Stream It Or Skip It: 'Jurassic World: Dominion' on Prime Video, the Third and Final Movie In The New Trilogy Of The Familiar Franchise

 

 

 

Arriving on Prime Video on January 6, 2023, Jurassic World Dominion all but begs one to recall the infamous Jurassic Park scene in which Laura Dern goes elbow-deep into a pile of triceratops shit. Dominion brings Dern back to the franchise, along with her old pals Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neill, who collide, in an explosion of stars, with new-trilogy mainstays Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt for a simple story of human-dinosaur relations designed to put a nice, tidy bow (for now, at least) on all this bloated, moronical and generally entertaining nonsense. Of course, this what’s-old-is-new-again-and-what’s-new-is-still-old dinos-amok film was a substantial box office hit, with folks worldwide flocking to theaters for the spectacle, which includes the introduction of a new heckalottofasaurus or whatever. Now, am I saying it’s the cinematic equivalent of going elbow-deep into a pile of triceratops shit? Let’s just say I’m not not saying that.
JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: THE BERING SEA. The deadliest catch is extra-deadly now, because fishermen attempt to pull up a crab pot and a giant mosasaurus leaps from the water to snatch it, capsizing the boat. This scene tells us that, since the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, where dinos escaped their island to worldwide freedom, humans are now trying to coexist with the mega-est of megafauna. The only thing on Earth that’s bigger than dinosaurs is the Biosyn corporation, whose Jobsalike CEO (Campbell Scott) says they’re researching dino DNA to cure cancer and shit, and totally NOT accidentally unleashing supersized locusts upon the world and causing ecological disaster, and not doing a damn thing about it. The Dern character we remember and love, Dr. Ellie Sattler, would like to do something about that, so she tracks down former compadres Dr. Alan Grant (Neill) and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Goldblum), and then they do something about that.

Meanwhile, in the Sierra Nevadas, Claire Dearing (Howard) and Owen Grady (Pratt) live off the grid so nobody can find Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a human clone who- you know, it’s just not important. Maybe you remember her from the previous movie, maybe you don’t, but it just doesn’t matter in the least. People want her DNA for various nefarious reasons, or maybe they’re not always nefarious, who can tell in this triceratops-shit plot, and those people are Biosyn people. So she’s kidnapped, along with the offspring of Owen’s favorite velociraptor, Blue, who lives in the forest near his and Claire’s cabin. So off they go to rescue their quasi-adopted daughter, and also the baby dino, who’s 49 percent cute, 51 percent scary.

Where exactly do they need to go? I lost track, because just in the first hour, the movie takes us to Alaskan waters, Northern California, Utah, West Texas, Pennsylvania and Malta, where half of a Jason Bourne action movie is dropped into a dinosaur movie, at which point one becomes understandably discombobulated. Eventually the movie settles down and ends up in a Biosyn HQ-lab flanked on all sides by a dinosaur sanctuary, so all the plots can crash into a heap in one place. There are a dozen or so ancillary characters to note, few of whom are important, some of whom don’t even need to be in the movie, and two of whom are worth noting, because Biosyn guy Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie) is a crucial plot device, and because Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) is a gum-chomping mercenary pilot who makes the morally correct choice to help our heroes and also is a very helpful aide in our comprehension of the action when she screams things like THIS PLANE IS GOIN’ DOWN when the plane she’s piloting is on fire and plummeting toward the ground.