jurassic world dominion movie reviews

Jurassic World: Dominion

Twenty-nine years ago, when “ Jurassic Park ” was released, computer-generated and digitally composited effects were still relatively new, but director Steven Spielberg’s team raised them to a new level of credibility by deploying them sparingly, often in nighttime and rainy scenes, and mixing them with old-fashioned practical FX work (mainly puppets and large-scale models). The result conjured primal wonder and terror in the minds of viewers. The T-Rex attack in particular was so brilliantly constructed that it put this writer sideways in his seat, one arm raised in front of his face as if to defend against a dinosaur attack. When there was a break in the mayhem, Spielberg cut to a very quiet scene, letting everyone hear how many people in the audience had been screaming in fright, which of course led to raucous laughter and a release of tension (a showman’s trick). A small girl sitting near this writer regarded his still-terror-contorted body and asked, “Mister, are you all right?”

There’s nothing in “Jurassic World: Dominion” that comes close to that first “Jurassic Park” T-Rex attack, or any other scene in it. Or for that matter, any of the scenes in the Spielberg-directed sequel “The Lost World,” which made the best of an inevitable cash-grab scenario by treating the film as an excuse to stage a series of dazzling large-scale action sequences, and giving Jeff Goldblum’s chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm the action hero job. Goldblum, who reprises his role in “Dominion” alongside fellow original cast members Sam Neill and Laura Dern , turned his “Lost World” performance into a wry-yet-cranky meta-commentary on corporate capitalism.

For that matter, there’s nothing in this new film as good as the best parts of “Jurassic Park III,” “ Jurassic World ,” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.” The latter had the most surprising pivots since the original, conjuring Spielbergian magic (think of that shot of the brachiosaur left behind on the dock) and mixing gothic horror and haunted house-movie elements into its second half. “Jurassic Park” creator Michael Crichton’s original inspiration, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , was referenced through the character of Maisie Lockwood ( Isabella Sermon ), a clone created by John Hammond’s business partner to replace the daughter that he lost.

Maisie is one of many major characters featured in “Dominion,” and her tragic predicament has disturbing new details added to it. But returning franchise director/co-writer Colin Trevorrow (writer/director of “Jurassic World”) and his collaborators are unable to focus on their deeper implications long enough to develop Maisie with the sophistication required for a great or even good science fiction/horror film.

The mishandling of Maisie is but one bit of scrap in this dumpster of a sequel. The film opens with Claire Dearing ( Bryce Dallas Howard ), onetime park operations manager of Jurassic World turned head of the activist Dinosaur Protection Group, breaking into a ranch where baby plant-eaters are being kept and impulsively deciding to rescue one of them. Then she goes to a cabin in the snowy Sierra Nevada mountains, where Maisie is living with the park’s former raptor-whisperer Owen Grady ( Chris Pratt ). The three form a makeshift nuclear family focused on protecting Maisie against parties who want to exploit her for genetic and financial gain. The semi-domesticated raptor Blue lives with them as well, and has asexually produced a child (mirroring Maisie’s relationship to her mother’s genetic material—though so haphazardly that it’s as if the filmmakers barely even thought of the two creatures as being thematically linked).

There’s also a corporate spy plot (as in most of the other films) involving a thoughtless and/or sinister corporation that talks of magic-and-wonder but is mainly interested in exploiting the dinos and the technology that created them. From “The Lost World” onward, the successors to park founder John Hammond ( Richard Attenborough )—a nice old man who meant well but failed to think through the implications of his actions—have been actively treacherous Bad Guy types. The heavy in this one is Dr. Lewis Dodgson, a character from the original film who’s been recast and promoted to CEO of BioSyn (‘bio sin,’ get it?). Dodgson hired another recurring “Jurassic” character, B.D. Wong’s Dr. Wu (arguably the true villain of most of these films, though in an oblivious, John Hammond sort of way) to breed prehistoric locusts that are genetically coded to devour every food crop, save for engineered plants sold exclusively by the company.

Dodgson is the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Maisie and Blue’s child. Actor Campbell Scott uses inventive body language and unpredictable phrasings and pauses to invest the under-written Dodgson with a distinct personality. He turns him into a sendup of two generations of Baby Boomer and Generation X tech-bro capitalist gurus. Dodgson is a man who carries himself like a peace-loving hippie but is really a voracious yuppie who keeps black marketeers and hired killers on retainer. The warm-voiced but dead-eyed way that Dodgson conveys “caring” is especially chilling—like a zombie Steve Jobs . It’s the film’s second most imaginative performance after that of Goldblum, who never moves or speaks quite as you expect him to, and blurts out things that sound improvised. (Chastising colleagues who are moving too slowly for his taste, he snaps, “Why are you skulking?”)

All narrative roads converge at BioSyn headquarters, where Neill and Dern’s Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler have gone to ask Ian Malcolm’s help in obtaining top-secret information that can end the prehistoric locust plague, and where Maisie and Blue’s baby have been brought so that their genetic secrets can be mined as well. Two new characters—Han Solo-ish mercenary pilot Kayla Watts ( DeWanda Wise ) who says she doesn’t want to get involved in the heroes’ problems and then does, and Dodgson’s disillusioned acolyte Ramsay Cole ( Mamoudou Athie )—join the intrigue, and presumably are being introduced as new-generation figureheads who can take over the franchise. Even if the entire film had focused on BioSyn headquarters, the film still might have seemed overstuffed and under-imagined. But Trevorrow turns the movie into a global travelogue, every sequence feeling narratively cut-off from the others in the manner of a substandard spy flick. (There’s even a rooftop chase modeled on one in “ The Bourne Supremacy ,” but with a raptor.)

A long sequence in Malta, where Claire and Owen have gone to rescue Maisie from kidnappers, encapsulates the film’s failures. There are a lot of promising notions in it, including a dinosaur-focused black market (like something out of a “ Star Wars ” or Indiana Jones film) where criminals go to buy, sell, and eat forbidden and endangered species. But it’s undone by a lazy undercurrent of comic-book Orientalism and a seeming inability to even see, much less capitalize on, potentially rich material. Michael Giacchino’s score pours on sinister Arabic-African “exotic” cliches, as if setting up an R-rated prison thriller in which Owen does a “ Midnight Express ” stint in a Turkish prison for hashish possession.

An action scene that throws Owen and the lead kidnapper into a fighting pit where onlookers wager on dinosaur fights is as indifferently composed and poorly edited as nearly every other action scene in the film—and it becomes depressing once you think about what Spielberg, or his favorite second-unit director Joe Johnston (“Jurassic Park III”), might have done with it. It could’ve been a tiny masterpiece of action, slapstick, and social commentary, with the pit audience initially reacting with outrage when their regularly scheduled dino-fights are disrupted, then gleefully shifting gears by betting on the two humans who are going at each other, making fresh odds and handing off fistfuls of cash while baying for blood. Trevorrow looks at this setup and sees nothing but a hero fighting a henchman in a pit.

There’s no scene in the film that’s entirely worthless. There’s no question that at this point, the “Jurassic” factory knows how to design and animate prehistoric creatures and integrate them with live-action scenes of actors running, screaming, shooting, setting fires, and the like. And yet the totality feels indifferently assembled, and the stalkings and chases and dino-battles are for the most part bereft of the life-and-death tension that every other franchise entry has managed to summon. And the plotting is abysmal, relying too heavily on coincidence and flukes of timing, retro-engineering personal connections between new and pre-existing characters, and handing the heroes major victories as casually as a hotel desk clerk giving a guest a room key, instead of letting them earn them through ingenuity.

Trevorrow even manages to recycle, not once but three times, one of the only clever gags in his “Jurassic World”—a comment on the 40-year budgetary and spectacle escalation of the summer blockbuster, in which a great white shark, the creature at the center of Spielberg’s groundbreaking 1975 film “ Jaws ,” gets eaten by a mosasaurus the size of a skyscraper. Every time Trevorrow does something like this, it feels like an even-more-desperate attempt to remind us of how much fun we might’ve had during “Jurassic World,” which wasn’t that great of a film to start with, and that was dining out on reheated cultural leftovers even during its best moments.

There are also scenes where characters (mainly but not always Malcolm) tie the capitalist rapaciousness of BioSyn to the film you’re sitting there watching. But these don’t have the wit and playfulness that powered similar material in “The Lost World.” They just seem curdled with self-loathing and awareness of how hollow the whole production is. At one point Malcolm chastises himself for taking the company’s money to work as their in-house philosopher/guru even though he knows they’re cynical corporate exploiters, and there’s a self-lacerating edge to Goldblum’s voice that makes it seem as if it’s the actor rather than the character who’s confessing to low personal standards. And there are times where Sam Neill, like Goldblum, seems embarrassed to be onscreen, or at least confused as to what he’s doing in the story—although to be fair, the script never convincingly justifies why Allan, a reluctant action hero in his other two “Jurassic” appearances, would leave the dinosaur dig site where Ellie finds him, other than that he’s from the earlier movies and needed to be here for nostalgia-marketing reasons.

Worst of all, the series again fails to properly explore its most tantalizing question: how would our world change if dinosaurs were added to it? The opening section packs any halfway intriguing or funny thing that “Dominion” might have to say about this topic into a TV news montage—showing, for instance, a little girl being chased on a beach by baby dinos (an homage to “The Lost World”), a couple releasing doves at their wedding only to have one of them get snatched out of the air by a pterodactyl, and pteranodons nesting in the World Trade Center (possibly a reference to Larry Cohen’s “ Q: The Winged Serpent ,” in which an ancient Aztec god nests in the Chrysler Building). Ninety minutes of footage like this, minus any characters or plot at all, probably would’ve resulted in an artistically better use of a couple hundred million dollars than “Jurassic World: Dominion,” which will doubtless be a smash on the order of all the other entries in the franchise, even though it doesn’t do much more than the bare minimum you’d expect for one of these films, and not all that well.

Now playing in theaters.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant
Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler
Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm
Chris Pratt as Owen Grady
Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing
Mamoudou Athie as Ramsay Cole
Scott Haze as Rainn Delacourt
Dichen Lachman as Soyona Santos
Daniella Pineda as Zia Rodriguez
Isabella Sermon as Maisie Lockwood
Justice Smith as Franklin Webb
Omar Sy as Barry Sembène
DeWanda Wise as Kayla Watts
Campbell Scott as Lewis Dodgson
B.D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu
Joel Elferink as Jeffrey
Jake Johnson as Lowery Cruthers
Kristoffer Polaha as Wyatt Huntley
Elva Trill as Charlotte Lockwood
Colin Trevorrow

Writer (story by)

Derek Connolly
Emily Carmichael

Cinematographer

John Schwartzman
Mark Sanger

Writer (based on characters created by)

Michael Crichton
Michael Giacchino

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‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Review: Extinction Rebellion

Things get very hectic in the last episode of this trilogy, which brings back familiar faces (Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Sam Neill) along with the usual dinosaurs.

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By A.O. Scott

“Jurassic World Dominion” starts with a nod to “The Deadliest Catch”: A marine reptile snacks on king crabs in the Bering Sea before turning its jaws on a trawler and its crew. Yikes! Then a mock newscast swiftly brings us up-to-date on the global catastrophe that began to unfold almost 30 years ago in the first “Jurassic Park” movie. In case you need a refresher, how it started was with Richard Attenborough rhapsodizing about the wonders of life; how it’s going is that the big lizards are everywhere, generally bringing out the worst in people.

It would be nice if those reanimated monsters inspired better movies. The “Jurassic” brand, born in Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel , promises bone-rattling action and sublime reptilian special effects infused with pop pseudoscience and bioethical chin-scratching. The second trilogy, which started in 2015, hasn’t quite lived up to that promise. “Dominion,” directed by Colin Trevorrow, might be a little better than its two predecessors ( “Jurassic World” and “Fallen Kingdom” ), but in ways that underline the hectic incoherence of the whole enterprise.

However: Jeff Goldblum is back, as the “chaotician” Dr. Ian Malcolm, more seductively lizardy than the dinosaurs themselves. Ian is reunited with his “Jurassic Park” frenemies Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). Ellie has been married and divorced and made a name for herself in the field of genetic something or other. Alan is still carrying a torch for her. Yes, he’s in love with her, but what I mean to say is that he literally carries a torch, to light their way through an old amber mine deep in the Dolomites.

That rocky bit of Italy is where the fiercest, biggest ancient predators now live, in a preserve built and supervised by Lewis Dodgson, an evil tech/pharma billionaire played by Campbell Scott. He seems nice enough at first — his company, Biosyn, claims to be protecting the dinosaurs out of the goodness of its corporate heart, and also curing disease, feeding the world and so on — but nobody except a naïve scientist is likely to be fooled. There are too many tells. Lewis’s silver hair is combed flat against his scalp, and he wears collarless shirts and soft jackets in rarefied neutral tones like ecru, pewter and mother-of-walrus. His very speech patterns suggest libertarianism run amok.

As it happens, Lewis has bioengineered a plague of giant locusts, with the help of Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong), another revenant from the earlier “Jurassic Park” movies. Biosyn has also kidnapped Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the cloned avatar of a famous scientist.

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Jurassic World Dominion Reviews

Jurassic World: Dominion manages to flatline in its attempt to blend the old with the new, yielding a mediocre adventure that barely reaches its maximum potential.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 23, 2024

“Jurassic World: Dominion” does a good job of finding a reason to introduce the “Jurassic World” regulars to the “Jurassic Park” regulars. The biggest surprise is that Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is finally memorable in this installment.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2024

After a slow and choppy start, the action picks up to a brisk pace and is unrelenting straight through to the final — somewhat sappy — montage.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2023

I have always admired the sense of urgency and danger this franchise was able to bring to the table. Unfortunately this uninspired sequel has overstayed its welcome due to its overdrawn runtime.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Sep 26, 2023

This latest offering in the franchise is a painful failure. Gone is all of the magic of the original movie having been replaced by a convoluted story, tired characters and a technology that now seems archaic.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Aug 16, 2023

Written by Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael, Jurassic World's narrative is an oddball situation, and almost feels as if two films have been haphazardly mashed together.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 31, 2023

the definition of an Amusement Park. Fun, silly,crowded,nasty,& exhausting… but in the end you look back & go that was kinda fun! Mixing the old & new cast had some great moments but I love how practical a lot of dinosaurs were,overall it’s not that bad

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Jurassic World: Dominion is impressive in its ability to flush away all the good will of the films that came before it. By the 90-minute mark, the audience is almost rooting for the locusts to win.

A massive disappointment on virtually every level. The cast, visuals, and score might save this from being a complete trainwreck, but not from miserably failing to deliver an epic conclusion to a saga that deserved nothing less than that.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Jul 24, 2023

According to studies, land-based animal extinctions occur every 27 million years, give or take. In the case of the Jurassic franchise, they occur every sequel.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 21, 2023

Might be a disappointment, but it's still an improvement over Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdo/m.

Full Review | Mar 21, 2023

The final chapter of the Jurassic World trilogy looks to bring closure to the series but winds up repeating itself in odd and disappointing fashion.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2023

This is 2nd best out of the Jurassic World trilogy. It's very brutal at times, it feels like the characters are lot more likable & even the action feels much more thrilling. My issue is that this doesn't feel like a apocalyptic scenario that it should be

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 26, 2022

Most of the sins of Jurassic World Dominion would be forgivable if the movie were more fun.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Nov 28, 2022

Jurassic World: Dominion is the worst thing to happen to the dinosaurs since that meteor 65 million years ago. This is how a franchise dies. With raptor-less applause.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 13, 2022

A disappointing end to something that could've been great, and hopefully the last we'll see of the franchise for a while - until they can come up with something really new.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 1, 2022

Jurassic World Dominion succeeds because of the nostalgia of seeing Dr. Settler, Dr. Grant, and Dr. Malcolm working together again, but ultimately their storyline does nothing to improve upon the ideas presented in Jurassic World.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 24, 2022

At one point Dr. Sattler, viewing the majesty of the replicated dinosaurs, says, "You never get used to it." Except here's the problem: you actually do. Familiarity with CGI monsters breeds, well, not exactly contempt. Mostly just boredom.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Sep 16, 2022

If you didn't know better, you'd think Chris Pratt had never acted before.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Sep 6, 2022

Viewers seeking a watchable combination of marauding visual effects and human actors running for their lives can find fun in this. It is only if anybody is seeking something more than that will the problems start.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Sep 3, 2022

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Jurassic World Dominion First Reviews: A Franchise Finale Full of Fan Service and Dino Action

Critics say the final jurassic film is far from the best, but it does a few things we've never seen before and die-hard fans should enjoy it despite its flaws..

TAGGED AS: Film , films , First Reviews , jurassic park , movie , movies

If you love dinosaurs, Jurassic World Dominion has a lot of them, and if you love the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, it has a lot of characters from each, as well. The sixth feature installment of the nearly 30-year-old franchise is the biggest and longest, if not among the best, according to the first reviews. Die-hard fans will get a lot of what they want, plus an infusion of globetrotting action, while audiences expecting a smart sci-fi blockbuster will be disappointed. Big and brainless: that sounds fitting for a dinosaur movie, right?

Here’s what critics are saying about Jurassic World Dominion :

Will Dominion please die-hard Jurassic fans?

Jurassic World Dominion is an epic thrill ride and satisfying conclusion to the arc that started almost 30 years ago with Jurassic Park . – Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies

Dominion is far from a perfect movie. But how low of a rating can you really give to a film that had you grinning from ear to ear from start to finish? – Amelia Emberwing, IGN Movies

Trevorrow has lost sight of what made cinephiles fall in love with Jurassic Park and what’s made that film such a crucial part of our pop-culture discussion nearly 30 years later. – David Gonzalez, Mama’s Geeky

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

Where does it rank in the franchise?

Jurassic World Dominion is an improvement from the last Jurassic World installment. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR

It recovers well from the pitfalls within Fallen Kingdom to deliver a far more entertaining conclusion. – Edward Douglas, The Weekend Warrior

Dominion has more in common with 1993’s Jurassic Park than 2018’s Fallen Kingdom as it revels in the magic of what made the original a success. – Kirsten Acuna, Insider

This [is] the best Jurassic movie since the original in 1993, but that doesn’t mean this one’s not, much like its predecessors, a hot mess. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

Of the three Jurassic World movies, Dominion is the least silly and most entertaining. But that’s not saying much. – Peter Debruge, Variety

It’s far from the worst — that (dis)honor still goes to Jurassic Park III . – Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

Will dinosaur fans be happy?

Jurassic World Dominion does not disappoint the dinosaur aficionado in all of us. – Christie Cronan, Raising Whasians

There are some peaceful and beautiful moments which will delight anyone who is or was a dinosaur kid at heart. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR

The amount of new and returning dinosaurs is worth the price of admission… Jurassic World Dominion has to have the highest dino-per-scene ratio of the entire franchise. – Kyle Wilson, The Lamplight Review

We’ve gone from 15 minutes of dinosaur footage in the first film, relying on a combination of animatronics and CG, to having full shots of dinosaurs every couple of minutes… Dialing back the dinos doesn’t really appeal to me. I have a feeling that’s the same for kids as well. – Aaron Neuwirth, We Live Entertainment

Unfortunately, a whole lot of the movie’s 2-hour and 26-minute run time isn’t about dinosaurs, but when the prehistoric creatures are on-screen, it’s impossible not to have a good time. – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

Does it rely too much on fan service?

The latest Jurassic movie, for better or worse, does everything it can to spelunk to depths of fan service previously thought unreachable. – Cory Woodroof, Nashville Scene

It is basically one big collection of Easter eggs and shout-outs to the earlier films. – Ard Vijn, Screen Anarchy

Yes, we get nostalgic Easter Eggs and references to the first Jurassic Park , but mercifully fewer than I expected with most of them confined to the third act. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

It’s everything one has come to expect from a Jurassic movie. When I come to one of these movies, I expect plenty of fan service. – Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies

Are there any surprises in the script?

The first two-thirds, especially the whirlwind first half of this (admittedly overlong) 146-minute picture plays like an overstuffed checklist of stuff we haven’t seen in a Jurassic movie. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Jurassic World Dominion earns brownie points for at last taking a risk in breaking the franchise formula to explore new ways to execute dino mayhem. – Kyle Wilson, The Lamplight Review

The film is a mishmash of regurgitated bits and pieces of what has come before. – Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

Is it great to see the original cast back together?

If you’re coming just to see the return of Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Alan Grant (Sam Neill ), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), you won’t be disappointed by their amount of screen time. – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

[Their] return is as delightful as one would expect after missing them together on-screen for nearly 30 years. – Amelia Emberwing, IGN Movies

The chemistry of Sam Neill and Laura Dern warm the screen like a cozy blanket while also giving relief from the dull teen angst happening at the Grady/Dearing cabin. – Kyle Wilson, The Lamplight Review

I’m ecstatic that the chemistry between the OG3 and the duo of the Jurassic World eras is both natural and magnetic. – David Gonzalez, Mama’s Geeky

Jurassic World Dominion could have easily existed without Owen or Claire at all. Seeing Dern, Neill, and Goldblum back in the saddle again feels far more exciting than anything that Pratt or Howard are called upon to do. – Alonso Duralde, The Wrap

How is the new cast?

DeWanda Wise steals the show with her spunky portrayal of a former Air Force pilot, Kayla Watts. – Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

My instant favorite character [was] DeWanda Wise as Han Solo, I mean as Kayla Watts. – Nell Minow, Movie Mom

The standout newcomer of the bunch is Wise as Watts. It’s rare to see a woman who is both badass and funny, and her presence on-screen is extremely welcome. – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

The true breakout of the film is DeWanda Wise…a welcomed addition to the cast and adds a level of badass, whit, and charisma missing from the previous two entries. – David Gonzalez, Mama’s Geeky

Mamoudou Athie, in particular, is a true stand-out, delivering a charismatic performance… It’s a shame that it took until the third Jurassic World movie to meet these [new] characters. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR

How is the action?

Most of the first hour becomes a Jason Bourne-type chase sequence across Malta – but with dinosaurs! It’s big, it’s stupid, it’s really fun. – Kyle Wilson, The Lamplight Review

One dino chase, in particular, feels like a moment out of a Mission: Impossible or Bourne movie, which is as thrilling as it sounds. – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

Trevorrow wanted to show us what he can do emulating a Bond-style chase sequence except for the pursuer(s) turn out to be Atrociraptors. – Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

The action set pieces are some of the best since the original. – David Gonzalez, Mama’s Geeky

What about the visual effects?

The visual effects once again remain one of the franchise’s standouts… The use of practical effects is certainly welcomed for someone who considers the original a masterpiece. – David Gonzalez, Mama’s Geeky

The combination of animatronics and CGI isn’t as seamless as I would expect this time around since Trevorrow and his team [did] a great job in Jurassic World . – Casey Chong, Casey’s Movie Mania

In 1993, Jurassic Park revolutionized visual effects, so it is really surprising, after 30 years of technological evolution, to see several shots in this sixth edition where the live-action and dinosaurs don’t appear to be on the same visual plane. – Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews

Is the movie enjoyable if you don’t think too much about it?

This is the essence of a summer movie… Just pass the popcorn and enjoy the chases. – Nell Minow, Movie Mom

I was relieved to see a “new” mega-bucks movie that looked like a mega-bucks movie. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Viewers don’t care if these films are good or bad. Audiences just want a fun romp at theaters and Dominion delivers. – Kirsten Acuna, Insider

Man watches dinosaur movie, man notices glaring flaws in dinosaur movie, man still enjoys dinosaur movie. – Cory Woodroof, Nashville Scene

Jurassic World: Dominion opens in theaters on June 10, 2022.

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Review: Dino delight 'Jurassic World Dominion' is the best since the first 'Jurassic Park'

After so many “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic World” movies spent trying to keep dinosaurs isolated in poorly executed high-tech sanctuaries, it’s nice to see a thunder lizard drop by a drive-in movie theater for a bite.

Director Colin Trevorrow’s “Jurassic World Dominion” (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters now) is a globe-trotting action adventure that awesomely imagines a world having to come to grips with rampaging dinos big and small living among humans – at least until the movie shifts its focus to yet another sanctuary full of cloned creatures, another shady tech company and another climactic primal showdown.

Although overly familiar, “Dominion” boasts everything you’d ever want in a “Jurassic” film and is the best in the series since the original 1993 movie. (That said, apart from Steven Spielberg's wondrous opener , this is not exactly a high bar.) The plot brings together the original “Park” heroes – a joy to meet again – and the newer “World” crew to essentially wrap up the current trilogy and the franchise so far.

'It's truly remarkable': 'Jurassic World' dads Chris Pratt, Jeff Goldblum on witnessing childbirth

All those warnings in the first “Jurassic Park” about playing with science come to fruition at the beginning of “Dominion,” which deftly uses an internet video to show how life on Earth has been affected by an influx of dinosaurs.

The new film picks up four years after the beasts escaped the destruction of Isla Nublar (see: 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" ), and returning characters Owen Grady ( Chris Pratt ) and Claire Dearing ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) are now a couple living in the Sierra Nevada as adoptive parents to Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the clone girl who released the dinos into the wild in the previous film. Much to her tween angst, the adults keep her hidden away from people who’d want to capture her for scientific purposes, but she gets kidnapped anyway alongside Beta, the spawn of Owen’s Velociraptor pal Blue.

Meanwhile, evolved dino-locusts are doing a number on crops in the Midwest. Fearing a worldwide famine on the horizon, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) reaches out to old paleontologist friend – and fellow OG Jurassic Park survivor – Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. During their investigation, they get an invite to the remote Italian mountain headquarters of Biosyn Genetics, where dinos from all over the world are taken. Mathematician Ian Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum ) is the in-house philosopher, and he gives Ellie and Alan the lowdown on the corporation and the morally and ethically questionable practices of its CEO (Campbell Scott).

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It takes a while, but the parallel story lines in Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael’s screenplay do come together for a “Jurassic” super team-up that’s pretty nifty to see, especially the long-awaited reunion between Dern and Neill’s characters. The coolest new character joining the bunch is Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a cargo pilot – and fun, swagger-filled twist on the Indiana Jones/Han Solo archetype – who helps Owen and Claire on their rescue mission. If the next trilogy ends up being “Jurassic Space,” let’s hope she’s at the wheel.

If you come to the “Jurassic” movies for the dinos (and let’s face it, that’s a lot of folks), there are plenty of species to be had – 27, in fact. The T. rex is back, naturally, although it gets a large new foe on the block with the debuting Giganotosaurus. Atrociraptors are used as precision killing machines in a spectacular motorcycle chase scene set in Malta – think something out of “Mission: Impossible,” but replacing Tom Cruise with speedy reptiles – and a winged Quetzalcoatlus does a number on Kayla’s plane. The creature effects are all top notch, especially the eerie mega-locust swarms.

Other than a T. rex getting loose in San Diego for a little while in the second “Jurassic Park,” the franchise hasn’t really leaned into dinos wrecking stuff in the real world – and mankind being thrown by having to share the Earth – so those moments early on in “Dominion” feel inventive. Yet the science veers pretty wonky and, while still mostly exciting, the film tends back toward the romping-and-stomping template we’ve seen previously.

In that vein, the new “Jurassic World” is more “Return of the Jedi” than “Empire Strikes Back,” giving fans a comfort-food finale that plays a few fresh numbers, but mainly sticks to the hits.

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Jurassic World Dominion review: Let's get these dinosaurs to the nearest tar pit

The legacy cast returns for a final-feeling sendoff that rarely captures the magic.

Senior Editor, Movies

If you can train velociraptors not to view you as a snack — just stick out your hand like you're hailing a cab and do a stern shake of your head — then maybe audiences can be trained to forget everything that made Steven Spielberg 's original 1993 Jurassic Park such a polished piece of fearmaking. Just a hair away from Jaws , it never let you forget its premise's cautionary sting, even with the theme-park-ification of Hollywood on the rise.

How prehistoric. Jurassic World Dominion (opening June 10), the sixth and, hopefully, final entry in a series of diminishing returns, takes us back to ethics-challenged scientists in remote labs and a general lack of learning from prior installments. Even returning snark source Jeff Goldblum (still looking good in leathers) finds his chaotician Ian Malcolm, once a reliable cynic, installed as the in-house philosopher at Biosyn, one of these secret corporate research facilities that no doubt calls itself a "campus" — he says he's got five mouths to feed. Rarely does selling out come so articulated in the dialogue. Is he the voice of the producers?

In Dominion 's world, dinosaurs are already among us, perched on city buildings, upsetting wedding ceremonies, and hassling runners on the beach. It's a stupefying intro, suggesting we'd all kinda be okay with this turn of events, somewhere between a drag and a headache. Mystifyingly, the story and screenplay (credited to director Colin Trevorrow and two others, though that can't be everyone) suggests that revived apex predators loose in the wild are the least of our worries. There are giant locusts the size of drones that Biosyn has unleashed to eat non-GMO crops. Ellie ( Laura Dern ) and Alan ( Sam Neill ) are on the case — it's one of those movies that climaxes with evidence being turned over to "my contact at the Times ."

Elsewhere — specifically in the snowy Sierra Nevadas — Owen ( Chris Pratt , he of the raptor-training hand gestures) and Claire ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) discover that their adopted daughter, Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who's both a directionless teen and, double-whammy, a human clone, has been kidnapped by bad guys who want her genetic code. All roads lead back to Biosyn, presided over by an evil billionaire in a Caesar cut ( Campbell Scott ), a place where everyone will attempt to look surprised to find themselves in the same fan-serving predicaments of yore, some of them for the second or third time.

Even though you'll recognize many of those moments (crouching behind a car while a T-Rex sniffs around; Goldblum hoisting a distracting torch, etc.), feelings of nostalgia won't be as forthcoming as a sense of box-ticking. The dutifulness is made worse by some unnecessarily junked-up action scenes, underlit and overhashed by editing. A black-market chase in Malta gives Trevorrow the opportunity to restage that jump-through-the-window moment from The Bourne Ultimatum — did you ever want to see a digitized raptor execute the stunt instead of Matt Damon?

Even with the original cast on board, there's surprisingly little chemistry or humor, and the movie makes repeated pit stops to stress family values: "Do you guys have kids?" Maisie asks Alan and Ellie, both of them no doubt tired of fielding that question, especially when fleeing from carnivores. Some of the new dinos have red feathers, a cute touch, but there's little of the wonderment of the first film, barring an image of a sad bronto at a logging site. It's the kind of listless enterprise out of which a savvy actor can sometimes pop: DeWanda Wise, playing a daring pilot, is basically starring in a one-woman Raiders of the Lost Ark in her head. Let's get that concept to the sequel writers stat, before they build another theme park. Grade: C–

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‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Review: Laura Dern and Sam Neill Are Back in a Franchise That’s Stubbornly Determined to Repeat Itself

Completing one trilogy while tying it back to the original, 'Dominion' comes the closest of the sequels to delivering on the 'Jurassic' franchise's fearsome threat of human-dinosaur coexistence.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION, (aka JURASSIC WORLD 3), from left: Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Isabella Sermon, DeWanda Wise, 2022. ph: John Wilson / © Universal Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection

With 1990’s “Jurassic Park,” novelist Michael Crichton took a hard look at what was happening in the field of genetic research and warned, via mathematician Ian Malcolm, “Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.”

Across six movies and massive advances in visual effects technology, Hollywood has been wrestling with a version of that same craven because-they-can impulse. The original “Jurassic Park” film was the kind of accomplishment whose creation effectively justified its existence: Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster pushed the limits of what movies could depict, while keeping audiences focused on the ethical questions that had concerned Crichton.

Sequels were inevitable, and there, Malcolm’s words rang true as the franchise became guilty of the very thing it pretends to criticize: unleashing dinosaurs on the world with no real purpose other than profit. Each subsequent installment teased some version of the question, “What if dinosaurs ever escaped the island?” But not a one has been up to the task of following through. “The Lost World” came closest. Remember the scene of a renegade T. rex rampaging through San Diego? It chased a bus through the window of a Blockbuster Video store. Those are the kind of consequences the franchise has been promising all along. But the latest cycle, which bears the misleading “Jurassic World” moniker, has kept the action relatively confined.

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Director Colin Trevorrow ’s 2015 reboot — essentially an amplified remake of the original, just with less compelling characters — took place back on Isla Nublar. The dinos escaped the island in “Fallen Kingdom,” only to spend most of their time terrorizing 11-year-old Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), while leaving the rest of the planet largely unbothered. While lousy, that film at least was directed by Spielberg’s spirit-successor J. A. Bayona. And just before credits rolled, it offered a glimpse of the movie most of us thought we were getting all along: We saw a Monosaurus stalking surfers and a T. rex roaring at a captive lion — king of the beasts meets king of the beasts — while Ian Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum ) remarked, “Humans and dinosaurs are now going to be forced to coexist.”

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At long last, with “Jurassic World Dominion,” it’s time to take Crichton’s concept to its dystopian conclusion. “Dominion” opens with a few clever examples of dinos among us: A Monosaurus upending a fishing boat in the Baltic Sea, Pteranodons nesting on the roof of the tallest skyscraper, etc. But it doesn’t include the impressive five-minute prologue released last fall, in which a T. rex attacked a drive-in movie theater. Instead, “Dominion” spends very little time worrying about how humans get along with these fearsome reptiles, sending most of its characters to another remote dino habitat.

Surprisingly, the greatest threat facing humankind in “Dominion” is devastating swarms of giant locusts, resurrected by the Monsanto-like BioSyn corporation. Yes, locusts. You know what else is resurrected, lifted from “Jurassic Park” like so much prehistoric DNA? The locust problem is an excuse to bring back Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill). For the franchise’s teenage target market, the original is a “classic” movie too old for many of them to have seen. However, for slightly older audiences, this reunion is a gift, recombining the chemistry that worked nearly three decades ago (Goldblum’s also along for the ride).

Back at BioSyn, mad scientist Henry Wu (BD Wong) explains that our best shot at beating the buggers is to reverse-engineer a genetic process used on the aforementioned girl. Turns out Maisie Lockwood was not only the world’s first human clone, but one cured of her mom’s terminal disease via a process that reprogrammed the DNA of every cell in her body. I suspect that Crichton would have approved of this kooky sci-fi twist. He loved to exploit our fear of technology. But that’s not how “Dominion” operates: Instead of interrogating this latest genetic manipulation, the script passes it off as an infallible solution, focusing the rest of its attention on the same thing every previous installment has — namely, likable characters running from dinosaurs, while the bad guys get their hands and heads bitten off.

Of the three “Jurassic World” movies, “Dominion” is the least silly and most entertaining. But that’s not saying much. This “stop to ask if they should” cycle’s human characters were never especially interesting, and why should we trust Trevorrow to suddenly make them so? Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) has always been basic, while her rugged, raptor-wrangling boyfriend, Owen Grady ( Chris Pratt ), should’ve been dino chow long ago. (Does anyone really believe that holding an open palm up to a super-predator will keep it from mauling you? Just ask Siegfried and Roy how well that works.) Together, Claire and Owen have adopted Maisie, keeping her hidden in a remote cabin, where liberated mama raptor Blue runs wild with her baby, Beta. While the Jurassic World dinosaurs were all bred to be sterile, we need only refer to Dr. Malcolm once again — “Life finds a way” — to explain how Blue reproduced on her own.

Now 15, Maisie’s reaching that age where she’s curious about her origins and wants to see the world. That wish is soon granted when BioSys goon Rainn Delacourt (Scott Haze) kidnaps her and Beta, shipping them off to a black market in Malta. Claire and Owen jet off after her, reuniting with Barry Sembène (Omar Sy), now conveniently employed by French intelligence, for the film’s most dazzling sequence. In Malta, “Dominion” gives us a taste of how smugglers and other shady characters might exploit the existence of dinosaurs: We see the creatures sold as exotic pets, sampled as rare meat and pitted against one another in cruel cockfights. It’s a criminal underworld not unlike the one Jabba the Hutt ran in “Star Wars,” and watching the good guys disrupt it is a thrill. There, we meet Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a Han Solo-like pilot for hire with no allegiances who agrees to help Claire and Owen.

“Dominion” also introduces several new species, nearly all of which reinforce the notion that dinosaurs were best left extinct. In Malta, henchwoman Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman) unleashes her Atrociraptors, which latch on to whatever target she chooses and pursue it until one or the other of them is dead. The ensuing chase is the most effective action sequence Trevorrow has directed yet and suggests he may actually be the right guy for the job. The earlier “Jurassic World” was a big step up from time-travel indie “Safety Not Guaranteed,” but ultimately proved beyond his competence level, while “The Book of Henry” — the only film he’s made in between — was just yikes. Here, he’s found his groove, if not necessarily the film’s reason to exist.

Ellie and Alan eventually convene with Claire and Owen at BioSyn HQ, where Campbell Scott appears as Lewis Dodgson — different actor, but the same guy who’d paid Dennis Nedry to smuggle embryos in “Jurassic Park.” In other words, this guy’s overdue to get eaten. He outlasted the competition, and now he owns the science behind all these dinos, using it to clone locusts for some reason. Owen plays him as a sociopathic Steve Jobs type, constantly popping Chiclets to calm his nerves (I’m not sure what Apple did to tick off Hollywood, but Jobs and Elon Musk have become the model for many a corporate villain of late). Meanwhile, Dodgson’s next-in-command, Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), is a surprisingly engaging character, thanks largely to the original way Athie delivers impossible expository lines. A better version of this movie might have focused on Ramsay trying to assist the various scientists in dealing with dinos out there in the real world.

Everything that happens at BioSyn goes more or less according to the “Jurassic” playbook. Still, it’s fun to see Dern and Neill together again on-screen, and Goldblum is great at making doomsday sound like a done deal. Trevorrow packs the movie with sly winks to the earlier films, plus “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and other Spielberg movies, and he commits to staging many of the dino interactions the way the master once did, by blending practical, animatronic critters with state-of-the-art CGI.

The movie promises yet another bigger-than-T. rex apex predator, the Giganotosaurus, destined to do battle with the unlikely underdog — though the duel is partly obscured in the background (been there, done that, I guess) until the arrival of a surprise ally. Nearly all the other species appear designed to prove Crichton’s theory that dinosaurs did not go extinct but became birds. Several of them feature primitive feathers, while others can fly. Fine, but it’s not the kind of evolution audiences are looking for from “Dominion.” Once again, the movie ends with images of dinosaurs mingling with humans, leaving us to wonder when this franchise is ever going to really engage with that idea in a meaningful way.

Reviewed at Elysées Biarritz, Paris, June 6, 2022. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 147 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment presentation, in association with Perfect World Pictures. Producers: Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley. Executive producers: Steven Spielberg, Alexandra Derbyshire, Colin Trevorrow.
Crew: Director: Colin Trevorrow. Screenplay: Emily Carmichael & Colin Trevorrow; story: Derek Connolly & Colin Trevorrow, based on characters created by Michael Crichton. Camera:
With: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Isabella Sermon, Campbell Scott, Dichen Lachman.

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‘jurassic world dominion’: film review.

Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are joined by original franchise stars Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum in Colin Trevorrow's globe-hopping conclusion to the de-extinct dinosaur saga.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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More is depressingly less in Jurassic World Dominion , a legacy sequel that tosses in frequent winking nods to the 1993 Steven Spielberg thriller that started the dinosaur franchise and yet completely loses sight of the heart and humanity, the rapturous awe that made it so unforgettable. Whatever goodwill superfan director Colin Trevorrow earned with 2015’s enjoyable reboot, Jurassic World , he pulverizes it here with overplotted chaos, somehow managing to marginalize characters from both the new and original trilogies as well as the prehistoric creatures they go up against in one routine challenge after another. Evolution has passed this bloated monster by.

Jurassic World Dominion

Release date : Friday, June 10 Cast : Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Campbell Scott, Isabella Sermon Director : Colin Trevorrow Screenwriters : Emily Carmichael, Colin Trevorrow

The Spielbergian Jaws trope of patiently building suspense by keeping the deadly creatures out of sight for as long as possible is anathema to this movie and its juvenile instant-gratification approach. There’s no mystery, no steadily mounting dread, just a succession of rampaging mayhem triggered with anesthetizing inevitability.

In one moment early on, Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), who was revealed in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom to be a genetic clone, gives a group of Sierra Nevada Mountains loggers a tip to lure a pair of brachiosauruses away from their work site. The astonishment on the human faces as these majestic gentle giants lumber off on their sweet, herbivorous way recalls the poetic power of Spielberg’s original . But the new movie elsewhere is engineered for only the most soulless of thrills. It almost never stops to breathe.

Like one of the dangerous experiments with genetic modification of scientist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong), the screenplay by Emily Carmichael and Trevorrow splices together the DNA of countless different movies but cooks up a genre mishmash with no discernable identity of its own. On top of the Jurassic Park core elements, the writers drop in bits of the Indiana Jones , Bourne and Alien series, and a Maltese black-market dino-traffic hangout straight out of the Star Wars cantina. There’s even a mutant locust plague that recalls … The Swarm ?!

Those big-ass crossbreed locusts start decimating crops across the American heartland, quickly multiplying to the point where Dr. Wu, who developed the freak species, warns of an impending food shortage. But to Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), his weirdo corporate boss at tech conglomerate Biosyn, global famine is just an unfortunate side-effect. Crops grown from Biosyn seed are untouched by the locusts, as intended, paving the way for the company to control the world’s food supply.

Ellie Sattler ( Laura Dern ), last seen in 2001’s Jurassic World III , learns of the locust phenomenon while studying soil science and sustainable farming. When she traces the bugs’ genes back to the cretaceous period, she reconnects with her former flame, paleontologist Alan Grant ( Sam Neill ), and they fly to Biosyn headquarters in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains. Their former associate, Ian Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum ), is working as a consultant there, preening like a rock star during lectures for the company’s young scientists. But he’s also been slipping Ellie intel about the food shortage threat.

Along with the giant lab facility, the Biosyn complex includes a vast sanctuary, a valley of lush vegetation ringed by snow-capped mountains, where international governments have agreed to relocate the countless prehistoric species that have been breeding like rabbits since they were liberated from the gothic Lockwood mansion at the end of Fallen Kingdom . Exactly how those dinos have multiplied and spread across the planet in four years remains a hazy detail, though the surviving velociraptor known as Blue has reproduced without a mate thanks to her strand of monitor lizard DNA.

It’s through Blue’s baby, named Beta, and Maisie that the second storyline comes into play. Both are abducted near the cabin where Maisie has been living under the guardianship of former Jurassic World park manager Claire Dearing ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) and raptor wrangler Owen Grady ( Chris Pratt ).

Before the whole gang gets thrown together in the labyrinthine tunnels and forests of the Biosyn sanctuary, there’s a bunch of minimally engaging plot preamble involving teenage Maisie’s rebellious need for freedom; the worldwide poacher market for exotic prehistoric species, of which there now seem to be dozens; and the nefarious mercenaries on Dodgson’s payroll to bring in both the baby raptor and Clone Girl, who holds the key to DNA manipulation. Or something.

That requires a detour to Malta for Owen and Claire, where they go into action-hero mode fending off attacks from human and animal predators, including a ruthless smuggler named Santos (Dichen Lachman), confusingly dressed in cocktail attire while she’s busy laser-tagging folks left and right to make them raptor targets. The film’s biggest set-piece is a dual chase through the ancient streets of the Maltese capital Valetta, with Claire in the back of a pickup and Owen on a motorcycle.

There’s some nail-biting excitement in the will-they-or-won’t-they make it scene in which they race to board a cargo plane bound for the Dolomites, captained by unflappably cool pilot-for-hire Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise). The writers count on pre-existing affection for the holdover characters, rather than giving them anything interesting to do beyond interchangeable “Oh no! Another dinosaur!” encounters. That allows charismatic newcomers Wise and Mamoudou Athie as Dodgson’s savvy head of communications, Ramsay Cole, to walk away with the movie, simply by virtue of bringing something different to the table.

Frankly, aside from the droll humor Goldblum brings to slick, shamelessly vain Dr. Malcolm, I could have ditched the old crew and taken an entire spinoff led by Kayla and Ramsay. The other newcomer, Scott’s Dodgson, is a pallid villain we’ve seen far too often lately, the socially stiff, egomaniacal CEO in the Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos/Elon Musk mold, who half convinces himself that the capacity for scientific and medical discovery in his work justifies the greed and the God complex.

The storylines feel rote, both separately and when they converge; a sameness sets into the action, whether it’s Ellie, Alan and Maisie in an abandoned amber mine or Owen, Claire and Kayla out in the wilderness sanctuary. Trevorrow keeps rolling out different dinos, including some old favorites not seen since the first movie, and new entries like the fearsome giganotosaurus, a late-cretaceous bad-boy theropod that has the distinction of being history’s largest terrestrial carnivore. Meh. In the apex-predator hall of fame, it might be bigger and meaner but ends up being no more terrifying than the good old T-Rex.

That’s because the storytelling lacks imagination. Scene after scene follows a familiar narrow-escape template, with no menace lingering for more than a few minutes, whether it’s a feathered pyroraptor (I’m including these names strictly for the dino nerds — you’re welcome) on a thinly frozen lake prone to cracking, or a bunch of flaming mega-locusts falling from the sky.

Despite all the breathless panic, most of the fixes seem too easy, like Claire glancing at a bank of computer monitors and conveniently exclaiming, “This is the same system we used at the park!” I actually started to miss watching her flee dinos in heels, given that she’s in sensible boots this time.

The dinosaurs are certainly varied in type and the CG work is solid enough for the most part, though some of the smaller, cuter species like the baby nasutoceratops look more like merchandizing opportunities than actual creatures. There was an artfulness to all this when Spielberg did it, with far less advanced technology. Now it all just looks like digital paint-by-numbers. There’s no magic. Even the abrupt swerve into classic monster horror that director J.A. Bayona attempted in Fallen Kingdom showed more invention than anything happening here.

Editor Mark Sanger and composer Michael Giacchino keep the story hurtling along, possibly hoping that if it moves fast enough no one will mind the colossally dumb plotting. At least there’s delicate distraction when John Williams’ original theme music is piped in over Ellie and Alan’s halting romantic reconnection, serving as a reminder of a real movie. As for this one, extinction beckons.

Full credits

Distribution: Universal Production companies: Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, in association with Perfect World Pictures 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 Director: Colin Trevorrow Screenwriters: Emily Carmichael, Colin Trevorrow Story: Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow, based on characters created by Michael Crichton Producers: Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley Executive producers: Steven Spielberg, Alexandra Derbyshire, Colin Trevorrow Director of photography: John Schwartzman Production designer: Kevin Jenkins Costume designers: Joanna Johnston Music: Michael Giacchino Editor: Mark Sanger Visual effects supervisor: David Vickery Live action dinosaurs: John Nolan Casting: Nina Gold

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Jurassic world dominion.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 36 Reviews
Kids Say 75 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Intense dino series finale focuses on human relationships.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 13+?

Several jump-worthy, potentially terrifying scenes of sustained tension and peri

Language includes "a--hole," "s--t," "son of a bitch," "bullsh--t," "rat bastard

Converse, iPhone, MSNBC, BBC World News. Also lots of Jurassic Park and Jurassic

Flirting, banter, a few full-body embraces. Two different couples kiss at least

A man offers a woman a beer, but she declines since it's still morning.

Any Positive Content?

Themes are in line with the rest of the franchise's: Science and nature can't (a

Owen, Claire, and the three scientists are brave, protective, compassionate. Owe

Diversity within supporting cast: a Black pilot presented as queer, a Black scie

Violence & Scariness

Several jump-worthy, potentially terrifying scenes of sustained tension and peril. Child in peril on multiple occasions. Dozens of people die, but only a couple of characters with speaking parts perish: They're eaten (whole or in pieces), dismembered, trampled, mutilated. Most characters are injured in some way. Apex predator dinosaurs are especially frightening; other dinosaurs are taught to relentlessly track and kill anyone identified as target. Bloody fights between dinosaurs, which slash, hunt, kill one another. Weapons-based and close-combat violence between humans includes tranquilizer guns, automatic guns, hand-to-hand fighting. Frightening scene of oversized killer locusts that decimate farms and terrorize two children.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "a--hole," "s--t," "son of a bitch," "bullsh--t," "rat bastard," "hell," and "damn." A teen character uses the middle-finger gesture.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Converse, iPhone, MSNBC, BBC World News. Also lots of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World tie-in merchandise available in real life.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Flirting, banter, a few full-body embraces. Two different couples kiss at least once. One character makes a joke about why a man loves his partner: "I get it; I like redheads, too."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Themes are in line with the rest of the franchise's: Science and nature can't (and shouldn't) be controlled; wild, large animals shouldn't be treated as weapons to manipulate; people matter more than profits. There's an ethical line between science and cruelty. Teamwork, integrity, and bravery are important when dealing with animals -- and other people. Everyone has a choice to change and make better and more ethical/moral decisions.

Positive Role Models

Owen, Claire, and the three scientists are brave, protective, compassionate. Owen and Claire are more focused on saving their daughter; Dr. Sattler, Dr. Grant, and Dr. Malcolm are interested in saving the world. A couple of conflicted characters grow and change allegiances, but the primary villain remains a stereotypically egomaniacal/quirky tech CEO.

Diverse Representations

Diversity within supporting cast: a Black pilot presented as queer, a Black scientist, and an Asian American scientist who's had a recurring role in the franchise. More female characters in this installment. The ensemble is multigenerational.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that Jurassic World Dominion is the third film in the Jurassic World reboot trilogy and reportedly the final chapter of the entire Jurassic Park franchise. Set four years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom , the story unites Owen ( Chris Pratt ) and Claire ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) from the newer films with scientists Dr. Sattler ( Laura Dern ), Dr. Grant ( Sam Neill ), and Dr. Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum ) from the original movies. Together they must fight the villainous CEO ( Campbell Scott ) of an international genetics/agricultural corporation who's lying about how the company uses dinosaur DNA. Expect plenty of jump scares, human-eating dinosaurs, and epic predator-on-predator fights, but there's a slightly lower body count in this installment than the previous ones. Language includes occasional use of "s--t," "bulls--t," "a--hole," etc., and there are a few embraces and kisses between two different couples. This cast is notably intergenerational and also features more women than others in the series have. As with all Jurassic films, this film continues to explore themes related to science, nature, ethics, teamwork, and prioritizing people over profits. Integrity and perseverance are also on display. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (36)
Kids say (75)

Based on 36 parent reviews

Fun mostly positive send-off for the franchise

Need to flush my brain, worse movie ever., what's the story.

JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION picks up four years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom . Dinosaurs co-exist with humans, and the ones captured and studied belong to Biosyn Genetics, a multinational corporation that houses and studies the dinosaurs in the Dolomite Mountains. Claire ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) and Owen ( Chris Pratt ) live in a remote mountain cabin where they keep Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), now 13, safe. Meanwhile, original Jurassic Park scientist Dr. Ellie Sattler ( Laura Dern ) investigates a swarm of supersized, genetically altered locusts that attack any farm that doesn't grow Biosyn seed. Ellie convinces her former partner, Dr. Alan Grant ( Sam Neill ), to join her on a trip to Biosyn's headquarters to determine whether the corporation is responsible for the killer locusts. They go under the guise of visiting their old colleague Dr. Ian Malcolm ( Jeff Goldblum ), who's on the company's payroll. When poachers kidnap Maisie and a baby velociraptor, Owen and Claire end up tracking her to Biosyn headquarters, where CEO Lewis Dodgson ( Campbell Scott ) is keeping his more nefarious plans top secret.

Is It Any Good?

This franchise finale is saved by the original trio of actors who made the original Jurassic Park memorable. Dern, Neill, and Goldblum add much-needed heft to Jurassic World Dominion as characters who are committed to saving the world. That puts them in contrast to Owen and Claire, who are on an extremely personal mission to rescue their daughter from a profit-seeking corporation. The dinosaurs are less impressive this time around, with familiar (and, at this point, predictable) battles between apex predators and several life-or-death moments. But it is a refreshing change to see the predators stalking around a snowy mountain landscape or co-existing with humans around the world. The movie's visual effects and other technical elements are high-quality, with excellent sound design and another on-point Michael Giacchino soundtrack that incorporates John Williams' original theme.

Directed by Colin Trevorrow from a script he co-wrote with Emily Carmichael, the film reunites the original Jurassic characters with the reboot stars, but the story doesn't come together seamlessly. Some developments feel forced and implausible (even beyond the suspension of disbelief required to watch this franchise), like when two characters emerge from a crash landing without even a visible bruise. The characterization is similarly uneven, although at least the three Jurassic Park actors don't need too much support to embody the scientists many viewers will fondly remember surviving the first film. And, despite its missteps, Dominion still delivers enough tension and edge-of-your-seat dinosaur battle action to entertain and close out the franchise.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in Jurassic World Dominion . How does it compare to the violence in the previous movies in the franchise? Did some of the scenes affect you more than others? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

Discuss the intergenerational aspects of the movie and of the franchise overall. Why do you think there have always been multiple generations in these stories? Is it rare to see multiple generations working together in a Hollywood movie?

Which characters do you consider to be role models ? Why are integrity , perseverance , and teamwork important character strengths ?

Do you think there should be more Jurassic movies? Which elements of the story were left open-ended? What feels resolved?

The movie suggests that people might be able to learn something from dinosaurs. What do you think that means? What could dinosaurs teach us?

Movie Details

In theaters : June 10, 2022
On DVD or streaming : August 16, 2022
Cast : Chris Pratt , Bryce Dallas Howard , Sam Neill , Laura Dern
Director : Colin Trevorrow
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studio : Universal Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Dinosaurs , Friendship , Science and Nature
Character Strengths : Integrity , Perseverance , Teamwork
Run time : 146 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense sequences of action, some violence and language
Last updated : July 11, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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The Jurassic World Trilogy Has Painted Itself Into a Corner

Watching Jurassic World: Dominion , you might find yourself starting to feel just a little sorry for the people who made Jurassic World: Dominion . At the end of the previous film ( Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — these titles start to blend together after a while), dinosaurs had finally been unleashed on the mainland and begun to exist alongside humans. That made for a promising cliffhanger, not to mention some stirring closing images, but it also effectively put the series in a bind. Now that dinosaurs are just, like, out there … what happens next? Why should we care about dinosaurs showing up somewhere since dinosaurs are effectively everywhere? How can the suspense escalate in interesting ways when these prehistoric creatures have become mere background noise?

Sadly, Jurassic World: Dominion appears to have found the answer in not making a dinosaur movie at all. The new film is, at times, a kidnapping thriller, a cloning drama, a Jason Bourne–style action flick, an Indiana Jones derivation, and a disaster movie, among others. It impatiently leaps from subgenre to subgenre with such frantic desperation that it feels like the movie is running from its own lack of imagination. Once upon a time, Steven Spielberg could spend enormous amounts of screen time patiently (and nastily) tightening the screws on a suspense set piece. Jurassic World: Dominion can’t be bothered to spend much time on anything, perhaps because if the movie ever pauses to take a breath, the audience might realize they’re being had. Because if the filmmakers aren’t all that impressed by dinosaurs, then what chance do the rest of us have?

To be fair, there are dinosaurs in Dominion , and there are enough bits of dino business to keep the kids awake, but the film itself clearly finds these creatures mostly unremarkable and uninteresting; one climactic three-way dino fight seems to last for about three minutes. Instead, the movie spends its time on … locusts? Dominion ’s central menace is a mysterious plague of giant locusts that is destroying crops and terrorizing farmers, seemingly unleashed on humanity by a powerful and mysterious biotech firm. Of course, all the Jurassic films like to dwell on the dangers of unchecked science and amoral profiteering (that’s how we got the dinosaurs in the first place), but we don’t go to these movies to see cautionary tales about deluded scientists, we go to see dinosaurs. The scientists are just an excuse to have the dinosaurs — not vice versa.

There are many other things Jurassic World: Dominion assumes. It assumes that we are genuinely interested in the relationship between raptor-trainer and dino-wrangler Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and park manager turned activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). It assumes that we buy Pratt as a wisecracking, can-do tough guy (as opposed to the slightly hapless and overconfident goofball he plays in the Marvel movies, where he fares better). It assumes that we are fully invested in the fate of Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a young girl who was revealed to have been a clone near the end of Fallen Kingdom (long story) and who is now being sought by Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), a soft-spoken but sinister, Steve Jobs–style tech guru who runs the aforementioned biotech company, called Biosyn.

The previous Jurassic World movies did generate tankerloads of money, so perhaps such assumptions were fair ones to make. Owen and Claire are, after all, the heroes of this trilogy. And yet one never really hears about them out here in the real world, the way we once heard about Han Solo and Princess Leia and Indiana Jones and the way we still hear about assorted superheroes, or James Bond and Jason Bourne. (Have you ever seen an Owen Grady lunch box? I sure haven’t.) That is likely because — and I hope you’re sitting down for this — the Jurassic World movies are not about characters; they are about dinosaurs . The original Jurassic Park trilogy (mostly) understood this; the films offered solid character work, but once the time came, the monster-movie spectacle took over.

Dominion also seems to have overestimated the nostalgia factor in bringing back the stars of the first film, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum, treating their relationships like some sacred canon. So, when doctors Ellie Sattler (Dern) and Alan Grant (Neill) are reunited, we learn about her failed marriage, which means there is hope again for them as a couple. Ellie and Alan have been invited to the campuslike headquarters of Biosyn by Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), who has become some sort of in-house philosopher and skeptic for the firm. While it’s certainly nice to see Dern, Neill, and Goldblum play these people again, it’d be nicer if the script gave them well-written dialogue or placed them in interesting situations. A symptom of our current nostalgia-at-all-costs pop-cultural landscape is that all too often filmmakers think it’s enough to just bring back familiar faces. I love Sam Neill, but I’m not sure I needed to see that “raising his head in twinkly-eyed bewilderment” move of his 85 more times.

Anyway, there are foot chases and motorcycle chases, and a plane crash, and a big fire (there’s often a big fire). It’s frantic yet lifeless, chaotic yet pro forma. A thorough lack of care emanates from the screen. At one point, a standoff involving two somewhat major characters is, as far as I can tell, completely abandoned halfway through; these people are never mentioned again. The film cuts so rapidly and so haphazardly among its various plot strands that the filmmakers appear to have lost their own threads.

At times, one can see what director Colin Trevorrow and his collaborators were attempting. Trying to be all things to all people, and to find their way in a universe where dinosaurs roam (and rampage) freely, they decided to mix dinosaurs into these familiar subgenres instead of finding a new story to tell. But the solution reveals the depths of the problem. Because the awe we’re supposed to feel upon seeing these dinosaurs — the entire reason for the movies’ existence — winds up taking a back seat to a cacophony of half-hearted plot points and story lines and twists and throwaway bits. During one chase, a dinosaur does the famous stunt from The Bourne Ultimatum in which Jason Bourne jumped from the window of one building into the window of another. In that earlier picture, the moment took our breath away, because we could see that it was a real stunt, done by real people, and it was something we recognized as being nearly impossible to accomplish. In Dominion , it’s an offhand, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gag, but it’s symptomatic of the movie’s broader issues. Because when the “stunt” is being performed by a CGI dinosaur … well, let’s just say a certain “wow” factor is removed. Which is a bizarre thing to say, because these movies are supposed to be nothing but wow factors. The only wow factor in Jurassic World: Dominion is the awesome depth of its failure.

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Jurassic World Dominion Review

10 Jun 2022

Jurassic World: Dominion

At the end of J.A. Bayona ’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom , dinosaurs and humans start living side by side. While this sadly doesn’t mean velociraptors are now Uber drivers (always give them five stars) or stegosauruses have decent jobs in IT, it does offer a mouth-watering premise for Jurassic World Dominion to explore; two species separated by 65 million years forced to rub along together with no electric fences or Bob Peck to contain the carnage. It’s an idea that Colin Trevorrow ’s franchise finale ultimately ignores, choosing to once again hem in its characters in confined studio-bound forests and dark corridors. It’s a messy, overstuffed affair but delivers dollops of dino goodness, elevated by the return of franchise holy trinity Sam Neill , Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum .

If Spielberg ’s original is about the beauty of the slow burn, Dominion starts at full pelt, throwing in sea-bound mayhem, a dinosaur rescue and a Wild West-style cattle drive, only with parasaurolophuses. Two plot lines emerge — one a dive into the illicit dinosaur black market, the other an almost secret agent story involving genetically modified prehistoric locusts — unified by the corporation Biosyn founded by Lewis Dodgson ( Campbell Scott ) of “Dodgson! It’s Dodgson!” first film fame. You should never trust a company with ‘sin’ baked into the name.

It’s lovely to see Dern, Neill and Goldblum sharing the same frame, the dynamic of the serious scientists exasperated by the rock-star chaotician still gloriously intact.

Dotted throughout are fillips of great action scenes, from a thrilling foot chase and a motorbike pursuit in Malta, a winged serpent taking down an aircraft and a feathered dinosaur (finally) slithering under ice. The best of the bunch is a quieter, more suspenseful sequence as Claire ( Bryce Dallas Howard ) takes refuge underwater with a huge beastie stalking above. But the film is at its best when focused on its original trio. It’s lovely to see Dern, Neill and Goldblum sharing the same frame, the dynamic of the serious scientists exasperated by the rock-star chaotician still gloriously intact. Goldblum in particular adds swagger and levity to a film in danger of becoming po-faced (it’s a great touch that Malcolm slid into Ellie’s DMs in the intervening years — of course he did). It also provides a sharp contrast to the relatively colourless heroes of the later trilogy, Chris Pratt seemingly leaking charisma from film to film and Howard bereft of a character trait you can grasp onto (at least the running in high heels was a thing).

Too many characters hinder investment, an over-abundance of critters (the CG ones look better than the animatronics) dilute the power of a singular Big Bad and the speechifying is occasionally cackhanded, making you pine for the elegant exposition of Mr. DNA. Some of the callbacks are clumsily handled — an iconic Laura Dern moment is squandered early — while some deliver exactly the right frisson; the distinctive sound of dilophosauruses filling a night sky is thrilling. “It never gets old,” says Sattler about the joys of studying dinosaurs, but what’s absent here is the series’ staple of wonder and awe. If we are living in a Jurassic world where dinosaurs are presented as that workaday, now might be the time to stop.

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'Jurassic World: Dominion' has a silly plot, but its dedication to nostalgia delivers a fun dinosaur romp that's better than the last film

Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for "Jurassic World: Dominion."
The third "Jurassic World" is best when the old and new casts are together, but that's not enough.
Despite a silly plot, "Dominion" is an enjoyable, nostalgic romp that should win at the box office.

When a "Jurassic World: Dominion" teaser was released last November, showcasing a T. rex menacingly invading a drive-in theater to destroy cars and property, it set the tone for what viewers are likely expecting from the sequel — dinosaurs on the loose in our world.

After all, 2018's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" ended with all of the dinosaurs escaping the confines of Jurassic Park, free to wreak havoc. In the film's final minutes , Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) teased that we were entering a new era, Jurassic World.

So it's a bit strange that instead of receiving a sequel that delivers on the premise teased in "Fallen Kingdom," returning franchise director Colin Trevorrow brings an overarching plot to "Dominion" that has nothing to do with dinosaurs whatsoever, but rather giant engineered locusts that threaten to wipe out the planet's food supply.

Sure, there are still plenty of dinos, chase sequences, and great T. rex fights, but instead of focusing solely on how the world is acclimating to its new dinosaur inhabitants (we see a bit of that in the film's opening montage with a curated news report about a black market for dinos, illegal breeding, and poachers), the film wastes so much of its potential on a plot to highlight the dangers of one corporation, Biosyn, having too much power.

Diehard "Jurassic" fans will instantly recognize the genetics company from 1993's "Jurassic Park." In this film, not only does its CEO, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), want to have control over every dinosaur species, but he also wants to control the world's food supply chain for a reason that's never really explained other than wanting to be the most powerful man on the planet. (You know, the predictable driving force behind many egotistical super villains.)

None of that silliness matters because the film is rooted in so much nostalgia that it may be enough to keep families satiated, who just want to see dinosaurs and some familiar faces in the form of Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and the original "Jurassic Park" cast reunited on screen.

Twenty minutes could've been trimmed from the film to bring everyone together sooner. Universal Pictures The sequel is at its best when the old and new 'Jurassic' casts are together, but it takes far too long for them to team up.

Surprisingly, Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and Malcolm reprise their "Jurassic Park" roles not to deal with dinosaurs running amok on planet Earth, but instead to expose Biosyn as the company behind the mystery locust outbreak.

Meanwhile the "Jurassic World" gang — Owen Grady (Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Howard) — are on the trail of a stolen teen, Maisie Lockwood (the clone from "Fallen Kingdom" who they're now holding hostage raising as their own), and a baby velociraptor who is apparently an immaculate child of Owen's old raptor pal, Blue. Poachers kidnap both to send them to Biosyn.

If you think everyone's converging at Biosyn early in the film, that's not the case despite what trailers may have you believe . The film spends too much time lollygagging to get everyone to the genetics compound with the locust plotline pushing the film to a bloated two hours and 27 minutes, making "Dominion" the longest movie in the "Jurassic" franchise.

Animatronic and more realistic-looking dinosaurs steal the movie.

The film returned to its roots by utilizing animatronic dinosaurs and finally delivered dinosaurs with feathers. universal pictures.

The cast aside, praise should also be given to animatronics supervisor John Nolan and his team, who created 27 individual dinosaurs for the film, 10 of which are new to "Dominion."

One scene in particular, when Owen enters a shady, underground lair for those who use dinos for sport, gives off massive "Star Wars" cantina vibes as a multitude of animatronic dinos are put on display.

Dinosaur fans and paleontologists may finally be happy that after years of incomplete depictions of dinos in "Jurassic" movies, the film finally showcases some dinosaurs with feathers.

You'll be rewarded if you revisit 1993's 'Jurassic Park' before watching 'Dominion.'

Do you love this scene in "jurassic park" you'll get to revisit a new version of it in "dominion." universal.

"Dominion" has more in common with 1993's "Jurassic Park" than 2018's "Fallen Kingdom" as it revels in the magic of what made the original a success — almost too much.

You won't be lost if you don't rewatch the 1993 film, but you'll certainly get swept up in all the nostalgia if you do. There are so many callbacks and near-recreations of scenes from the original that you'll either love the throwbacks or think "Dominion" is doing a lazy job of simply rehashing what worked in the past in order to tap into fans' love for the franchise.

If you weren't upset that 2015's "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" was essentially a rehash of "A New Hope," then you'll probably enjoy "Dominion" just fine.

Any bad reviews shouldn't hurt this movie at the box office.

Some critics began panning the film online in social reactions Monday. Those likely won't matter at the box office. "Fallen Kingdom," which is a tougher watch than "Dominion" with a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes , grossed over $1 billion worldwide .

People love dinosaurs. Viewers don't care if these films are good or bad. Audiences just want a fun romp at theaters and "Dominion" delivers.

There are some absolutely bonkers scenes in this film. It skims over immaculate conception, cloning, and repeats the name of a new dinosaur — the Giganotosaurus — so many times that it clearly exists just to get kids to ask parents for a toy when you leave theaters. Despite its shortcomings, "Dominion" is an enjoyable outing for families as long as you don't think too hard.

The film's production notes confirm that this is the final installment of the "Jurassic" franchise, and it ends quite neatly with no post-credit scenes.

Though the three-film "World" franchise may be over, there's nothing to stop another "Jurassic" franchise from kicking off. "Dominion" does leave at least one loose end that could make another franchise possible, and as Dr. Malcolm famously says in the film, "Life finds a way."

"Jurassic World: Dominion," also starring BD Wong, Justice Smith, Isabella Sermon, Mamoudou Athie, Omar Sy, and Daniella Pineda, is in theaters Friday.

Main content

Review: Overlong franchise finale ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ falls short of veloci-rapture

Two women encounter a dinosaur in the movie "Jurassic World Dominion."

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“This isn’t about us.” The words arrive late — much too late — into “Jurassic World Dominion,” an underimagined, overlong goodbye to this phase, at least, of a blockbuster franchise that’s overdue for extinction. The speaker is making an obvious point (it’s about the dinosaurs, stupid), but also, in context, a pretty disingenuous one.

Once upon a Michael Crichton-loving epoch — exactly 29 summers ago, when Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” conquered the box office — these giant prehistoric reptiles effortlessly stirred our collective awe, terror and wonderment. But those days now feel as distant as the Late Cretaceous epoch, and this sixth series installment, ostensibly another Mother Nature cautionary tale, feels awfully human-centric and human-driven. For better and for worse, it is about us.

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What this means, practically speaking, is that you’ll spend much of the movie’s 147-minute running time watching seven or eight co-protagonists running around another mad scientist’s dinosaur farm, where bioethical boundaries are once again crossed and security measures are once again doomed to fail.

Chris Pratt is back as that genial raptor whisperer Owen Grady, as is Bryce Dallas Howard as his dino rights-defending better half, Claire. The more exciting news, if you can call it news, is that Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum are reunited for the first time since 1993’s “Jurassic Park” — a fan-service coup that almost compensates for the dim reality of how little they’ve been given to do.

From a narrative standpoint, the most important figure here is Owen and Claire’s adopted daughter, Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the 13-year-old product of a human cloning experiment whose precious genetic code may hold the key to human survival. And survival is key, now that the dinosaurs have broken past their various man-made barriers and migrated all over the planet.

After the relentless claustrophobia of the previous film, 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” there’s a certain relief in seeing these creatures free to roam the planet they once ruled; witness the majestic sight of a friendly, wrinkly apatosaurus experiencing what appears to be its first taste of snow.

That striking image aside, it’s a grave new world indeed. Fishing boats are capsized by creatures from the deep. Winged pteranodons attack from above without warning, and it’s a pter-rible sight indeed.

A deep-pocketed biotech firm called Biosyn has stepped up to provide the dinosaurs with a high-tech mountain sanctuary, and just in case you thought that might be a good thing, the company is run by an eccentric megalomaniac (a perfectly hissable Campbell Scott) whose name, Lewis Dodgson, will jog every “Jurassic Park” fan’s memory. And if all that weren’t enough, a plague of genetically modified giant locusts has descended on farms and fields, threatening to wipe out most of the world’s food supply.

Two men talk as a third man looks on in the movie "Jurassic World Dominion."

Maybe it’s my entomophobia talking, but in a movie about dinosaurs, it’s funny that it takes a swarm of oversize insects to induce even the mildest case of the shivers. Still, for a while, “Jurassic World Dominion” holds your attention, and it does so less insultingly than 2015’s franchise reboot “Jurassic World,” a vapid, hugely profitable foray into blockbuster filmmaking for its director, Colin Trevorrow.

After contributing to the script for 2018’s mildly superior “Fallen Kingdom,” Trevorrow is back at the helm for “Dominion” and clearly determined to engineer his own nostalgia-tickling clone of a grandly old-fashioned Spielberg entertainment.

That’s a tall order, but Trevorrow and his co-writer, Emily Carmichael, do an initially serviceable job of keeping the story’s many unwieldy parts in diverting motion. Much of the first half plays like a globe-trotting espionage thriller, as Owen and Claire get swept up in a kidnapping, a raptor-napping, car chases through the streets of Malta and a brief glimpse inside the ever-growing dinosaur black market, which is sadly not called “Dinos ‘R’ Us.”

The genre template is obvious, but for a “Jurassic” arc, it’s almost novel. It also generates the movie’s one remotely thrilling sequence, involving Owen, a couple of friendly-as-they-sound Atrociraptors and a rusty beater of a plane piloted by the whip-smart Kayla Watts (a very welcome DeWanda Wise).

Meanwhile, the movie busies itself getting the original “Jurassic Park” gang back together, staging a tentative romance between scientists Dr. Ellie Sattler (Dern) and Dr. Alan Grant (Neill) under the least romantic possible circumstances (genetically modified giant locusts!), and then shipping them off to Biosyn’s remote facilities for some undercover snooping.

There’s fleeting pleasure in these scenes, especially once John Williams’ original theme kicks in and that merry theoretician of chaos, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), shows up, wisecracks at the ready. But this is also where tedium sets in, long before the finish, as all the good guys — which is most of the cast, including Mamoudou Athie as a conflicted Biosyn employee — wind up on a long and repetitive collision course, in which scene after scene plays out with zero wit, tension or surprise.

Bryce Dallas Howard in the movie "Jurassic World Dominion."

OK, that’s not entirely true. It is surprising, or at least dispiriting, to see an actor as nimble as Omar Sy ( “Lupin” ) wasted in a few forgettable action scenes. Sadder still is the reduction of a once-proud antagonist, Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong), to a series of self-flagellating “Oh, God. Sorry I unleashed a plague of genetically modified giant locusts” monologues.

For all that, and despite Dodgson’s unambiguous villainy, “Jurassic World Dominion” plays at times like a feature-length biotech promo, anchored by the sight of young Maisie contemplating her own miracle-baby origins and a lot of earnest encomiums about the power of genetic engineering to save us all.

It’s about us, in other words, notwithstanding the movie’s imbecilic “Circle of Life”-style hymn to the wonders of interspecies coexistence. And because it’s about us — well, us and the genetically modified giant locusts — the dinosaurs themselves fade even further into insignificance.

It’s astonishing how little tension or even momentary menace Trevorrow is able to mine from individual action sequences, how tame even T. rex now seems in its late-franchise dotage. The mix of practical and computer-generated effects used to bring these behemoths to life has evolved by leaps and bounds, but their ability to stir and scare us — much less provoke even a moment’s thought — is a thing of the ancient past.

'Jurassic World Dominion'

Rating: PG-13, for intense sequences of action, some violence and language Running time: 2 hours, 27 minutes Playing: Starts June 10 in general release

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'Jurassic World Dominion' Review: Messy Franchise Finale Is Streaming Now

The last Jurassic Park movie is all over the place, and you can check it out on Peacock.

Bryce Dallas Howard gets some of the best scenes in Jurassic World Dominion.

I was in a toy store the other day, and I saw a toy for tiny tots: a cutesy dinosaur with a Jurassic Park sticker on it. It struck me that the kids the toy is aimed at probably weren't born when the last Jurassic World film was released, let alone when Steven Spielberg's original '90s classic came out. And that sums up Jurassic World Dominion -- a familiar logo slapped on a toy that makes no sense at all.

Released in theaters in June, Jurassic World Dominion is streaming on Peacock now, having been released Sept. 2 with extra footage. It's the sixth and final film in the franchise (for now) and unites the stars of the original movies -- Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum -- with the stars of the more recent Jurassic World films: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and, er, some other people. It should be the culmination of a series that for decades has delighted fans and inspired people's interest in dinosaurs.

And sure, this hyperactive, overstuffed widescreen blockbuster is certainly a T. rex-size bucket of popcorn. But if you're emotionally invested in these characters, this world of dinosaurs and humans co-existing, then Dominion doesn't know what to do with you.

The last time we saw the Jurassic World crew was 2018. Fallen Kingdom led to the biggest cliffhanger in the whole franchise, finally fulfilling the threat that's hovered over the series since the beginning: The dinosaurs are out! That promised a sixth and final Jurass-equel that would be the biggest and most bananas yet. Forget about reality, dinosaurs rule the Earth! The gloves are off! Look out, humans!

Chris Pratt's Owen Grady rides a motorbike down stone steps as he's followed by a dinosaur in Jurassic World Dominion

Exit, pursued by a dinosaur.

Except not really. Dominion boasts some cool opening images, like dinosaur cowboys and pterodactyl nests atop skyscrapers. But the film wimps out on that bonkers premise, rowing back the dino-plague to just a few isolated locations and a dark web of breeders, poachers and heavily tattooed cockfighters. Instead, a whole new and unexpected menace is introduced that gives the film a startlingly scary early image, but feels like kind of a sidestep from what should be the main peril. Which is that dinosaurs rule the frickin' Earth.

Co-writer Emily Carmichael cameos as an autograph hunter fangirling over Jeff Goldblum, and you can at least sense the giddy love for the Jurassic series in the whirlwind of action and jokes. But in the hands of co-writer and director Colin Trevorrow that giddiness pinballs all over the place in a script that can't seem to concentrate. It's a Western (with dinosaurs). It's a spy movie (with dinosaurs). It's a Westworld -esque corporate sci-fi conspiracy chiller (with... actually, that bit could've done with more dinosaurs). Dominion tries to be not just a climax to the Jurassic Park series, but also some kind of frenzied culmination of every blockbuster ever. Only with dinosaurs.

No time to dinosaur

The first half is a James Bond film, with globe-trotting undercover agents and shady brokers and a Jason Bourne-esque Mediterranean motorcycle/rooftop chase. Dominion does eventually turns into an actual Jurassic Park movie, with stars dangling precariously in crashed vehicles while a Doyouthinkhesaurus sniffs them out. Bryce Dallas Howard in particular gets a couple of creepily tense scenes. But the whole thing suffers from genre whiplash, struggling to grasp onto the kind of nerve-shredding set pieces that made the original movie(s) so unforgettable. Watch the first Jurassic Park and tell me it would've been improved by a knife fight.

In the hands of director Steven Spielberg, the first Jurassic Park was a glossy blockbuster full of suspense and action, while underpinned by unforgettable characters. And it also had a sly B-movie sense of gallows humor, like that bit where the snivelly lawyer got eaten on the toilet. Dominion doesn't have either the characters or the sense of black comedy. By this point, the characters are all basically the same heroic good guy, with no selfish or untrustworthy or cowardly characters adding texture and suspense. When all the characters are people we know and supposedly love, the action scenes turn into an unwieldy scrum of a group of eight or nine people shuffling around together, with little sense that anyone can do anything unpredictable or that anything unexpected will happen to any of them. If only the film had the conviction to show the heroes being warped by their experiences, or even the courage to have the core cast get eaten. Anything to add some conflict, some unpredictability, anything.

The many stars of Jurassic Park breathes in as a dinosaur bares its fangs at them.

Kayla Watts, Maisie Lockwood, Claire Dearing, Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler and Owen Grady meet a smiling Giganotosaurus.

The film also doesn't really know how to unite the two generations of Jurassic stars, shoving them into a room together and letting them awkwardly stare at each other. There's a lot of "I read your book!" and an eye-rollingly shoehorned "I knew your mother," but really only Goldblum sparks in these overpopulated scenes. The film just can't think of a compelling reason these people need to meet. Compare it with Spider-Man: No Way Home , another nostalgia play merging former generations of a long-running franchise. No Way Home at least came up with affecting emotional problems and cathartic payoffs for Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. By comparison, even with Laura Dern gamely giving it her best shot, the encounter between Park and World stars is disappointingly inert.

One welcome addition is B.D. Wong, the scientist from the first film who's popped up in enough of these things to become a tragic figure, tortured by his mistakes. He's the closest thing to an actual human person, and carries the original film's themes of scientific folly and hubris on his shoulders. We don't see much of him, though: As if the cast wasn't padded enough with old faces, there's also a ton of new characters.

DeWanda Wise's swaggering Han Solo-esque rough diamond pilot is entertaining but never going to do anything unexpected, and oddly sidelines Chris Pratt during the action stuff. Meanwhile, there's no need for not one but two icy evil women villains, or a succession of nothing-y henchmen -- especially as they all have a habit of just disappearing from the story.

But then there are the real stars: the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs will never get old. Still, one of the strengths of the first film was the way it set up certain dinosaurs and their traits, leaving us watching through our fingers as we waited for those lethal traits to be employed against our heroes. Whether it was T. rexes seeing movement or velociraptors getting behind you (clever girl), each action sequence was given a nerve-shredding jolt of tension because we knew what the dinosaurs were capable of. In Dominion, dinos are just kind of there. Paleontology fans will no doubt get a kick out of the assorted creatures (especially the ones with feathers) but it's a missed opportunity to layer in suspense for the average viewer.

By this point, dinosaurs from all different paleontological eras are crashing about the place, with spinosauruses and giganotosauruses and tyrannosauruses going nuts at each other. If you learn anything from the Jurassic Park series, it's that mixing eras is madness. And yet Jurassic World Dominion splices nostalgic eras and movie genres and just about any other DNA it can lay its hands on. The result is a primordial soup of a few entertaining scares, but it's 65 million years away from making any sense.

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Jurassic World Rebirth

Five years post-Jurassic World Dominion, an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough. Five years post-Jurassic World Dominion, an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough. Five years post-Jurassic World Dominion, an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.

Gareth Edwards
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Trivia Gareth Edwards "dropped everything" to direct the film, stating before production, "I was about to take a break and I started writing my next idea for a film and this is the only movie that would make me drop everything like a stone and dive right in. I love Jurassic Park (1993) ...so this opportunity is like a dream to me. And to work with Frank Marshall and Universal and David Koepp , who's writing the script, I think they're all legends. So I'm just very excited."
July 2, 2025 (United States)
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COMMENTS

Jurassic World Dominion
Rated: 2.5/5 Jul 23, 2024 Full Review Sarah Vincent Sarah G Vincent Views "Jurassic World: Dominion" does a good job of finding a reason to introduce the "Jurassic World" regulars to the ...
Jurassic World: Dominion movie review (2022)
Maisie is one of many major characters featured in "Dominion," and her tragic predicament has disturbing new details added to it. But returning franchise director/co-writer Colin Trevorrow (writer/director of "Jurassic World") and his collaborators are unable to focus on their deeper implications long enough to develop Maisie with the sophistication required for a great or even good ...
'Jurassic World Dominion' Review: Extinction Rebellion
PG-13. Running Time. 2h 26m. Genres. Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi, Thriller. Movie data powered by IMDb.com. A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the ...
Jurassic World Dominion
Jurassic World: Dominion is impressive in its ability to flush away all the good will of the films that came before it. By the 90-minute mark, the audience is almost rooting for the locusts to win.
Jurassic World Dominion First Reviews: A Franchise Finale Full of Fan
If you love dinosaurs, Jurassic World Dominion has a lot of them, and if you love the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, it has a lot of characters from each, as well. The sixth feature installment of the nearly 30-year-old franchise is the biggest and longest, if not among the best, according to the first reviews.
Jurassic World Dominion Review
Characters new and old keep the film flying high, even if some of the Claire and Owen stuff makes the plane's engine sputter now and again. Jurassic World Dominion Review. 7. Review scoring ...
Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)
After 80% of the movie is finished and we have gone over the revisiting our "favourite" Jurassic characters and our classic Jurassic scenes phase, the predictable ending occurs. And you realize the movie was as a wonderful and full of quality content as a dino fart. 1,574 out of 1,856 found this helpful.
'Jurassic World Dominion' review: Best since first 'Jurassic Park'
Although overly familiar, "Dominion" boasts everything you'd ever want in a "Jurassic" film and is the best in the series since the original 1993 movie. (That said, apart from Steven ...
Jurassic World Dominion review: Let's get these dinosaurs to the
Jurassic World Dominion (opening June 10), the sixth and, hopefully, final entry in a series of diminishing returns, takes us back to ethics-challenged scientists in remote labs and a general lack ...
'Jurassic World Dominion' Review: Laura Dern and Sam Neill ...
The locust problem is an excuse to bring back Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (Sam Neill). For the franchise's teenage target market, the original is a "classic" movie too old for ...
'Jurassic World Dominion': Film Review
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, BD Wong, Omar Sy, Campbell Scott, Isabella Sermon. Director: Colin Trevorrow ...
Jurassic World Dominion Movie Review
Our review: Parents say (36 ): Kids say (75 ): This franchise finale is saved by the original trio of actors who made the original Jurassic Park memorable. Dern, Neill, and Goldblum add much-needed heft to Jurassic World Dominion as characters who are committed to saving the world.
Jurassic World Dominion
Summary Dominion takes place four years after Isla Nublar has been destroyed. Dinosaurs now live—and hunt—alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history's most fearsome creatures ...
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
Jurassic World Dominion: Directed by Colin Trevorrow. With Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill. Four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, Biosyn operatives attempt to track down Maisie Lockwood, while Dr Ellie Sattler investigates a genetically engineered swarm of giant insects.
Movie Review: Jurassic World: Dominion, Starring Chris Pratt
Movie Review: Jurassic World: Dominion, the third film of the blockbuster trilogy, seems to have forgotten that these movies are supposed to be about dinosaurs. Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard ...
Jurassic World Dominion Review
Release Date: 09 Jun 2022. Original Title: Jurassic World: Dominion. At the end of J.A. Bayona 's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs and humans start living side by side. While this sadly ...
'Jurassic World: Dominion' Review: a Silly Nostalgic Dinosaur Romp
After all, 2018's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" ended with all of the dinosaurs escaping the confines of Jurassic Park, free to wreak havoc. In the film's final minutes, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff ...
'Jurassic World Dominion' review: Overlong, tedious finale
Review: Overlong franchise finale 'Jurassic World Dominion' falls short of veloci-rapture. DeWanda Wise, left, and Laura Dern in the movie "Jurassic World Dominion.". (John Wilson ...
'Jurassic World Dominion' Review: Messy Franchise Finale Is ...
And that sums up Jurassic World Dominion -- a familiar logo slapped on a toy that makes no sense at all. Released in theaters in June, Jurassic World Dominion is streaming on Peacock now, having ...
'Jurassic World Dominion' Review Thread : r/movies
SanderSo47. ADMIN MOD. 'Jurassic World Dominion' Review Thread. Review. Rotten Tomatoes: 37% (158 reviews) with 5.0 in average rating. Critics consensus: Jurassic World Dominion might be a bit of an improvement over its immediate predecessors, but this franchise has lumbered a long way down from its classic start. Metacritic: 38/100 (48 critics)
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
Jurassic World Rebirth: Directed by Gareth Edwards. With Scarlett Johansson, Ed Skrein, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali. Five years post-Jurassic World Dominion, an expedition braves isolated equatorial regions to extract DNA from three massive prehistoric creatures for a groundbreaking medical breakthrough.
Jurassic World
Jurassic World is a 2015 American science fiction action film directed by Colin Trevorrow, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, and Derek Connolly from a story by Jaffa and Silver. [5] It is the first installment in the Jurassic World series and the fourth installment overall in the Jurassic Park film series, following Jurassic Park III (2001).
Every Dinosaur In Jurassic World: Dominion Explained
Jurassic World: Dominion is the final movie in the Jurassic World trilogy, a fact it attempted to celebrate by reintroducing a score of characters, and dinosaurs, from the first Jurassic Park in 1993.

Jurassic World: Dominion

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