Jurassic World Dominion (Colin Trevorrow, 2022, USA/Malta)

Jurassic World Dominion is the latest and sixth entry into the Jurassic Park franchise. The immense success of Steven Spielberg's landmark and iconic 1993 first film almost guaranteed that the series would turn into a franchise, though the results have been mixed. While all sequels have uniformly performed quite well at the box office, they have been mostly met with mixed reception - particularly by critics. Dominion has been met with the worst critical reception of any Jurassic film up to this point. What does this legacy sequel get wrong? 

Dominion sparked our interest by bringing back many of the cast members from the original Jurassic Park, reprising their roles - Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and even B.D. Wong. At the same time, the franchise had been revitalized several years ago with a new cast of younger faces, namely Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. The script's attempt here to successfully integrate the legacy characters and the new character is a bit clumsy. We can feel the writers' furiously attempting to bring together these two worlds as we watch the film, leading to a work that somehow feels disjointed.

While there are some interesting visual ideas - I can think of the monster coming up through the ice - overall Dominion relies too heavily on CGI, and this ends up feeling rather cheap overall. The writing is also poor, with Chris Pratt, in particular, appearing quite lifeless on screen despite his usual charm in other movies. Dominion is not awful, and will certainly entertain younger audiences with its dinosaur battles, but as a legacy sequel, it pales in comparison to a much stronger effort like its fellow summer blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick. Undoubtedly the Jurassic franchise will continue if the financial success of Jurassic World Dominion is any indication.

5/10