesting to watch. She even gets to be a part of the best dinosaur sequence in the whole film, where she has to hide in a scummy pond to avoid a blind Therizinosaurus with a hair-trigger temper. She still suffers from the writers not wanting to explore her or any other character with any depth (Franklin asking if Claire is saving dinosaurs from illegal breeders and poachers to absolve her guilt over what happened at Jurassic World is never followed up on) and from the writers forcing their main characters into James Bond/Jason Bourne-style action sequences that don’t feel at home in a Jurassic Park film (the knife fight with Soyona Santos and the rooftop Atrociraptor chase being the most egregious examples).

-I’ve already gone over many of the problems with Maisie’s subplot, so I won’t belabor the point. Isabella Sermon’s performance is really the only thing the “human clone” subplot has going for it, and even then, it’s often undermined by the script’s insistence on treating Maisie like just another stereotypical bratty teenager.

-Barry Sembene, Owen’s partner from the Jurassic World raptor program (played by a returning Omar Sy), is now working in Malta to shut down the dinosaur black market on the island and agrees to help him and Claire track down Maisie. He reveals that he tried to settle down and help his cousin run a cafe after Jurassic World, but decided his “dino-whisperer” skills were too valuable to waste now that cloning technology had gone open source. The biggest problem with his showing here is that it’s too short, as once Soyona Santos has been arrested and the black market shut down, he departs to go on his next mission. It’s almost enough to make you wish you were watching a movie starring Barry and his dinosaur rescue team going on other similar missions.

-Speaking of Soyona Santos (played by Dichen Lachman), she’s another character whose biggest problem is that her screentime is too short. Her role is as the liaison between Biosyn and the Malta black market, who has a trained pack of Atrociraptors at her beck and call, and dresses and speaks like a James Bond villainess. Despite my quibbles with the way the action scenes on Malta are structured, Santos fits like a glove in the role she’s given, being effortlessly calm and unflappable even when her plans are going belly-up. She would return as one of the main antagonists of the animated Chaos Theory series, which would expand on her character and her raptor pack. However, here she’s an underdeveloped but still fascinating villain.

-Lewis Dodgson, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired as a villain. He’s easily the most evil human villain of the franchise so far, having hatched a plot to destroy all the crops not grown with Biosyn seed with his genetically-engineered giant locusts and thus corner the market on the global food supply, not caring about the inevitable famines this would cause. The problem is that he’s also the most boring. He has none of Dennis Nedry’s personality or Eli Mills’ imposing presence. Indeed, despite his aforementioned evil plan and his willingness to throw our heroes to the lions (or, in this case, Dimetrodons) to save his reputation, he comes across as far too meek and submissive to register as a threat.

This isn’t helped by some massively idiotic decisions he makes, especially when he burns the locusts in his lab to get rid of the evidence without sedating them first, thus causing them to break out and start a massive forest fire in the sanctuary. Nor is it helped by what reads to me like a very disinterested performance from Campbell Scott, which made it feel like the actor would much rather be anywhere else right now (even the breakdown he has after the burning locust breakout feels half-assed).

The only positive thing I can say about Dodgson as he appears in this film is that his getting devoured by the dilophosaurs in the hyperloop was very poetic, given that it was the same way his protege Dennis Nedry died in the original film, but even that is somewhat undermined by Dodgson asking “What’s your story?” to the dilos right before they splatter him with venom, which leaves me confused as to what he was trying to accomplish by conversing with his predators.

-The conclusion to Dr. Henry Wu’s character arc really does not stick the landing. The film tries to present him as having repented for his actions in the previous films by using Maisie and Beta’s DNA to manufacture a pathogen that will kill off Dodgson’s super-locusts. This redemption arc feels unearned, however, as Wu was the person who made the Indominus and Indoraptor into the deadly killing machines they turned out to be. Not to mention that, if you consider Camp Cretaceous canon, then he left the Nublar Six stranded in the ruins of Jurassic World and didn’t bother to tell anyone they were there. It makes his heroic framing in the final scenes feel tone-deaf at best. I’m not saying a dinosaur should have eaten him; I just think it would have made more narrative sense for him to serve some jail time at the very least.

-Ramsay Cole, Dodgson’s understudy, is interesting in that he shares his boss’s social awkwardness but not his lack of empathy. He seems just as vaguely sinister as Dodgson when we first meet him, only to reveal later on that he’s actually a mole working to bring down Dodgson’s operation from the inside. Like all of the other original characters in the film, he’s somewhat let down by how thinly written he is in the script, with Mamoudu Athie’s acting doing most of the heavy lifting in adding depth to the character. His presence also further undermines what little menace Dodgson possesses, given that he doesn’t figure out that Cole is the mole he’s been chasing until Cole literally tells him to his face, and doesn’t seem concerned that Dodgson will seek revenge against him as he casually rejects the hapless CEO’s bribe to keep him quiet and walks away.

-Kayla Watts is this film’s winner for the “new character who deserves a much better movie” award. She’s introduced as an apathetic black market pilot who cares little for the moral deficiencies of whoever signs her paychecks. But that begins to change when she sees Maisie being transported on Malta and runs into Claire, whose desperation to find her adopted daughter is palpable, and decides to help her and Owen out, even at the risk of pissing off her number one customer, Lewis Dodgson.

Watts makes quite the impression with her dry sense of humor and natural coolness that feels way less forced than what the film tries to do with Owen. She also has excellent chemistry with the other characters, getting several of the film’s funniest lines (“Quick! Pull over!” “That’s not how planes work.”). She’s also the first explicitly queer main character in the franchise, as confirmed by DeWanda Wise and indicated by the line “I like redheads too,” and the possible romantic tension between her and Denise as her plane comes in for a landing at the Biosyn sanctuary (what did happen between them in Dubrovnik?).

The biggest problem with Kayla Watts is that her screentime is far too short for such a cool character. She deserved so much better than this film.

-Finally, there’s Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm, who are easily the best part of this film for me. Sure, the writers probably only brought them in as a cynical ploy to elevate their broken screenplay. However, they still have fantastic chemistry with one another, even after almost three decades apart. Sattler describing how Malcolm “slid into my DMs,” much to the confusion of a still machine-incompatible Grant, is a testament to the bond these actors still clearly share.

Out of the trio, Sattler is the primary driver of the plot, which Trevorrow thought was appropriate since Malcolm and Grant had already had films of their own as main characters (The Lost World and JPIII, respectively). She’s already hard at work investigating the Biosyn locusts when we first see her, and it’s she who convinces Grant to come along with her to the Dolomites to get to the bottom of it.

This allows the Dominion to settle one of the franchise’s biggest bugbears: Sattler and Grant’s relationship. When Sattler reveals her divorce from Mark, Sam Neil’s acting perfectly conveys the complicated emotions Grant is feeling upon hearing the news. While it’s clear that he’s giddy as a schoolboy upon hearing that his longtime crush is single again, it’s also tinged with a bit of sadness, given the cordial relationship Grant had with the Denglers. Nevertheless, when he and Sattler share a big damn kiss at the end, it’s hard not to feel like crying tears of joy at seeing them finally confirmed as an official couple.

It’s also rather heartwarming seeing Grant and Sattler form a sort of grandparent-type bond with Maisie as they help her escape from the Biosyn lab, especially since Sattler apparently knew Charlotte from her college years. Maisie’s first meeting with the two, as they stumble out of the locust holding area being mauled by spooked locusts, also provides one of the funniest lines of dialogue in the film (“We don’t work for Biosyn.” “I can tell.”).

Speaking of comedy, Malcolm, who's now working for Biosyn partly to support his kids and partly to expose their dirty secrets, is still as much of a rock star mathematician as he’s always been, still going on grandiose speeches about humanity’s lack of control over nature and still verbally devestating the villains with well-placed one liners (as demonstrated in the caption for the image above). He also demonstrates that his heroic side hasn’t dulled one bit when he hurls a flaming locust into the Giganotasaurus’ open maw to buy the group time to get to safety. The film also establishes a vitriolic yet heartwarming dynamic between him and Grant. Despite Grant’s clear annoyance with Malcolm’s idiosyncrasies, he still goes out of his way to save him from certain death at several points, and they clearly still have massive respect for one another.

It’s a shame that the movie that reunited them is rather poorly conceived overall. Even so, I’m still glad they’re here, as, in my opinion, it’s mainly the return of the heroes from the original trilogy that manages to save this film from being a total loss.

The Dinosaurs

Bigger…Why do they always have to go bigger?- Ian Malcolm

Usually, I would say, “Here’s where we talk about the real stars of the film!” As mentioned above, however, the dinosaurs got sidelined in this film so that Trevorrow could focus on genetically modified locusts instead, which means that many scenes featuring them could be written out entirely without impacting the story in any meaningful way. The continuing complaints about inaccurate designs weren’t helped by the prologue (cut out of the theatrical version but restored in the extended cut), which takes place at the end of the Cretaceous period, yet still features the same inaccuracies that we see in the cloned dinosaurs. Nor did it help matters when Prehistoric Planet, the most prestigious dinosaur documentary since Walking With Dinosaurs, was released a year after this movie (on my 27th birthday, incidentally) and featured much more accurate versions of several prehistoric animals featured in the World trilogy (Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Mosasaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, Therezinosaurus, Dreadnoughtus, Atrociraptor, Pachycephalosaurus, and Pyroraptor).

Nevertheless, the film still offers some well-done scenes featuring them, like Maisie helping to lead an Apatasaurus away from a lumber yard, the Atrociraptor chase through the streets of Malta, and Claire’s close encounter with the Therizinosaurus.

As always, I’ll provide a rundown of what this does right and wrong with its prehistoric animal designs and how they behave. I’ll focus mainly on the new species in this film, as most of the inaccuracies present in the species from previous films are still preserved (the only exception I know of is that Stegosaurus lost its droopy tail and regained its beak). As for the others:

-The film tries to pass off the locusts as a species that coexisted with the dinosaurs during the Cretaceous Period. Leaving aside that insects that large haven’t existed since the Carboniferous Period ended 300 million years ago, the grasshopper family (Acrididae, which includes locusts) only first appeared during the Paleocene epoch 59 million years ago, seven million years after dinosaurs went extinct. Indeed, many fans would have preferred it if the film had just kept them as modern-day locusts that had been genetically altered to grow beyond their normal biological limitations.

-As I noted above, the film introduces several feathered theropods into the franchise. Oviraptor looks closest to the real animal, although its design still features several subtle inaccuracies that nobody but the most dedicated paleontology nerds would notice (no pennaceous feathers on the arms, no rectrical feathers on the tail, and hairlike feathers instead of birdlike contour feathers). Moros (a diminutive ancestor of T. rex hailing from Cenomanian-era Utah) suffers from the same problem as Dilophosaurus in that it’s smaller than the real animal, which stood about chest-high compared to humans when fully grown (although it’s possible that the individual we see in the film is a mere juvenile).

-Therezinosaurus makes quite the showing in its franchise debut, being a rare herbivore that is framed as just as menacing and dangerous as the carnivores. The individual in the Biosyn sanctuary is blind, which causes it to lash out at anything that moves, including a deer peacefully munching on berries. Claire ends up having to hide underwater in a scummy pond to avoid a similar fate in a dinosaur sequence that eschews action for once and instead dwells in pure slow-burning suspense. I do have to dock points for its skull design, which is too blocky and square-shaped compared to the real animal, but seeing a herbivore just as vicious as Velociraptor and Rexy is a welcome change of pace.

-I’m less enthusiastic about Pyroraptor’s showing, however. It’s introduced stalking Owen and Kayla on the frozen lake where Kayla’s plane crashes, and diving into the water to pursue them. Leaving aside that, like every other dromeosaur in the franchise, it’s much larger than its real-life counterpart, its tropical parrot-like feather arrangement really is not suited to a dinosaur supposedly adapted to swimming in cold-water climates like the film implies. I also don’t care for the raptor’s monstrous lizard face. It feels like the filmmakers were trying too hard to sell the raptor as a villain.

-Soyona Santos’ trained Atrociraptor pack also suffers from the “raptors bigger than in real-life” problem, which is especially egregious here, given that the real animal was even smaller than Velociraptor (in fairness, though, they were initially supposed to be Deinonychus, which was about the size of Santos’ raptors in real life). Their chase scene, thrilling as it is, is also one of the more glaring instances of the “Super Persistent Predator” trope in the franchise. Any real animal would have tired out and given up on our heroes long before they reached the airstrip, no matter how well trained by unscrupulous criminals.

-Then there’s the main stars of the Battle at Big Rock short film: Allosaurus and Nasutoceratops. Like with Oviraptor, the differences between Nasutoceratops and its real-life counterpart are subtle enough that all but the most dedicated paleontology nerds wouldn’t notice (tails too long, heads too big, etc.). Allosaurus, on the other hand, fares a lot worse. It shares the same problem as other carnivores introduced in the World trilogy of possessing crocodilian-type scutes, and its skull is significantly narrower than that of the real animal. On the other hand, it’s one of only a few theropods in the franchise with non-pronated hands, which is a nice touch.

-Dreadnoughtus has a similar problem to the apatasaurs in that its design feels far too generic. Honestly, it might be even worse with the former, as the neck is much thinner than the real animal, and it’s generally larger than the real animal as well. Also, it’s shown lounging in a lake when it’s first introduced, which is an outdated idea about sauropod lifestyles that has long since been disproven.

-Dimetrodon (that Permian protomammalian reptile best known for constantly being mistaken for a dinosaur even though it isn’t) makes its franchise debut in the caves under the Biosyn sanctuary when Dodgson shuts down the hyperloop in the hopes that Grant, Sattler, and Maisie will stumble across their lair and get eaten (they escape with Malcolm and Cole’s help, however). The ensuing action scene is one of the better ones in the film. However, I have to dock points for the reptilian features the filmmakers added to the animal, like scaly skin and sprawling limbs, which, as an ancestor of modern-day mammals, it almost certainly didn’t possess. Indeed, the only thing remotely mammal-like about these Dimetrodons is their disturbingly humanlike roars.

-Another protomammalian reptile, Lystrosaurus, also makes its franchise debut in a Malta black market fighting ring. It manages to avoid many of the inaccuracies I pointed out with the Dimetrodons. However, it seems to possess a protoceratopsian frill that was almost certainly not present on the real animal. It almost looks like a Star Wars alien that wandered onto the wrong film set.

Much like the Therizinosaurus, the Lystrosaurus also subverts the “peaceful herbivore” trope, although played much more for black comedy in its case due to its diminutive stature. It’s introduced in the extended edition by decapitating an Oviraptor with a single bite, and later bites down on Delacourt’s arm (assisted by a juvenile Carnotaurus on the other arm) while Owen interrogates him on Maisie’s whereabouts, before a juvenile Baryonx comes along to deliver the coup de grâce.

-Speaking of non-dinosaurs, Quetzalcoatlus is introduced attacking Kayla’s plane when Dodgson turns off the air deterrent system keeping it in the valley, forcing Claire to bail out with the only parachute and Owen and Kayla to crash land on the frozen reservoir. It’s shockingly accurate to the real animal. However, its size has been exaggerated to allow it to take down a Lockheed C-130 cargo plane, which has a 132-foot wingspan (the real-life Quetzalcoatlus, on the other hand, only reached 36 feet).

-And finally, we come to this film’s chosen dinosaur antagonist: the Giganotosaurus. Good Lord, where do I start with the Giganotosaurus?

Perhaps the easiest place to start would be its design, which had many franchise fans groaning in dismay when it was first revealed. For reference, here’s what Giganotosaurus looked like in real life:

In Jurassic World Dominion, however, it looks like this:

I think the problems speak for themselves. Not only does it have the same “crocodile skin” problem as the other carnivores, but it also has a dorsal hump that would look more at home on its smaller carcharodontosaur cousins, like Acrocanthosaurus or Concavenator. Even though the film tries to claim that it’s a perfect replica of the real animal as it existed in the past, it looks even more cartoonishly evil than the genetic hybrids that preceded it. It’s almost like the concept artists were instructed to make it look more like a dragon than a dinosaur (especially during the groan-worthy scene where Malcolm shoves a burning locust into the back of its throat to cover the group’s escape, causing it to breathe fire like it’s frigging Smaug or something).

These poor design choices might (and I emphasize might) have been tolerable if the Giga had done anything to warrant being called a dinosaur “villain” on par with the I. rex or Indoraptor, but just like every other dinosaur in this godforsaken film, it never gets enough screentime to accomplish much. The worst thing it does is bully Rexy out of a cervine lunch (the deer killed by the Therizinosaurus I mentioned earlier) and attack our heroes at the observation tower (the only casualties of that attack are two locusts that were burning to death anyway, and it gives up on its human prey rather quickly after meeting sufficient resistence, like any normal predator would).

Speaking of bullying Rexy, apparently Trevorrow wasn’t content to have them come to blows due to the simple fact that they are large apex predators being forced into a space that isn’t big enough for both of them. No, because if the prologue is any indication, he thought that their rivalry should be an ancient one stemming from Rexy’s Cretaceous ancestor losing a battle with a Giga 65 million years ago. One doesn’t need to know that Giga went extinct thirty million years before T. rex and lived on a completely different continent to recognize how utterly batshit this idea sounds.

I would also probably be remiss if I didn’t mention the now infamous interview in which Trevorrow claimed that his interpretation of the Giga was the Joker of the dinosaur family that “just wants to watch the world burn,” and even went as far as to base its facial markings on the Batman villain’s famous makeup. This comment garnered widespread ridicule thanks to how ridiculous it sounded, and the dino’s lackluster showing in the final film didn’t help.

Indeed, many fans argue that the Therezinosaurus fits the Joker role much better, albeit more because its blindness makes it more prone to lash out than any inherently evil qualities it has. It even takes part in the final showdown between the Giga and Rexy, delivering the killing blow when Rexy shoves the Giga into its claws and impales it. It’s definitely one of the less thrilling bits of dinosaur action in the film, and the Giga arguably doing nothing to deserve such a gruesome fate doesn’t improve matters.

Final Thoughts

YES! FINALLY! IT’S FINISHED! THANK YOU, JESUS!

Sorry for the outburst. It’s just such a relief to finally get the Jurassic Park retrospective back on track after such a long hiatus. I’m sorry it took so long, but now that the end is in sight, let’s wrap this up.

Jurassic World Dominion gets a 4/10 from me (it’s closer to a 3 than a 5). It’s probably the only entry in the mainline franchise so far that I actively dislike. The story feels so overstuffed that it leaves several essential elements by the wayside (including the friggin’ dinosaurs, which is the last thing that should be happening in a Jurassic Park film), the retcon with Maisie’s backstory feels forced and not well thought out, the main heroes and the main villain are uninteresting and lack depth, and it features some of the worst innacuracies in the dinosaur designs that I’ve ever seen in these films. Honestly, the only thing keeping this film from getting a lower score is Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm, who remain just as lively and engaging now as they were when we first met them (also Kayla Watts and Soyona Santos, who radiate coolness despite their limited screentime). The extended edition definitely improves on some of these issues, but it still remains way too bloated and scattershot for its own good.

And that’s all I have to say about Jurassic World Dominion, but the retrospective isn’t over yet. There are still two more entries I wish to tackle: the animated series Camp Cretaceous and Chaos Theory. I’m not planning to do an entry on Jurassic World Rebirth, though, because Lord knows this retrospective has dragged on long enough. I’ll probably do a shorter review on that one when I finally get around to seeing it.

I’m not sure when the Camp Cretaceous review will come out, because I’m currently also working on a second entry in my “1001 Animations” series, and I also would like to get started on my next “Cryptids of North America” article sooner rather than later. Still, now that I’ve finally gotten back in the groove, the Jurassic Park retrospective is going to be my number one priority for the time being. So stay tuned, fellow dino nerds!