Jurassic World: Dominion Broke My Goddamn Heart ... and Not In a Good Way
I’m a fan of dinosaurs, and I’m a fan of the Jurassic Park franchise. That’s not something I say lightly -- I may enjoy a lot of different franchises, products, or even things, but I’m always pretty reticent to toss around that (other) f-word.
Words matter. At least, most of the time.
The first Jurassic I could see in theaters was Jurassic Park III, and that’s maybe why I enjoy this much-derided sequel more than most. It may also have informed my appreciation for these movies -- with all of its script and structure problems (III was famously written as they were shooting it!), this installment seems to eschew story for eye-popping dino set pieces.
And if you’ve read even just one of my blogs, you know what a slut I am for premise.
Premise is the guiding light, the clarifying clarion, and the foundation for which great experiences are built. Premise. Is. Everything.
Every time I step into a Jurassic flick, the premise is simple: gimme that glorious monster dinosaur action. I’m here for the dinosaurs. I want to see them do cool shit. I want to cheer for them. I want to cry for them.
So yes, I’m a fan of the Jurassic franchise. While I hate 3D, I still got hyped on the 2013 re-release of the original. It was the first time I visited the original park in theaters. I even made a Halloween costume out of it. (To this day, I stand by and will defend to my death the ingenuity of this costume.)
Being a fan, I welcomed the new franchise with open arms and was gobsmacked to discover the lengths Trevorrow had gone to develop the dinosaurs -- again, the single most important thing in these movies! -- as characters that I could actually empathize with. They weren’t just movie monsters terrorizing humans, but movie monsters with motivations and conflicts and arcs.
I was as mystified as anyone, watching the horror of the classic velociraptor slowly morph into an action hero. But I’ll be damned if I don’t stand up and cheer every time Blue swoops in to save the day or feel heartbroken when she aligns with the Indominous Rex.
I can feel these things because dinosaurs are more important than humans in the Jurassic World era. And yes, that seems to come at the expense of human character development -- but again, I came for the dinosaurs in the first place, so I don’t care if Chris Pratt ranks somewhere below a caricature of an action hero. I’m too busy marveling at that beautiful chaos-incarnate kaiju, the Indominous Rex.
I came for the dinosaurs. I love the dinosaurs. And Trevorrow surprised me with new versions of these dinosaurs that I fell in love with over the years -- deeply -- across both Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Then we get to Dominion.
And with a movie so jam-packed with dinosaurs, one can’t help but wonder: are there going to be any dinosaurs in this dinosaur movie? You know, any dinosaurs that I’m going to care about? Any dinosaurs that rise above featured background extra status?
Tl;dr: no. None, whatsoever.
Jurassic World is brilliant in its meta take on commercialism and sequels, mashing it up with the inevitability of the chaos embedded deep within the Jurassic DNA of Michael Crichton’s first novel. Dr. Wu states it plainly, “Bigger. Scarier. Um, ‘cooler’ I believe is the word that you used in your memo.” It couldn’t have been any more perfect if he turned to the camera, threw the Fonzie thumbs, and said, “Eeeeeh!”
And just like the Hollywood sequels that become monstrous, bloated, half-baked mutant shit shows, the Indominous Rex breaks free and wreaks predictable, chaotic havoc.
In the final act, Gray starts counting and then proclaims, “We need more teeth” -- yet another subtle dig at sequel culture. But this time, in the context of Jurassic World, the only thing that could right such an ungodly, Indominous wrong was the hero of the first film -- because nothing -- nothing! -- will ever be better than the original. Natch.
There’s so much more to be said about the meta genius of Jurassic World, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. When we turn to Dominion, we see the “more teeth” narrative at work -- but instead of more Rexy (there’s less Rexy, despite the added buck and doe from JP2), we get more humans. Grant, Sattler, Malcolm -- no, we need more teeth, dammit! Here’s Dodgson, Wu, Franklin, Zia! Barry’s back, Kayla’s cool, and Ramsay Cole seems essential -- wait, who’s Barry, again?! Oh yeah, Owen, Claire, and Maisie are all here, too, I guess, not really sure why, since humans have never been any good in the Jurassic World movies!
(I will caveat this statement: I think the boys in JW1 are incredibly effective. I think Franklin and Zia in JW2 are simple but enjoyable characters. I think Claire -- as an arc across the first two films -- is interesting; and Wu, as an arc across JP and JW-JW3 is also clever. All of this pales in comparison to dinosaurs, though. Gimme more of that sweet, sweet, Jurassic action, baby.)
So in Dominion, the “more teeth” script is flipped in favor of the humans. Yes, if we count them, there are a lot of dinosaurs in Dominion, but none of them are really elevated beyond that featured extra trope.
Here’s a chaotic example of why pivoting to human stakes doesn’t make sense and another example of how genius Jurassic World is. In Jurassic Park, chaos was introduced by human villainy (Nedry) and then amplified by the arrogance of man trying to control nature. In Jurassic World, that necessary human element was eliminated by using the Indominous Rex as the ultimate vector of chaos -- a scheming, conniving, psychopathic movie monster raging against the arrogance of man (or woman, in this case).
While there are other minor human villains in JW, none of them matter -- Indominous is the literal big bad.
The best use of humans in Jurassic World (aside from the boys, of course) is the brilliantly simple contrast between Owen and Claire, all in service of that “arrogance of man over nature” narrative. (Best use of humans -- not the best human characters.) On the one hand, Claire views the dinosaurs as assets, mere numbers on a spreadsheet, and money-making attractions for her park (commercialism, sequels, et al.). On the other hand, Owen recognizes them as living, breathing animals that need to eat, hunt, and, well, you know. You don’t rule over animals -- you have to find a way to live alongside and in harmony with them. This has always been a core theme of the Jurassic franchise, but since our main characters are dinosaurs this go around, it’s easy to forgive how on-the-nose Owen and Claire are with this reminder.
More importantly, this simple premise is the narrative structure that shapes all three Jurassic World movies ...
ACT 1: Arrogant woman uses dinosaurs as theme park attractions, and everything goes to hell. (But she was “just doing her job!”)
ACT 2: Dinosaur island blows up, forcing the dinosaurs to invade the modern world. (B-plot: dinosaurs are fucking scary, yo!)
ACT 3: Arrogant woman must learn to live with the dinosaurs because the alternative is total chaos and destruction.
It’s simple, it’s poetic, and there was plenty of room in Dominion to tell a parallel story, using Giga and Rexy as the dinosaur mirror of Owen and Claire -- one wants to dominate the valley, seeing the other dinosaurs as mere playthings for its amusement and the other wants to actually live in harmony (or at least, in her place in the food chain/ecosystem!). It’s simple. It’s clean. It’s a shame it never happened.
But back to those genius dino-characters!
Like the plot of Jurassic World itself, the producers took the Indominous Rex, refined her, made her smarter, scarier, and delivered another horrifying dino monster movie villain with the Indoraptor. Every time this fucker is on screen, it’s fucking iconic -- the claw reaching out to flick Maisie’s hair; its game of play-dead with Wheatley; the rooftop moon shot; the upside-down (Dracula) invasion of Maisie’s bedroom immediately followed by that horrible claw creeping across her bed.
The demonic Indoraptor and the jaw-dropping cinematography and the writing and the direction all live in brilliant harmony to reveal the character of one of the greatest movie monsters of all time. So who cares if Eli Mills is twirling his mustache and Chris Pratt is only slightly more semi-substantial than the last flick? WE HAVE THE DINOSAURS IN THIS MOTHERFUCKING DINOSAUR MOVIE.
(And don’t get me started on the first half of Fallen Kingdom, where the island erupts -- I think we can all stipulate that this was dino-movie perfection, regardless of what anyone thinks of the back half of the flick.)
Friends ... I love these movies. I love being in awe of these cinematic monster masterpieces. It stirs something deep and profound in me. When I’m not writing or working, and I have absolutely nothing else to do with myself, I create illustrations that insert dinosaurs into scenarios where they don’t belong. Like Jaws, A Nightmare on Elm Street, or running across the detached saucer of the USS Enterprise, to name a few of my recent pieces.
So when I say that Dominion broke my heart, trust me when I say, yes, I’m sad. Like, really sad.
Trevorrow made me fall in love with dinosaurs -- as characters -- and then refused to give me any dinosaurs to love in Dominion. He filled the movie with poorly-written human characters and then had the audacity of literally winking at the camera during an embarrassing, weak-sauce climactic battle and proclaiming: “This isn’t about us. Humans. Not that you could tell because there’s nothing else happening on screen but stupid human drama.”
There’s plenty to critique about Dominion. For example, how the entire Malta act felt like a knock-off Mission Impossible action-adventure. (FWIW, I hate those movies -- they’re big, loud, and dumb.) And then there’s how JW1 and JW2 had tasteful nostalgic throwbacks without succumbing to the worst tropes of nostalgia cinema (see: Matrix: Resurrections and anything by JJ Abrams) ... and Dominion flipped the script once again by becoming a beat-for-beat retread of Jurassic Park, right up to Dodgson’s end mirroring Nedry’s.
This isn’t clever. This is boring. And worse, there are no dinosaurs to give a shit about.
ON THE PROLOGUE: There’s been a growing opinion that if the prologue had been included with the movie, the finale would have been dramatically improved. I can tell you that I intentionally (re) watched the prologue immediately before watching Dominion. Structurally, yes, it helped explain that this finale was a rematch between Giga and Rexy that was 65 million years in the making ... but it did nothing to fix the lack of empathy for any of these dinosaurs.
ON THOSE LOCUSTS: I actually loved this concept. It made perfect sense, aligned perfectly with the arrogance of man thread that runs through all of the movies, and is a brilliant callback to Biosyn’s (and Dodgson’s) airborne rabies fiasco at the very beginning of the original novel.
ON BIOSYN: I loved how Camp Cretaceous warmed us up for the bio-genetic-medical scifi stuff. I didn’t hate any of it. It would have made a great backdrop for a dino-centric flick.
ON THE ONLY TRULY MEMORABLE DINO MOMENT: I keep describing dinosaurs as “featured background extras” and the standout was the scythe-clawed Freddy Krueger-wannabe, Therizinosaurus. That whole sequence was fucking incredible and was exactly the kind of dino-monster-movie fun that was missing from everywhere else in this movie.
ON THE DINOSAUR CANTINA SCENE: I have to watch it again, but if we look at it in isolation, it’s an excellent concept. It brought to life the seedy underbelly of unchecked, rampant de-extinction. Too bad the rest of the flick didn’t follow in its footsteps.
ON THE DILOPHOSAURUS: Round 1 with Claire was genius and a hilarious subversion to how horrific Nedry’s finale was in Jurassic Park. Round 2 was tired, dull, uninspired, unnecessary, and cut the knees out of the first scene. Fuck off.
ON THE BEST PARTS OF THIS MOVIE: Like the prologue cut from the film, the best parts were the beautiful, sweeping cinematography of dinosaurs spreading across the world. Maisie telling the loggers how to help guide the Apatosaurs out of the work site (harmony!); Owen riding a horse with the herd of Parasaurolophus and then lassoing one of them (but like, why?); the denouements at the end with the trike walking with the elephants, et al.
I’ll eventually give it a second watch when it hits streaming in October ... but for now, Dominion is the worst Jurassic film I’ve seen, ranking so far below JP3 that it’s not even fair to mention JP3 in the same breath. Which is a goddamn heartbreaking shame because Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm deserved better.
Fucking Dodgson deserved better.
And you’re sure as shit the dinosaurs deserved better.
