Still from Jurassic World Dominion
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Campbell Scott, Isabella Sermon, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Scott Haze, Dichen Lachman
Duration: 2 hours 26 minutes | Language: English | Rating: 1
Two apex predators battle for supremacy in Jurassic World Dominion. On one side, you have the undisputed heavyweight. On the other, you have some unnatural-born stars. Lose all the teeth and the fat. At some level, you find the real, more grounded allegory: about an older behemoth struggling to cohabit in an ecosystem ruled by a newer but well-established one. By which we mean Universal and Marvel.
With the final chapter of the second Jurassic saga, Universal may be hoping for a win, if not above, at par with this year's biggest box-office draw in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The problem is as far as soulless IP extensions are concerned, Jurassic World Dominion is as irredeemable as they come. Director Colin Trevorrow cannot access a single iota of magic of the Steven Spielberg classic that started it all — without resorting to cheap nostalgia. He still tries though, but it's the equivalent of a T-rex chasing its own tail with its tiny-ass arms.
Playing by the more-is-better principle, the new dino extravaganza brings in more prehistoric creatures than ever before. More humans to be chased and snacked on. More child-in-peril situations to heighten parents' separation anxieties (as required by Spielberg, the movie's executive producer). More corporate avarice and impropriety. More hammering of man-playing-God message. More finger-wagging at our hubris. All these aren't tethered to a coherent story, but hung on a CGI clothesline with routine fight-or-flight sequences as pegs. No one expected Dominion to do anything singular in the slightest. All we hoped for was a movie that sprints along at a zippy pace and sticks the landing, like the franchise's star raptor Blue. With a creatively bankrupt movie that clocks in at two hours and 26 minutes, we don't even get that.
Remember this is the kind of movie where a corporation is dumb enough to build a theme park around a not-exactly-extinct volcano. Four years after Isla Nublar was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, the prehistoric reptiles have migrated to the mainland. Pterodactyls have built their nests atop skyscrapers. The sight of a stegosaurus doesn't register disbelief on any one's faces anymore; it's more an inconvenience. If there's anything worth exploiting, humanity will find a way to do it. Breeding farms and black markets have opened up in various parts of the world. Malta, which has become crime central, is home to raptor-fighting rings and dino kebab stalls.
In this new world order, Chris Pratt's raptor whisperer Owen Grady makes his entry like some Western hero, riding on horseback and shepherding a stray dinosaur. Bronco Grady has moved to the remote forests to play house with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and their adoptive daughter Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). When Maisie and Blue's daughter Beta are kidnapped by a nefarious corporation named Biosyn, Bronco Grady and Claire launch a rescue mission. Meanwhile, the original trio of Jurassic Park — Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) — are secretly looking into Biosyn's genetic research work to expose their nefarious intentions (something about unleashing a plague of locusts so they can control the world's food supply — if you must know). The two parallel plotlines are spliced together for the final showdown against Big Corp and Bigger Dinos.
But not before Bronco Grady makes a sorry Bond audition in a motorbike chase through the streets and across the rooftops of Valletta with raptors on the hunt. Making Pratt into some sort of action hero is another reason why the Jurassic World franchise has not been able to capture the appeal of its forebear. Jurassic Park threw together a chaos theorist, a palaeobotanist and a palaeontologist along with a couple of kids, none of whom were prepared for the nightmare that lay ahead of them, making them solid audience surrogates and thus enhancing the immersion. The Jurassic World movies are centred on a leather-vested daredevil and turned what remains the most terrifying dinosaur — the velociraptor — into a tameable force of nature, as if it were a pet dog. If you ever run into one, it turns out all you need to do is: raise your hand, maintain eye contact, and keep saying "Hey girl."
When the original came out, the CGI gave the feeling Spielberg had opened a whole new magic box. The modern-day blockbusters prove again and again he may have opened Pandora's. Dominion is filled with all kinds of dinosaurs: thoroughbreds and hybrids. But even their powers of awe wear off in this bloated amusement park. For there is not a single memorable image or a moment staged with any sense of wonder or curiosity.
Because the dinosaurs aren't terrifying enough by themselves, Dominion introduces a smuggler (Dichen Lachman) and Tim Cook's evil biotech analogue (Campbell Scott) as sub-villains. It is funny how these movies condemn grubby corporations while being the grubby products of corporations themselves. Nostalgia too has been corporatised into the most shameless pandering. Ellie and Alan being reluctantly roped into another expedition, Ian making the nth intelligent-sounding speech, the whole gang hiding behind an overturned jeep, or the Dilophosaurus aka "the spitter" delivering another Karmic kill — may all summon a wistful smile before the sentiment curdles because these moments feel unearned. What's worse: the charms of Dern, Neill and Goldblum only highlight what Pratt and Howard have none of. Newcomers DeWanda Wise as the pilot Kayla Watts and Mamoudou Athie as Biosyn's Head of Communications Ramsay Cole at least have personalities.
Also among the returning cast members is BD Wong as Dr. Henry Wu, a man who has just refused to learn from his mistakes going all the way back to the original. His stubborn resolve to keep messing around with gene splicing and expecting different results sums up the futility of continuing with the Jurassic movies themselves. How many times will it take humanity to realise they can't cage nor can they co-exist with these pre-historic creatures? What Jurassic World Dominion proves beyond doubt is this franchise itself needs to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Jurassic World Dominion is now running in theatres across India.
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