Jurassic Bugs Dominate This World

“Do you promise it’s over?” Jurassic World: Dominion, Universal Pictures (2022)

By C. A. Ramirez

Dinosaurs play second fiddle to grasshoppers and Apple’s CEO.

Hollywood is still out of ideas. 

Jurassic Park was an Oscar winning, accolade saturated, work of cinematic art. It is incomparable. Few filmmakers can capture lightning in a bottle the way Spielberg was able to then. Unfortunately, the Jurassic Park series has no story to tell after the 1993 film. The question of, “can dinosaurs and humans coexist?”, was asked and answered with that film: “no”. Jurassic World: Dominion’s CG laden soapbox regurgitates that same tired trope, like an uncle at Thanksgiving explaining the flat-Earth theory, “can humans and dinosaurs coexist?”. For the last time, no!

The worst part about Jurassic World: Dominion is that it has no plot. There is literally no reason to tell this story, again. This ridiculous premise was answered in 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park. One of the worst entries in the series by far, it suffers from the same idea, “what if dinosaurs…wouldn’t that be…?” No, no it would not. When did Hollywood start developing movies based on, “who would win, a shark with a sword or a crab with a rocket launcher?”. For the sweet love of every competent writer and director who has ever contributed to the stellar body of work that made Hollywood gleam, studios need to place value in competent writers. In the words of Ian Malcolm, Jurassic World: Dominion, “is one big pile of shit.”.

Movies need a flawed villain that reflects the fears and trepidations of its heroes. John Hammond was the original villain in Jurassic Park. A villain in the making, and all that needs to occur is for his world to become unstable, revealing that he didn’t have all the answers after all. Flying too close to the sun on genetically modified wings can be dangerous. Hammond was well-written, and his performance was stellar, on par with his acting career. Jurassic Park: Dominion has the worst antagonist that I hope to ever see in a movie, Lewis Dodgson. Dodgson was modeled directly after Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, and it is an absolute disaster.

Cook, I mean Dodgson, is the head of yet another corporation that is going to use Dinosaur DNA to do this and do that and help humanity because nothing else on Earth can do what it does…Oh my God, what a train wreck. Once again, the audience is forced to entertain the beaten horse that Dinosaurs can help us. We just need to find out how. We’re the problem, not them. The whole conviction of this story mechanic falls on deaf ears. No one in the audience can be convinced that now, this time around, things will work out. Unfortunately, Dodgson has spliced Cretaceous DNA into, wait for it, grasshoppers, or locusts. Yup, the cures to debilitating diseases can only be solved by creating a hybrid species of prehistoric grasshopper (or locust). The best way to tell a stupid story is without intelligence.

Back in a jungle in a somewhere with some dinos. Jurassic World: Dominion, Universal Pictures (2022)

The way this story is told is about as nonsensical as the decision a group of teens makes to split up once they enter a haunted house. Chris Pratt’s beloved raptor, Blue is back, of course, and he/she has a baby…ok. A major theme of Jurassic Park: Dominion is the sanctity of familial relationships, and it lands with two broken ankles before slamming its face against the mat. Blue’s kid, “Baby”, is of course being hunted by yet another biomedical research group because once again Blue’s DNA, blah, blah, blah. Oh wait, there’s also a social justice warrior thread concerning a synthetic human made by one of the original researchers that worked with Hammond once upon a time. Kill me.

The world is filled with dinosaurs. Little raptors harass kids playing in desert towns, while Brontosauruses hold up traffic at a construction site. Yes, the world is adapting, dare I say, evolving; a new symbiotic relationship is emerging. But wait, Grasshoppers! The grasshoppers are swarming, turning into unstoppable locusts. The screenwriters, being without Wikipedia, the internet, or a book, conjured a plot that no one cares about and one that isn’t even sound to begin with. I never imagined insects would replace the threat posed by dinosaurs running amuck, but here we are. I digress, this is the new Hollywood, “a cogent story and plot? Get security!”. The locusts are reproducing at an accelerated rate thanks to the Cretaceous splicing done by Tim Cook, and are now more of a threat to the world than the dinosaurs…ok.

Naturally, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are back, and so is Maisie, an artificially created human or something, I don’t know – I couldn’t follow the ins and outs of a family dynamic that feels nothing like a family. Maisie likes to run off too, which is just perfect for a “plot” that has her as the genetic key to destroying the grasshoppers, because she was created by a doctor who worked with Hammond…like Cotton Hill at a urinal, it’s a stretch. Something, something, something, a movie that sells more toys. But wait, there’s more! Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant are both back in the picture and they’re both single! I wonder if there’s room for love to blossom? Stay tuned dear viewers! Even our favorite “chaotician” is back, Dr. Ian Malcolm. Member berries aplenty, never mind about a plot that makes sense, or characters with actual arcs, a believable world, or even a compelling narrative – nope. Those contrivances are for the birds, let’s just shoot everything against a digital backdrop. We’ve got toys to sell!

Jurassic World: The Swarm or Jurassic World: Dominion?

Maisie and Blue’s baby are kidnapped by the evil, enter generic corporate name “______syn”, and the pair are whisked away to Tim Cook’s evil lair, where they alter last year’s iPhone to look a little different and work a little worse. Here, is where we meet another member berry, B.D. Wong. He’s back too. He created the grasshoppers because of course he did. There is nothing in that character’s past that would ever make him reconsider using cretaceous DNA spliced in a modern-day organism, yet he has absolutely no hesitation to create another world wrecking abomination – thanks dude, you do you…to hell with the consequences? Now that we’ve established the plot; grasshoppers, a synthetic human, Tim Apple, aged member berries, and oh yea, dinosaurs – we can get into the rest of the movie…oh, wait, that’s it.

The beginning doesn’t make sense. Howard is documenting the harsh treatment of an illegal Dinosaur breeding farm somewhere in middle America. Their mission is to observe and report the illegal activity. Which spurs Howard’s character to break from the plan and steal a sick dinosaur. This prompts alarms to go off and a lackluster chase ensues, but of course, our fateful heroin gets away. Mind you, Howard is supposed to be keeping a low-profile because she and Pratt are hiding Maisie, who cannot be found. Obviously, the best thing to do when staying under the radar, is to break into a dinosaur breeding farm and create a ruckus that will invariably attract attention to you. The sick dinosaur they save also has no impact on the story, we never see it again and it doesn’t do anything but show that Howard can’t follow directions and only makes things worse for everyone around her. Way to go, instead of a damsel in distress we got a distressed damsel that can’t follow a simple plan – a wonderful contradiction to what made everything great about Dr. Sattler’s character is iconic in Jurassic Park. Blue’s baby is in custody and Maisie is kidnapped, and since we don’t care about either one of them, the plot stays behind at the dock as the story gets sucked into an undertow of haphazardly constructed characters, paper thin plot, and disastrous action sequences. 

A ten-year-old with a TBI could have written better dialogue, and a Bonobo monkey, high on the purest crack, could have shot it more competently. Every moment of Jurassic Park: Dominion feels like an eternity. I could not wait for this movie to end. Four couples and a family with kids walked out on this movie and this occurred at an iPic Theatre. A movie theater that serves its patrons gourmet popcorn, decent bar food, and alcohol – none of those luxuries could save this film from people being completely bored. A young couple left 20 minutes before the end, sighing in desperation as they left. I wish I could reproduce their collective sigh; a more honest and accurate review of the film could not exist. The editor, producer, or some other fanged creature, discovered the shaky cam feature, every action sequence looks as though a dozen high voltage vibrators made by McDonnel Douglass were duct taped to the lens. There must be a video game aficionado amongst them because there is enough motion blur to induce vomiting from a fighter pilot. This movie screams, “help me Spielberg, you’re the only one who can film a decent Jurassic Park movie, help me Spielberg.”

Ian Malcolm is at the forefront of the fight against using dinosaurs in any way for human benefit because it can only lead to chaos. Malcolm is also working closely with Tim Apple, because Tim Apple comes off as a good guy at first. A persnickety techie who may be awkward but has good intentions, helping construct a habitat where Dinosaurs can live peacefully, a Zuckerberg who means well…gross. However, Malcolm knows the truth. Tim Apple is not what he seems so he contacts the authorities. INTERPOL, Scotland Yard, even MI6 and the CIA – the world must know that Tim Apple is behind the grasshoppers. I jest. Since he uncovered a globally catastrophic plot, Malcolm enlists Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant to carry out an act of corporate espionage because that’s what paleontologists do. Holy cow, this movie is a disaster. Meanwhile, Maisie is being flown all over the world by a nefarious group contracted by the generic corporation, “_____syn”, so the audience can see how badly dinosaurs are being treated on an international level. Raptors are being trained as killers, with notions that they can become the next big thing in warfare or security, or something. It was so ham-handed I ended up not caring. The point is, humans are bad, dinosaurs good.

Maisie finds her way back into the hands of “_____syn”, and now the story really deflates. While Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler, paleontologists turned corporate spies, meander through the halls of Tim Apple’s corporate hell hole, Maisie literally wanders into the room. How fortunate! Just as Dr. Grant and Sattler acquire the sample from the grasshopper, needed to prove Tim Apple’s guilt, the human McGuffin falls ass backwards into the arms of characters that don’t know who she is or why she is important. Don’t worry dear audience, Maisie tells Dr. Grant and Sattler that, “my mother worked with Dr. Hammond.” Cue the Oscar clap, and brace for the roar of the crowd. One line of dialogue glues two sets of characters that have never met by referencing another, compelling and rich Hollywood, such art. Now that Grant and Sattler have proof Tim Apple is a nefarious douche canoe AND they also found the human McGuffin, they can now meet up with Chriss Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard – oh yea. They found their way to Tim Cook’s remote hideaway. There was a plane and a pilot and they kind of all came together but of course a huge flying dinosaur cut that trip short. No need to worry, they crash landed in a frozen lake but were uninjured, as tends to be the case. Able bodied enough to make it into Tim Cook’s penetrable fortress of plot holes, and malformed character arcs; they also run into Dr. Sattler and Grant and the human McGuffin. It's actually quite remarkable, two sets of characters with no prior relation ended up meeting each other in Tim Apple’s corporate monstrosity, it is uncanny. Truly a magical movie moment, too bad we don’t care about whether any of these characters live or die.

In possession of incriminating evidence, Tim Apple realizes his goose is cooked. The world will know that it was “_____syn” who created the super grasshoppers. Oh yea, remember the grasshoppers? They never left, and the entire time these half-baked shells, called characters, have been fumbling around the world, the grasshoppers have been ruining it. The whole world is on the brink of extinction and NO ONE cares. The world at large isn’t shown suffering, farmers aren’t shown destitute; holding their hands out, broken and poor. Nope. The worst thing to happen to planet Earth does so in isolation from the audience. No one seems affected by this seemingly horrid turn of events except a cast of characters that will make you wish the meteor from Deep Impact was minutes away from impact.

Tim Apple is killed by spitting dinosaurs WHILE holding the can of shaving cream that Nedry dropped in Jurassic Park. The member berries are so dense in this train wreck of a film that you can’t help but wonder who greenlit this atrocity. The can is not referenced once in the film, it's not used as a vehicle to tell Tim Apple’s origin story or anything about him. Did I not mention that? We know NOTHING about the villain. He has no depth. Let me repeat this: the villain has no arc. John Hammond had a vision to create a world that was as enchanting as his flea circus, but real and tangible, an experience you can feel and touch. That scene was organic because it was improvised by Richard Attenborough, the flea circus being one of his fondest and earliest memories as a child with his mother. It was seamlessly blended into the script, lending a glimpse of who Hammond is, revealing what motivated him to create Jurassic Park in the first place. None of that character detail, progression, or arc is present in Tim Cook. Apple’s CEO not only possesses zero substance, he is forgettable as soon as he enters the movie and when he dies, there is no emotion. No one cheered in the theaters, no one gasped. By the time the villain in Jurassic Park: Dominion is killed, the only emotion the audience has left to feel is relief. The death of the “villain” means the end of the film is near, thanks to Christ, Vishnu, Mohammed, Shiva, and that one guy who started the Mormon religion. The amount of boredom and confusion plastered on the rest of the movie goers among me was depressing. We all looked as though we were tricked into being members of a studio audience being pitched a line of products from “As Seen on TV”, a stupefying experience to say the least.

Ah yes, the conclusion. The death of Tim Apple leads our rudderless story to its inevitable end. Humans will just have to live with dinosaurs. “Mankind had their shot and nature SELECTED them for extinction.”, nope, mankind will be just fine. The last 7 films have proven exactly this, right? Oh, dinosaurs killed a lot of people in those films? Humans never really figured out a way to live with them peacefully? Strange how species separated by millions of years of evolution are not getting along…I don’t know, that might offend people on Twitter. Can’t we make a film that doesn’t objectify dinosaurs negatively? They aren’t bad. It's not their fault they are alive and thriving. Sure, we can’t walk down the street without worrying about a raptor flanking our five-year-old, or dodge a T-Rex meandering through the Redwood Forest. The improbable and illogical can work out, we just haven’t tried hard enough. After three decades the Jurassic Park franchise ends by trying to topple its stellar beginning. Casting aside the moral and philosophical dilemma of resurrecting extinct animals for personal gain or scientific advancement. Jurassic Park: Dominion spits in the face of one of the most beloved movies, Jurassic Park. Humans and dinosaurs CANNOT live together, no matter what you do and try, “life finds a way.” Hollywood would be wise to never reboot, redux, re-release, repackage, or resurrect in any way, shape, or form, Jurassic Park. Thankfully, this was the last in the “franchise”, and I hope whoever wrote and shot this cinematic abortion goes back to film school because they slept through every class. 

Sorry about that. Yea, they kill all the bugs. The end.