The long-awaited third installment of the Jurassic World trilogy is finally upon us, with Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) teaming up with the original Jurassic Park trio for a globe-trotting adventure. Jurassic World Dominion brings back Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler and Ian Malcolm (Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, respectively) to a world where dinosaurs live among humans. Life finds a way, right? Critics have screened this legacyquel, and their reviews are in to tell us what to expect when the two Jurassic trilogies collide.
Audiences’ first reactions to Jurassic World Dominion’s screening were pretty harsh, with criticisms of the Colin Trevorrow project including lack of character development and being overall pointless (even without the inclusion of hybrid dinosaurs). Now the critics’ reviews are out to give us more context to those thoughts. Let’s check out what we can expect from this sequel when it hits theaters on June 10, starting with CinemaBlend’s review of Jurassic World Dominion. Eric Eisenberg rates the movie a paltry 1.5 stars out of 5, calling the plotlines bland and disconnected with a script that has no idea what to do with the legacy characters:
The blockbuster model for Jurassic World Dominion is very clearly Avengers: Endgame – a capstone project that is intended to reflect cohesiveness in the continuity – but it fails in so many ways where the Marvel film succeeds. Rather than constructing a story that effectively captures the full scope of the franchise and takes advantage of the principal characters’ beloved qualities, we instead get two high-concept ideas that are mashed together in a structure-less mess with bad pacing and boring action.
Alonso Duralde of The Wrap says just like in the movies, grafting two DNAs together proves to be a bad idea, and adding the stars of Jurassic Park into the Jurassic World trilogy only serves to highlight how uninteresting the more recent characters are:
The screenplay by director Colin Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael (Pacific Rim: Uprising) spends so much time moving its cast from place to place that it can barely be bothered to provide twists or sleuthing; characters like Mamoudou Athie’s PR flack or Dichen Lachman’s sleek assassin show up, tell the heroes what they need to know, and then sink into the background. There’s certainly no room for any big ideas about science or technology besides, ‘Whelp, the dinos are here now; guess we gotta coexist.’
Pete Hammond of Deadline, however, says there is fun to be found in the new sequel, if you can buy into the premise. This review says the visual effects and overall production are, as expected, first-rate, and the movie is quite an allegory for humans losing their grasp on what’s happening to our planet:
Audiences who will flock to it will not be disappointed, plus the filmmakers really do have something to say about the way our earth is moving out of our control if we don’t find a way to contain the damage, so much of it man-made. Jurassic is the perfect allegory for what we actually are doing to ourselves.
Sarah Musnicky of Nightmarish Conjurings says the movie has a fanfic vibe and loses focus pretty quickly. The addition of Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum only proves how lacking in heart and humanity this series has been, the review says:
There’s a lot going on in JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION. It’s as if Colin Trevorrow (who also directs albeit poorly considering performances) and screenwriter Emily Carmichael decided to throw things at a wall to see what would stick. A lot must have stuck to produce this convoluted, bloated final product viewers get to witness. You’ve got kidnappings. Genetically engineered locusts. Baby Raptors. Underground dino trafficking rings. There’s a lot going on, which results in a film that feels long and loses its focus from its main point – the livelihood of both dinosaurs and the human race.
Matt Singer of ScreenCrush rates the movie 3 out of 10, saying that not only does Jurassic World Dominion not answer its predecessor’s question about how humans and dinosaurs could co-exist, it doesn’t even try. It’s fun to see the Jurassic Park actors back together again, but their presence doesn’t really make much sense in the movie. In the end, this review says it’s just more of the same:
Alas, Dominion is just more of the same. More banal platitudes about the dangers of science run amok. More breathless chases involving dinosaurs who can keep pace with a jeep and yet never manage to catch the humans when they’re running on foot. More scenes where an idyllic and flawless dino sanctuary completely collapses in a matter of minutes. More scenes where Chris Pratt’s unflappable and impervious action dude gets a dinosaur to stop attacking him simply by sticking his hand in front of its face. (Later, he teaches the other characters this trick and then they’re all controlling raptors by shoving their hands in their faces.)
Even with its criticisms, Jurassic World Dominion is sure to be a box office win. If you’d like to see what happens when the original trio combines forces with our Jurassic World heroes (and find out what these locusts are about that the reviews keep mentioning), you’ll have the opportunity to do that soon! The blockbuster hits theaters on Friday, June 10. Be sure to check out our 2022 Movie Release Schedule to see what other films are coming to theaters soon!