Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Who, then, would be roasting procompsognathus meat in a dodgy underground market when multibillionaire foodies would pay unthinkable sums for live specimens to be prepared fresh by their personal kitchen staff? Who would pit the rarest animals on Earth against one another in blood sports for mere betting-action money when there’s no limit to what industrial giants would pay for the same creatures? This is what the last movie was about, so the questions matter. Worse still, by the end the movie appears to lose track of the entire issue. The whole weight of the world’s industrial appetite for genetic power is laid on a single dirty corporation and a single unscrupulous CEO, as if the chaotic downfall of one more misbegotten enterprise could somehow usher in a new age of global peace and almost eschatological harmony — legit “lion lying down with the lamb” territory, as if taking us from Genesis to the Apocalypse in two and a half hours.

The one thing Dominion has going for it is the mark of all true legacyquels, at least as the term was originally defined: beloved, aging stars reprising classic roles. With the return of Sam Neill as Alan Grant and Laura Dern as Ellie Sattler, Dominion reunites for the first time all three principals of the original Jurassic Park, along with one other original cast member, BD Wong, whose geneticist Henry Wu became a semi-villainous figure in the first two Jurassic World movies. Another character from the original film, bio-espionage agent Dr. Lewis Dodgson (as in “We’ve got Dodgson here!…See, no one cares”), is also back in a bigger role, albeit recast with Campbell Scott replacing convicted sex offender Cameron Thor. (Dodgson had only one scene in Jurassic Park, but he was a bigger deal in the two Crichton novels.) Of course Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are back as, respectively, velociraptor trainer Owen Grady and former Jurassic World park manager Claire Dearing. I don’t even know where to start with them, so let me go back to the returning players for a moment. I said in my Top Gun: Maverick review that if a legacyquel “is pretty good, it will be like a reunion with old friends.” Dominion is not pretty good, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy catching up with Alan, Ellie, and Malcolm. Dern, especially, is a welcome presence, for several reasons: because she’s so good; because she only had a cameo in Jurassic Park III; and because women in older middle age just don’t get cast in action movies the way older men do.

Ellie also feels like a real character, which can’t be said for Claire. Claire started off as a corporate ice queen who was bad with kids and saw dinosaurs only as assets. By the second film, she was an environmental crusader for dinosaur rights. Now she’s a guerrilla zealot liberating dinosaurs from shady operators and also a mama bear living in the woods helping to raise a special teenaged girl named Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), whose genetic history makes her important to powerful people for mysterious reasons that turn out to be one of the stupidest conceits in this deeply stupid film. (But not the stupidest, because the same people also want a baby raptor for reasons that make even less sense. And all of this relates to a malicious corporate scheme that a 12-year-old would realize an 8-year-old would see through, and a ridiculously labyrinthine whistleblower plot to blow a whistle that could be more easily blown any number of ways.)

Two actors playing brand-new supporting characters make a bigger impression than any of the non-legacy characters. Mamoudou Athie plays Ramsay Cole, a slyly polished corporate functionary playing a much longer game than he ought to be. DeWanda Wise is Kayla Watts, a freelance ex-military pilot who sticks her neck out for nobody until, in the time-honored tradition, she does. If you aren’t paying attention to self-congratulatory publicity around the film, you could be excused for not realizing that Wise’s character is meant to be bisexual, an allegedly brave, important character choice reduced, so far as I can tell, to a fleeting remark about “liking redheads.”

Sometimes-energetic action sequences — at times verging on Jason Bourne or Ethan Hunt territory, but with raptors or larger predators — are undermined by cheap manipulation of variables empowering the dinosaurs to do exactly as much as the heroes can withstand, and no more. Owen’s restraining hand gesture, which we bought in the first Jurassic World because it invoked lifelong training and bonding with a particular set of raptors, is now a magical flourish that throws all dinosaurs for a loop. A lengthy, harrowing sequence with two pairs of military-trained raptors chasing Owen on a motorcycle and Claire and Kayla in a truck loses steam once it becomes clear that the raptors never will. (Lose steam, that is; unlike real predators, they run at top speed as long as the scene goes on, never tiring, never slowing down.) Conversely, a ridiculous sequence pitting all the heroes together against the franchise’s latest big bad — a more formidable cousin of the T-rex called Giganotosaurus — is almost comical in how poorly Giganotosaurus performs and how brazenly the humans thwart it. The 1993 film’s T-rex would have eaten them all halfway through the scene.

Dominion is directed by Colin Trevorrow, who also directed the 2015 Jurassic World and co-wrote all three films. The middle movie, Fallen Kingdom, was directed by J.A. Bayona, a proficient artist who at least invested his installment with striking images and evocations of Spielbergian tension and excitement: achievements Trevorrow can’t begin to touch. Even the better action sequences only remind us how firmly Ethan Hunt owns this territory now. I spent most of Dominion wishing I was watching other movies: the original Jurassic Park; Top Gun: Maverick; next year’s Mission: Impossible installment. The world of late 20th-century Hollywood action franchises may not be quite extinct, but, absent Cruise (who will be 60 in July) and perhaps George Miller (who will be nearly 80 if he completes his Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa on schedule), filmmakers capable of carrying on the tradition seem to be.