Why did we queue up Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)? We had already determined that we don't care about these movies. Are we hoping that they'll get better? Or is it just because they are there?
My memories of this movie are already a bit hazy. As far as I can reconstruct, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are living off the grid, raising some dinos and a girl, Isabella Sermon, who is a clone of someone from another movie. They try to keep her from the outside world, but she gets kidnapped by evil corporate head Campbell Scott (character name: Lewis Dodgson, after Mark Twain or something). So they go to find her in Malta.
Meanwhile, Laura Dern figures out that the huge mutant locusts that are eating all the crops (except those from Biosyn seeds, Scott's evil corp) use dino DNA. She teams up with good old Jeff Goldblum, now one of those TEDtalking science influencifiers, and they go after Biosyn.
Biosyn has a couple of other bad guys. BD Wong is the bioengineer who wants Sermon's clone DNA for something nefarious, and Mamadou Athie is the corporate flunky enabling Scott. They have some good times later on.
What else can I say? This movie has several Elon Musk/Tony Stark style mad scientist/influencers, not just Goldblum. It also has some mildly interesting Malta locations. It has the usual Jurassic franchise competing themes of "Aren't these dinos cute and/or majestic?", "Aren't these dinos deadly/ecologically harmful?", and of course, "Aren't corporations jerks?". It should be possible to balance them successfully, but I don't think director Colin Treverrow succeed.
They do better with the whole grandeur of dinosaurs part, and Chris Pratt gets to do his dino-whisperer act. But I noticed even more swipes from Disney's Fantasia in this one. For example, diplodocus in the swamp with a raging fire in the background. They way they lift their heads as if wondering where the meteor hit - it made me start humming the Rites of Spring. Well, I guess it doesn't hurt to steal from the best.
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