The Jurassic Era Ends with a Roar

By Mark Cerulli

Almost 30 years ago, Jurassic Park thundered into theaters, forever changing the cinematic landscape. Steven Spielberg’s iconic film was based on Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel that brilliantly channeled people’s endless fascination with dinosaurs. It was beyond a box office hit, grossing close to a billion dollars during its 1993 release. It also revolutionized visual effects, leaving old-school stop motion dinosaurs in its dust.

Jurassic World: Dominion ain’t your father’s Jurassic Park… This 6^th and “final” instalment in the JP franchise is a huge, loud, expansive spectacle that brings together the original cast (including dinosaurs) and the franchise’s 2^nd generation stars for one last scaly hurrah.

The film opens with a cable news clip that tells us that dinosaurs have escaped from the ruins of Isla Nublar and are now everywhere. Once that has been established, director Colin Trevorrow puts the cinematic pedal down and doesn’t let up for two hours and twenty-seven minutes. The somewhat muddied plot involves Biosyn, the shady corporate heir to John Hammond’s InGen, run by Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), a Jeff Bezos type who is using dino DNA to “benefit mankind”. Uh huh. (If Dodgson’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was the original bagman who handed Dennis Nedry the infamous can of shaving cream/bio-sample tubes in the original film.)

Luckily, Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is onto Biosyn, corralling her reluctant former colleague Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to visit their remote headquarters where the third member of the original Jurassic team, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) is a visiting scholar in residence. The Biosyn retreat is also a world sanctuary for… dinosaurs. The OTHER parallel-running plot involves the genetically-engineered child (the wonderful Isabella Sermon) of an original Jurassic Park scientist who is in hiding with Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). Her unique genetic makeup makes her a very valuable commodity and a target for kidnappers. The two Jurassic Park worlds - old and new - collide when she is kidnapped and Owen and Claire follow her trail from the Pacific Northwest to the alleyways of Malta and, the futuristic Biosyn complex itself. There are breathtaking man v. dinosaur chases that rival any James Bond or Jason Bourne pursuit. Jurassic World Dominion also drifts into Indiana Jones territory with a knock-down, drag-out fight in a seedy dinosaur smuggler’s market, complete with a dino fighting pit, of course!

Trevorrow, who ably helmed the previous two Jurassic Park movies, really hits his stride with this film – from a dino roundup on horseback in a vast prairie to stunning mountain photography in the Italian Alps and dino-mayhem in the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest. The film brings back old favorites like the T-Rex and the raptor “Blue”, and introduces new ones like the Quetzalcoatlus, a huge, feathered dinosaur and the Dreadnoughtus, which resembles a Brontosaurus on steroids – 27 dinosaur species in all. According to the production materials, each creature was grounded in reality under the strict supervision of a leading paleontologist. The film’s visual effects are rivalled only by its audio effects – every crash is bone-jarring and the various dino roars are teeth-rattling.

While Pratt and Howard are great performers and have developed a wonderful onscreen chemistry, it’s the return of the original cast members – Neill, Dern and Goldblum that really got the preview audience clapping. Even original JP scientist Henry Wu (BD Wong) is on hand to try to rectify his mistakes. They all step back into their roles as easily as you’d pull on a favorite shirt; and Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm patois is as wry and quirky as it was in 1993. Time has been kind to them all.

For this epic conclusion to the cinematic Jurassic era, Universal has pulled out all the stops and is seeing their cash cowasaurus off with a bang.