Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

[The Joker]

Great to see Sam Neill and Laura Dern back as Alan Grant, and Ellie Sattler.

[thecolorsblend]

Wondered if Goldblum, Neil and Dern would ever come back. That might be enough to get me to see this thing, in fact.

[The Dark Knight]

I'd like to say I was excited about this, but I'm not. It's so far removed from the atmosphere of the first film which was a masterclass of less is more tension building. I don't see this as being anything remotely like Jurassic Park as I envision it. Nor do I like the creative decision of doing a time jump back to definitively show what happened back in the time of the dinosaurs with their battles. That's a step too far - we should only be dealing with fossils and having modern day conjecture. Millions of years in the past should be an idea, not a documentary.

[The Joker]

Honestly, I unironically wish the JP3 Spinosaurus would at least get a cameo in this (I'm aware of JP3 Spino appearing in the "JW Camp Cretaceous" series, but come on, a JW movie appearance would be a little more pleasing). Hell, even Biosyn and Lewis Dodgson are returning for Dominion.

Evidently, there are plans to continue to franchise past Dominion. Given that the Jurassic World trilogy has been more or less squarely set in a legacy franchise territory, I would assume the idea to break some sort of new ground is there. Just as long as they don't go back to that "half-human, half-raptor military soldiers" idea from back in the day that actually got as far as concept art and models. That notion was cringe, and has aged like milk. I'll take the amalgamation of dinos with random assortment of animal traits over that any day.

[The Dark Knight]

I was standing on the corner, just me and Yoko Ono, waiting for Jerry to land. And up comes a 30 second Dominon TV spot. I heard a couple of dialogue excerpts that turned me right off harder than the excessively poor CGI.

"Blue had a baby. That's impossible." The hijackers of our entertainment no doubt see this from a transsexual point of view. Taking pre existing Jurassic Park themes to ram home their fantasy of wanting the unnatural to be natural and accepted as a mainstream norm. Climate change hoax propaganda can also be read in to the "we're on the verge of extinction" line. The subtext here alone means I'm avoiding Dominion like the plague.

I then found the black woman in the film is openly bisexual - with Colon Treverrow saying "we've had the opportunity to hopefully make someone that young girls are going to be dressing up as at Halloween for years to come." Let young girls be young girls, Colon. Keep sexuality out of their lives, it's unnecessary and simply indoctrination.

I also found this, which I'll simply post verbatim:

Emily Carmichael, a co-screenwriter on the film, then shares more of the film's woke intentions.

And all the women got their chance to shine. "There's a moment where Ellie has to grab [Chris Pratt's] Owen and pull him up, so it's her saving him," Carmichael says. "I was standing next to Bryce by the monitor, and she nudged me and said, 'Let's normalize seeing this on screen.' And I was like, 'Bryce, you're looking at the future, and I see it with you.'"

The franchise also lost sight that these are ANIMALS. Instead, we have dinosaurs being divided into being heroes and villains. Colon even describes the new dinosaur as being like the Joker. This absurdity ain't for me, fam. Top Gun: Maverick shunned the toxic woke parasite that destroys all it touches and instead embraced feel good patriotism.

[Silver Nemesis]

The only Jurassic Park film I really like is the 1993 original. That one's a classic. I like how Spielberg teases the audience and delays the reveal of the dinosaurs. And when he does finally show us something he starts with the placid herbivores before gradually introducing us to the more dangerous species. It's a slow-burn tactic that inspires a sense of magic, wonder and anticipation in the viewer. The first film also addresses thought-provoking themes concerning the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering. Like most good science fiction, it's about something.

In contrast, the sequels are largely superficial cash grabs, and the special effects get progressively worse with each entry. None of them recaptures that sense of magic and wonder that the first film had. JP 2 and 3 are mildly entertaining, and I'm open to re-watching them when they're on television. But the Jurassic World flicks have left me cold since day one. The more nostalgia bait they cram in to connect those movies with Spielberg's original, the more they cheapen the 1993 film. So this'll be a hard pass for me. And I say that as someone who loves dinosaurs and kaiju films about dinosaurs.

[The Joker]

The JP films have always been rather hit-and-miss with me. Course, the 1993 original is a cinematic classic, and with this sort of premise involving Dinosaurs, you can only get shot out of the cannon once, but unlike with Spielberg and Jaws, I am not willing to say that the film was a vast improvement over the Michael Crichton book. A great adaptation, but not an enhancement (and hell I still wonder what a early '90s James Cameron JP would have been like). Course one has to recognize that some changes from book-to-film were necessitated by adapting it for a movie, but after reading the book (to which I didn't until after seeing the movie) they still bother me to some degree.

With the Lost World:JP2, perhaps I made the mistake in reading the book prior to seeing the movie, cause I certainly felt like I was the only one walking out the theater that day, gravely disappointed by what I had just seen. Not only by the changes from the book (the whole "Red Queen Theory" being noticeably absent), but by even Spielberg's directorial efforts. I mean, I know he was Mr. "I don't do sequels" up until that point, but it literally felt like he had simply lost interest in the project at some point during production, and as a consequence, the film meanders around a bit too much, and characters comically evoked as downright moronic (like walking around a island forest screaming out for help because you're being attacked by dinosaurs, but the nearest guy next to you can't even hear you cause he chose to walk around with headphones ... on a island full of dinosaurs).

So no, that movie didn't have much replay value for me as a kid.

With JP3, I had no expectations. None. No book to compare it to, nothing. So I went into that one without really any enthusiasm really, and ended up enjoying it more than Spielberg's "The Lost World", mainly because it was, unapologetically, a spectacle romp with dinosaurs. Nothing more, and nothing less. Hard to really hate something that's entertaining, and that self aware. I know some fans were bothered by the Spino killing a TRex, but eh, I didn't lose any sleep over it.

Long wait for a JP4, and with JW, it was more or less in the same vein with JP3, only with a lot more callbacks and nods to JP1. So yeah, the nostalgic dial was turned up to 11, but it was 2015. Between JW and "Star Wars The Force Awakens", the nostalgia feels were definitely being exploited.

JW Fallen Kingdom? Eh. Didn't like it as much as JW, but it was ok. Kinda one of those movies where I tend to like scenes, but certainly not the entire film itself. Actually, as much as JW started leaning into outright cartoon land, "Fallen Kingdom" really just went all in by having dinos going all Merrie Melodies (with one nearly breaking the 4th wall and grinning at the audience following just having fooled a human in getting close enough to have half his arm bitten off, followed by the rest shortly thereafter).

As a side note, I couldn't help but wonder if Adam Wingard had seen "Fallen Kingdom", and wanted Godzilla to do the same in "Godzilla vs. Kong". Since we see Godzilla grinning after he stops Kong cold from hopping around building to building in Hong Kong after getting blasted by the G man's radioactive ray/breath. Supposedly, Toho had a policy that Godzilla cannot emote like that, but somehow Wingard got away with it. I believe he speaks about this on the GvK commentary track, BTW.

With JW Dominion, outside of knowing that the nostalgic buttons are going to be pressed even more so than JW, I don't have any expectations whatsoever, and I've learned over the years that the best way to view these movies.

One of the underlying and continual themes with the JP films, that seem to carry over (in various degrees) from film-to-film, and to which was a focal point in the Michael Crichton novels, is the question of, "just how far should science go?" Not only with the dinosaurs themselves, but with the notion and motives behind concerning that of human cloning. Which was explored in "Fallen Kingdom". 

Crichton, to his credit, wasn't simply a "believe the science." type of guy.

He questioned it.

[The Dark Knight]

The only Jurassic Park film I really like is the 1993 original. That one's a classic. I like how Spielberg teases the audience and delays the reveal of the dinosaurs. And when he does finally show us something he starts with the placid herbivores before gradually introducing us to the more dangerous species. It's a slow-burn tactic that inspires a sense of magic, wonder and anticipation in the viewer. The first film also addresses thought-provoking themes concerning the ethics of cloning and genetic engineering. Like most good science fiction, it's about something.

In contrast, the sequels are largely superficial cash grabs, and the special effects get progressively worse with each entry. None of them recaptures that sense of magic and wonder that the first film had. JP 2 and 3 are mildly entertaining, and I'm open to re-watching them when they're on television. But the Jurassic World flicks have left me cold since day one. The more nostalgia bait they cram in to connect those movies with Spielberg's original, the more they cheapen the 1993 film. So this'll be a hard pass for me. And I say that as someone who loves dinosaurs and kaiju films about dinosaurs.

Atmospherically, the only film that feels like it belongs to the world of the original is the first sequel, which not surprisingly featured the creative talents of Spielberg and Williams. That's where the series ends for me. It has a fair share of memorable set pieces (the trailer falling from the cliff, the long grass, making compys a credible threat, etc). It also makes all subsequent sequels unnecessary given it already touched upon most, if not all, of the narrative decisions of the JW series - namely dinosaurs making it to the mainland, going on a rescue mission, or an elderly man living in a mansion. And any new elements were silly, namely the trained raptors. Coming straight after the original, The Lost World had fresh connective tissue such as Lex, Tim, Hammond, the fallout from Nublar and the introduction of Sorna. A sequel could be justified with that material. Stretching the series out to six films created repetition and a lack of care in replicating the required atmosphere.

[The Joker]

Still haven't had a chance to check out "JW Dominion" due to a bunch of stuff going on in my life as of late (quick and unexpected death of someone I've known since I was 17, job stuff .. getting a good raise next month. Yay! Gonna need it with this economy. That's patently clear, ect ect), but seeing "JW Dominion" stomp a overestimated "Lightyear" starring a Not-Tim Allen turbo dunce, is both amusing and satisfying at the same time.

https://deadline.com/2022/06/lightyear-box-office-2-1235047729/amp/

[The Laughing Fish]

Sorry to hear about your friend, Joker, my condolences.

I don't mind Jurassic Park, but I'm not too into the franchise. The original Spielberg film was good, but I was always surprised it spawned so many sequels. They kinda seemed derivative.

The first Jurassic World was okay for what it was, but I don't think I'll see it again. I might see the rest of this new trilogy at some point in the future, for curiosity's sake.