Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

"We're racing toward the extinction of our species. We not only lack dominion over nature, we're subordinate to it." -Dr. Ian Malcolm.

Well, the end of the Jurassic Park series (at least the poster calls it that) plays out the way anyone who's seen the previous entries would expect. The beginning of the series is a classic movie which emphasized the dangers of genetic power. Now, flash forward to this, the sixth entry, and that issue is pretty much moot, since dinosaurs were set loose upon the world at the end of the previous entry Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), which I must note is the only entry in the series I did not see in the theater, & it turned out to be the right way to go since I find it the most boring entry. Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the little girl responsible to dinos now running amuck all over the globe, is being raised by our couple from the previous two entries Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) & Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) in a cabin in the mountains of Nevada. Owen also spends his time trying to contain stray dinos.

Not surprisingly, Maisie would like to see more of the world, but her adoptive parents are protective of her because of her unique genetic characteristics, established in Fallen Kingdom. Sure enough, bad guys are spying on them and, when Maisie attempts to run off, succeed in capturing her as well as the daughter of Blue, the raptor Owen trained. At the same time, locusts start running amok all over the world. These attacks threaten to bring famine all over the world.

This problem is brought to the attention of Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), who, in turn, calls upon her former flame Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill). They deduce that the locusts are the products of a company called Biosyn. They head to the HQ in Italy, where, as luck would have it, they are assisted by their old acquaintance Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who is an employee. Owen and Claire also arrive in Italy, having traced Maisie there. One thing leads to another and soon we have a James Bond-esque chase sequence through the streets complete with raptors.

Eventually, the culprit behind the locusts is revealed to be Dodgson (Campbell Scott), who was briefly seen in the original film and, we see, went to the trouble of recovering the shaving cream can which housed stolen dino embryos.

Eventually, all our protagonists converge together and, with help from Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong), also from previous entries, the locusts are stopped. To the surprise of nobody, Owen, Claire, & Maisie are once again a happy family living in the mountains, Grant & Sattler resume their relationship &, with Malcolm, become advocates for the dinos which are now sharing the planet with humanity.

I know this review doesn't hit all the marks of the film. That's because I always felt there was nothing much that could be done with the storyline after Fallen Kingdom. I must admit, I got a kick out of Claire going through the water a la Apocalypse Now (1979), to escape being dino chow.

But none of the newer characters adds anything, and everyone else just goes through the motions. What I hated about this film, though, was the locusts, which are as annoying as those in The Mummy (1999). On the one hand, it's cool to see characters from across the series sharing the screen. But Dominion is simply enjoyable if you're fine with films where you can guess what happens next practically from the moment the film begins.