Jurassic World: Dominion

Great individual scenes (the lake!) stuck together with very cheap glue full of cliché, homages to this (politically) hyper-correct time we are living in, frequent illogical behavior by the characters and dumb dialogs. All the same, this is a solid popcorn affair and pure fan service for lovers of the first Jurassic Park, but it’s worth a watch. It’s nice that the main powerhouse is made up of oldsters Sam Neill and Laura Dern and their hinted at love story from part one. Again this is about the classic struggle between evil corporation and mistakes made in the quest for profit by a miserable boss with the face of Tim Cook. This time round again, the story isn’t so much about dinosaurs as their clones, the genes of prehistoric locusts and good old whistleblowing. Dinos keep more to the sidelines, occasionally tripping up the main protagonists while they are trying to save the world from locusts and some sort of strange motivation driving them. A metaphor for wildlife protection (we have to act now, we should have done something...), but nothing else. In the end, it all boils down to quality, inventive action - the sequence on Malta is marvelous (will it be the new attraction in Universal Park?) - and who gets got by the T-Rex + who will help in the duel with the Giganotosaurus. The best thing here is Goldblum’s Malcolm who keeps on coming out with one-liners, going on and on about a dog that humped his leg so hard that he had blisters from it. P.S.: You made a promise to a dinosaur? (09/06/2022)

Well, they’ve killed Jurassic Park. And they've made caricatures of the original iconic characters, much like they did with most of the scenes that Spielberg gave the hallmark of something special, confident and immersive thirty years ago. The filler was at least entertaining, but even then I wondered a few times whether the filmmakers meant it seriously. Boring as hell, dumbly cynical twists and a clumsy environmental messages like from the monster movies of the 1950s. After this, I'm tempted to raise the far tighter and better edited and shot Extinction to 5* and the consciously, straightforwardly "campy" Jurassic Park 3 to 4*. Compared to this travesty, where Sam Neill is the only one who keeps his face, they are masterpieces. 40 % (19/07/2022)

While it looks promising in the beginning, in the end the third Jurassic World isn't much better than the second. If it weren't for Doctors Grant, Sattler and (especially) Malcolm, I probably wouldn't have cared about a single character, and yet the new heroes were so entertaining and promising in the first film of the trilogy. I guess the problem is that the filmmakers didn't know what to do with them next, they were all about releasing dinosaurs into civilization and didn't bother with the humans. I simply didn't have much fun, from the middle of the film onwards I raised my eyebrows more and more, hoping that at least Colin Trevorrow would entertain me with visual effects and action, but they weren't even that great (how is it possible that Jurassic Park and The Lost World still look fantastic, while here you see digital dinosaurs that don't move completely smoothly, and animatronic dinosaurs that look like better toys?), and the action or suspense scenes didn't exactly take my breath away either (for example, the clash between the humans and the giganotosaurus starts off great, or copying Spielberg, but ends up being utterly ridiculous), and I wasn't worried about anyone. No, not even the pond scene, which was pretty lame. Apart from Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, probably only Michael Giacchino didn't disappoint me... And I'd love to see the likeable DeWanda Wise in something better. (10/06/2022)

The return of the main characters from the first Jurassic Park was pleasing, as they are still likeable, enthusiastic scientists who love dinosaurs. Drawing the viewer into a world that dinosaurs are a living part of is cool. The movie gets off to a good start with the trafficker’s den in Malta and the long action scene that takes place there. Chases on rooftops and on a motorcycle in the streets, as we know them from Bourne and Bond movies, upgraded with velociraptors...why not?! But the rest of the film, in which we are only transported to a different reservation than in the first film, is a lumbering retread of what we have already seen, and it’s not very exciting, for that matter, with a lame Tim Cook-esque villain, logical crutches and nonsense unworthy of this film franchise. And only one fantastically shot scene that recalls Spielberg (the dive into the lake). And sadly, it is a short scene. Dominion is the weakest instalment of the whole franchise. (08/06/2022)

It's hard to understand how such an experienced creative team can produce such a dud from a substance as undoubtedly juicy as Jurassic World. Not even the old guard can help. Typically stodgy Neill and know-it-all Goldblum in the roles we ate up in the glorious first film, which incidentally is WAY better or at least the same as the xth sequel. Even the good old mechanic effects, of which there are plenty, were managed by Spielberg at least at the same level, but with better camera work and editing. The current CGI mess isn't even worth mentioning, and when Bryce Dallas is jumping from barrack to barrack like Bourne in Tangier it's clear that this attempt at frenetic live action, but with dinosaurs, isn't really going to be anything innovative. If that was all, it would still be bearable, at least to eat some popcorn, but the script was written by someone apparently on drugs and the fact that the whole confused, disjointed, incoherent dinosaur inferno lasts 150 minutes sends this megalomaniacal colossus down the drain. (19/07/2022)