Clawing its way back into our cinematic lives is the latest release and final episode in the trilogy, aptly called Jurassic World Dominion. It’s hard to believe we are around 29 years from when Steven Spielberg brought the Michael Crichton novel to life in 1993 with Jurassic Park. I have had the privilege of visiting the Universal movie theme park in Los Angeles several times where some of the original Dino-robots are part of the park’s tour ride. So after months of waiting for cinemas to open we can now provide you with a Jurassic World Dominion Movie Review.
We’ve come a long way from Spielberg using the ‘next evolution’ of robotics that gave him so many problems in the movie Jaws. Now with CGI that merges with reality, we don’t even have the plasticine stop-motion graphics that saw battles in the early Clash of the Titans. But have we come too far? This seems to be the tone of the critics. They comment on a lack of engaging acting, the reliance on the shock and pizazz of dino characters that would never make it to a real studio lot and ask if we’ve forgotten how to tell the story.
While Jurassic World Dominion is no Charles Dicken’s novel, it wasn’t meant to be. As much a game of gridiron can have 11min of ball-handling play and be called a game, the latest action-adventure movie from Director, Colin Trevorrow does it want it promises and sets us up for shock value along with some fun from the original characters in Laura Linney, Ellie Sattler, Sam Neill’s, Alan Grant and of course the chaos master of Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm.
Our magnetism to the story of the dinosaurs has always been the recipe of movie magic. Take our intrigue with a dose of care and occasionally douse it in fire and fear to create an arc of curiosity leading to panic and then deliverance. And isn’t it amazing that we know we’re walking into that successful cycle from the early slow and pacing trepidation of suspense building through to the “We’re gunna die” falling off the cliff ten minutes from the end conclusion. We kinda know it could get ‘bad’. How, we don’t know, but yes, someone will be lunch and many will run faster than they have before, even in heels and ultimately a burst of inspiration will form an escape and hopefully a sequel.
This third movie wraps up the second trilogy with some thoughts on genetic modification and our approach to the global food chain. At times feeling like Jason Bourne meets Jurassic Park with a little Freddy Krueger thrown in, Jurassic World Dominion is all in all a movie high on action and adventure which never lets up. OK, that last piece bringing in the claws of Freddy may seem a little left field, but hit me up online after you’ve seen the movie.
While the world in Jurrasic World Dominion is years down the track from the problems erupting out of Isla Nublar, mankind has suffered trying to acclimatise with the rage and size of dinosaurs, it is a world also dealing with the same problems of the here and now with population, poverty and food supply getting to the right points of need. Now while my comment on Freddy who we know as an evil human-esque character, Jurassic World Dominion looks at how corporations have the power to become the evil in any situation. While I thought the styling of our key bad guy was a little close to the bone, the allusion based on the mega corporations we know is very real. Smiling to the press conference may seem light and innocuous but still conniving on how to build a share price in the hidden rooms of power.
Now let’s return to how this blockbuster, popcorn flick, which ticks the boxes of the public, can be reviled by some reviewers saying 1 star or 2 out of 10. How can the reviewers get it so wrong and the fans get it so right? Pretentious, its as simple as that. When a review has lost touch with the fan base they represent, they have elevated themselves to adjudicators and not reviewers. The saying in business and some other areas of life is that there are those who do and those who teach. Take that into the field of movie and show entertainment and it’s a similar conversation. There are those who create and those who write about the ones who can’t create. To be a reviewer, we should immerse ourselves in the space of the entertainment. Did it entertain? Jurassic World Dominion delivers an entertainment experience.
Did you see the first Jurassic Park movie when you were 10 years old, 20 or 30? Was it on DVD 20 years ago or with your partner on a streaming service last week? Whatever the answer, you will walk into the wonders of Dino land with Jurassic World Dominion and walk with all sorts of creatures both imagined and created, CGi ‘monsters’ and two legged megalomaniacs, wondering which is the worse to face.
Take the family and be amazed. The dinosaurs are bigger than they were before. The heroes will fall into traps, the bad guys should get their just desserts and occasionally the lines will be corny. It shouldn’t be believable but it should be unbelievably good.
“Don’t Move”. You’re in the right movie.
