Jurassic World

Jurassic World Dominion is a good action film, but it fails to address or understand the themes behind Jurassic Park as a whole.

Maverick is, for all intents and purposes, an ending for the character of the same name, at least in terms of his career with the Navy. It harkens back to a time when blockbusters were just that — a movie to be talked about all summer, not for the next 30 years as the studio continues to produce spin-offs. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunch box, and now you’re selling it. Hell, even the five minutes that Val Kilmer appeared as Iceman Kazansky in Maverick — despite being unable to speak because of a battle with throat cancer — felt more emotionally satisfying than the ninety minutes of screentime the iconic heroes had. Ian Malcolm types — and hell, even Ellie Sattler types — would never survive in the archetypal climate that Jurassic World has created for itself, and they barely survive in Dominion, despite being the part of the film most audiences are looking forward to. Co-writers Colin Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael seem to misunderstand the characters as they were at the end of Jurassic Park, having learned lessons and been traumatized in a way no one else can relate to. The problem with Jurassic World is not that it’s nostalgia bait, because nostalgia baiting would imply that the sequel trilogy — particularly Dominion — understands any of what makes people nostalgic for Jurassic Park in the first place. Rebooting the franchise under the premise of launching a successful dinosaur park was already enough of a slight against the original film, but to skew into post-apocalyptic sci-fi where legacy characters are on a mission against a character with five lines from the original is simply unfounded and confusing. There was never a need for sequels to begin with — Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton was even pressured by fans and studios to write The Lost World back in 1995 — and Jurassic World feels like an almost plastic replacement, too shiny and perfect for a franchise supposedly about man-eating dinosaurs. Jurassic World does none of that, simply canning the idea of “bringing back dinosaurs” as a concept to sell toys and shirts and plastic lunch boxes. For people who aren’t invested in the long-running success of the franchise like I am (hello, you’re talking to the gal with a “life finds a way” tattoo), it’s a serviceable way to spend two and a half hours on a Friday night, particularly with kids. The last film in the rebooted trilogy, Jurassic World Dominion, is slated to be one of many blockbusters hitting cinemas this year, and it’s closing out the trilogy with a bang, playing on nostalgia and bringing back some of the franchise’s most iconic imagery. I call it the Mamma Mia Rule: you don’t go into that film for the plot, you go into it to watch hot people sing ABBA songs, and that’s why you enjoy it.