The Jurassic Park franchise has always hinged on man’s inherent stupidity, so it’s fitting that its reboot series—beginning with 2015’s Jurassic World—has leaned heavily into abject inanity, culminating with just about every other plot point in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, a film of such lamebrained illogicality that it almost feels like a prank. That particular brand of head-smacking absurdity is also omnipresent in the second trilogy’s wrap-up, Jurassic World Dominion (June 10), whose sole novelty is marrying old and new stars in formulaic legacy-sequel fashion. It’s screeching, roaring, rollercoaster-ride nonsense devoid of the awe and suspense that marked Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original, which in comparison to this modern monstrosity feels like a precious relic of an earlier blockbuster age.
Directed with the grace of a rampaging T-Rex by Colin Trevorrow, who previously helmed the first Jurassic World, Dominion picks up four years after its predecessor, with dinosaurs now co-existing with humanity, and raptor whisperer Owen Grant (Chris Pratt) and reformed theme park exec-turned-dino activist Claire Daring (Bryce Dallas Howard) residing off the grid in the Sierra Nevada mountains with Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a clone of deceased Jurassic Park scientist Charlotte (Elva Trill). Much to Maisie’s chagrin, Owen and Claire demand that she stay hidden from the world, and their warnings prove valid when a poacher locates and kidnaps her along with Beta, the baby of Owen’s beloved raptor Blue, who’s living in an abandoned school bus in the nearby woods because, well, of course she is. This instigates a rescue mission by surrogate parents Owen and Claire, who through their CIA contacts—namely, returning supporting characters Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and Barry Sembène (Omar Sy)—discover that both Maisie and Beta are being trafficked in Malta.
While catching up with its contemporary protagonists, Jurassic World Dominion simultaneously reconnects with its classic characters, who’ve been recruited for dino-battling duty in order to nostalgically court older viewers back to theaters. Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is studying a swarm of giant locusts that are devouring crops across the U.S., and her concerns compel her to visit Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), who’s toiling away as an archaeologist. Since this locust horde threatens to destroy the Earth’s ecosystem in no time flat, and given that Grant still has not-so-hidden feelings for ex-girlfriend Sattler, they agree to partner. Moreover, they promptly seek the counsel of Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who’s working in some vague philosophy-lecturer position at Biosyn Genetics, a cutting-edge firm that’s established a dinosaur sanctuary in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, where it’s conducting research that weirdo CEO Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) claims will one day cure a host of deadly diseases.
All roads must eventually converge at Biosyn’s ultra-secret facility, where—in a development about as shocking as the sun coming up tomorrow—it turns out that Dodgson, per his name, is up to nefariously dodgy behavior. Before that faux-revelation can materialize, Jurassic World Dominion stages a revved-up and piercingly strident chase through Malta’s streets in which Owen and Claire, the latter driven in a truck by former Air Force pilot and current mercenary-with-a-heart-of-gold Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), are pursued by angry laser-guided raptors. It’s at this early point that the film tips over into typical preposterousness, with Claire outrunning a fleet dinosaur through the magic of disingenuous editing, and Owen repeatedly skidding out of harm’s way on his motorcycle with superhuman skill. Even for a dinosaur series as ludicrous as this, such basic disregard for the laws of physics turns everything daffy and inconsequential.
Despite featuring a collection of familiar faces, Jurassic World Dominion boasts no actual characters; rather, it assembles well-known actors to embody, respectively, Action Man (Pratt), Harried Heroine (Howard), Plucky Girl (Sermon), and Old-Time Photocopies (Neill, Dern, Goldblum). BD Wong similarly reprises his role as Dr. Wu, the geneticist who despite repeatedly bringing about calamity via his cloned dinosaurs, can’t stop himself from opening Pandora’s Box in the lab. This time around, Wu believes that science is the answer to his own gene-splicing mistake. What Wong really needs, however, is a better stylist, considering that his defining characteristic is a floppy head of hair whose goofiness is matched by the rest of the pandemonium, much of which takes place in a generic building that’s as dull as the look perpetually affixed to Pratt’s face.
“Jurassic World—not a fan,” deadpans Malcolm at one point, yet there’s no genuine self-reflection to be found in these proceedings; Goldblum’s wisecracking know-it-all continues to be merely the jokey mouthpiece for the film’s incredulous audience. Trevorrow makes sure to periodically gape at titanic Brontosauruses roaming the land, as well as stage the occasional set piece in which Claire is stalked by a scary-looking prehistoric creature. Alas, the sense of wonder and terror that Spielberg brought to Jurassic Park is MIA, replaced by a deafening cacophony of shrieks and squeals, as well as prolonged CG-heavy sequences that stampede about in search of an authentically tense moment. At least everyone isn’t skulking around a haunted mansion à la Fallen Kingdom, although one especially silly instance does recall The Bourne Ultimatum, and not in an intentionally amusing way.
The fact that Jurassic World Dominion is marked by dim-witted decision-making, uneven special effects, and a jagged narrative full of half-hearted ideas and convenient contrivances is par for the course. As with its two immediate ancestors, this beast of a film crashes and smashes with reckless abandon, assuming that its sound and fury is what people paid to see and, therefore, will ably overshadow its Swiss-cheese plotting. As a multiplex event, Trevorrow’s latest has the size and scope to overpower one’s eyes and ears, but not one’s mental faculties, and as a result his mayhem is of a largely empty variety, as noisy as it is unsatisfying.
More than Neill and Dern, Goldblum at least gets a few choice quips in, including one directed at the perpetually laughable “mutual respect” that Owen shares with his raptor buddy Blue. Yet his charisma isn’t enough to compensate for a saga that’s evolved into a blander and less awesome enterprise with each passing installment. Billion-dollar global grosses and ancillary revenues notwithstanding, Jurassic World Dominion reconfirms the same thing its story suggests: some classic goliaths are better left in the past.
