This Is the Worst Jurassic Park Movie (And I Can Prove It)

While Jurassic Park remains one of the greatest movies of all time, the track record of its sequels is far shoddier. Rarely has a masterpiece produced so many direct follow-ups that were so dismal and missed the point of what made the original work so well. Heck, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s lone additional directorial effort in the saga, is handily Spielberg’s weakest motion picture. All the fun, theatricality, and pitch-perfect casting marking that first Jurassic Park was later swapped out for limp staging and dire human drama.

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Still, those who think that a raptor yelling “ALAN!” in Jurassic Park III was the nadir of the franchise have missed the mark. The Jurassic World trilogy, which started in 2015, is where the weakest moments of the saga began. Inevitably, this culminated in the finale of Colin Trevorrow’s trilogy, Jurassic World Dominion, becoming the worst Jurassic Park movie by far.

What Makes Dominion the Low Point of The Jurassic Park Saga?

Remember when people complained that Jurassic Park III had a runtime beneath 100 minutes? That Joe Johnston directorial effort suffered from severe pacing problems, no question, particularly with how its climax doesn’t exist. However, that brief runtime is infinitely preferable to Jurassic World Dominion’s bloated runtime, which made it the first installment in the franchise to exceed 130 minutes in length. Running 147 minutes, Dominion lasts for an eternity as it juggles endless subplots concerning Jurassic World’s new characters, as well as veteran Jurassic Park characters (including Dr. Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm).

Brevity is not the name of the game here. Dominion‘s script, penned by Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael, instead opts to have the World and Park characters exist in entirely removed subplots for nearly the entire runtime. To say this results in something disjointed is an understatement, especially since there are also further subplots involving clone girl Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), and Claire Dearing’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) new reckless pal Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise). All of their actions inexplicably revolve around super-sized locusts causing chaos in the real world. Not dinosaurs. Locusts.

Naturally, Dominion is a bloated creation in terms of human characters and gargantuan bugs, but it opts for limited dinosaur action. Fallen Kingdom‘s cliffhanger ending, promising dinosaur and human society colliding, is eschewed save for a brief sequence where dinosaurs rampage across Malta. Otherwise, Dominion is an oddly derivative exercise. This includes a third act, once again confining dinosaur carnage to a remote laboratory surrounded by natural foliage. This plot turn leads all of Dominion’s characters to converge on an isolated compound owned by villain Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) that might as well reside on Isla Nublar or Sorna.

Not even a third act ramping up the dino action and finally bringing these characters together can inject excitement into the proceedings. Dominion’s scattered narrative approach makes it a chore to get to “the fireworks factory”.

Jurassic World Dominion Struggles As A Standalone Movie

Frustratingly, Trevorrow and Carmichael conclude Dominion’s labyrinthine web of melodramatic human subplots with a couple of CG dinosaurs duking it out. This includes the franchise’s beloved T-Rex from the first movie fighting with a Giganotosaurus (a Therizinosaurus also comes to the Rex’s aid). The fight starts with an eyeroll-worthy bit of “fan-service” where the T-Rex is seen through a circular object, which evokes the Jurassic Park logo. Subsequently, though, the T-Rex and Gigantosaurus duel pays off a previous skirmish between the beasts from thousands of years ago seen in a Dominion prologue that preceded F9: The Fast Saga in IMAX.

On its own merits, this skirmish is a hollow retread of the Velociraptor vs. T-Rex fight that wrapped up the first Jurassic Park or Jurassic World’s climactic dino duel. However, it’s extra befuddling and frustrating that a core emotional undercurrent to this fight will be incoherent unless you’ve seen a separate short film. Just before this fight, Dodgson perishes at the hands of some Dilophosaurus. Previously, these critters killed of Dodgson’s inside man, Denis Nedry, in the original Jurassic Park decades earlier. Dodgson even dies clutching a Barbasol can of dino DNA like Nedry.

Dominion is such an inert exercise that its ending is full of material that only matters when adding outside context. It’s just fan-service and pay-offs to Chekhov’s Guns from other projects. Combine that with the shockingly poor lighting choices of this nighttime dinosaur battle, and Dominion leaves an awful taste in one’s mouth. All of this comes after a movie that was already pretty poor on all fronts, including delivering the bare amount of spectacle a dinosaur-centric blockbuster should deliver. Trevorrow and company instead focused on having esteemed actors like Laura Dern deliver cringeworthy lines about how “he slid into my DM’s” or “it’s always darkest just before eternal nothingness.”

Watching Jurassic World Dominion is like staring into nothingness. Even its use of practical effects and locations elicits a shrug thanks to the indifferent shooting style. Not even composer Michael Giacchino, usually a reliable source of energy in zippy blockbusters, can imbue extra fun into the production. Other weak Jurassic Park installments like The Lost World or Fallen Kingdom had one or two set pieces that showed admirable theatricality or visual panache; Dominion, though, sees hollowness annihilating this franchise like a cataclysmic asteroid obliterating a dinosaur-populated Earth. The dinosaur-centric screentime is minimal. The obtuse narrative decisions are endless. Worst yet, all Dominion can do is call back to an infinitely superior motion picture from 1993 that you could just watch instead.

Jurassic World Dominion is now streaming on Peacock.