Jurassic World: Dominion Is a New Low for a Never-Ending Franchise

The latest Jurassic Park sequel is exhausted and running on fumes. Big, loud, annoying fumes.

Still from Jurassic World: Dominion. (Universal Pictures)


Early in Jurassic World: Dominion, there’s a series of mini-disasters indicating how, now that dinosaurs are roaming the Earth, we all automatically become prey. A fishing boat is toppled by a gigantic undersea beast, a little girl is chased down a beach by baby dinosaur predators, and a dove released at a wedding gets snatched out of the air by a swooping pterodactyl.

If that doesn’t sound too bad, considering what the worldwide carnage would be if you had any imagination whatsoever, it’s because the movie’s setting up for the lugubrious ending, when horses are running the Western plains with Parasaurolophuses and elephants are roaming congenially with Triceratops, just one big Peaceable Kingdom. See, all our environmental catastrophes are easily solved if we develop a bit more interspecies tolerance and eradicate one bad corporation, conveniently named BioSyn Genetics, which is pronounced “bio-sin.”

Jurassic World: Dominion is a terrible movie, hacked up by editor Mark Sanger, who frequently seems to lose interest halfway through action scenes, and featuring the most sickeningly oversweetened film score I’ve ever heard, courtesy of composer Michael Giacchino. The film’s so badly made, it’s inspired critics to wax nostalgic for the supposed genius of Steven Spielberg’s first Jurassic Park back in 1993. Remember the glass of water that shook when the Tyrannosaurus rex was coming? Yeah, those were the days, when filmmaking giants walked the earth alongside their CGI dinosaurs.

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