TAKE ONE Presents... - The Dinopod 6: JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION (2022)

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Simon and Jim take on the last (for now) film in the Jurassic Park franchise, JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION. They get into the problems with the script, editing, and cinematography, the film's clear desire to be a film in any other franchise except Jurassic Park, and how the complete defusing of the paradigm shift at the end of the last film is indicative of the franchise's sense of capitalist realism. Content warnings: death and mutilation, animal abuse and speciesism, climate change and ecological destruction. Our theme song is Jurassic Park Remix by Gabriel Filósofo available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/gfilosofo/jurassic-park-remix Full references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/Z9C34WKS

Hello and welcome to Take One Presents, the Dinerpod, a podcast where we watch all the Jurassic Park franchise films in order, contextualising them and critiquing them. I'm Simon Bowie. I'm joined, as always, by my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. Hello. I had the misfortune of being in England last week, in Manchester, specifically. And I kept seeing posters for Jurassic World the Exhibition, which I hadn't heard about, had you heard of this? I hadn't, no. No.

You sent me some pictures about it, no. No. I hadn't heard of it, but apparently it's an exhibition in the Trafford Centre in Manchester with like animatronic dinosaurs attempting to give people the experience of going to Jurassic World. The animatronics, it must be said, look not great. They look a bit silly. Not quite Stan Winston. Yeah, exactly. So I just watched the trailer of, you know, walking through this place.

It looks like there's about five animatronics in total. the FAQ says it'll take you an hour to get through the exhibition, which doesn't seem like a long time, and it just seems like you go through and get photos with the dinosaurs and whatnot. So I didn't go out of my way to visit the exhibition, even though you get to meet, you know, blue and the T-Rex, the Indominus, a brachiosaur. Have they watched these films? I don't want to meet the Indominus Rex. You meet the Indominus Rex.

off, eating a giant steak, like the steak that Fred Flintstone gets at the start of the Flintstones. But we'll crack on, because we have a lot to talk about today, because we're talking about the longest film in the franchise, Jurassic World Dominion from 2022, as well as, you know, briefly we'll touch on a couple of short films that also came out around this, Battle of Big Rock, Bal at Big Rock in 2019 and the Jurassic World Dominion Prologue, which was released as a kind of short before another film. What, Jim, is your experience with Jurassic World Dominion? So this one is, so it's unusual amongst these films actually, where I had a very different initial viewing experience.

And before I rewatched it for this recording, it was my only one. only time I'd watched it, I went to a baby and carer screening at the Everyman Cinema in Edinburgh with my wife, Rachel, and my daughter, who at the time, so this would have been, she would have been about five months old, I think, something like that. Actually, the second film I'd taken her to, I'd literally taken her the day before, in typical art house film wanker fashion, I'd taken her the day before to the Italian film Il Bucco. Nice. So that's actually our first film.

Her second film was Jurassic World Dominion. So I saw it there. So it was a slightly distracted viewing. Like she did sleep for a decent chunk of it. Not a reflection on the film, or at least, you know, not a direct reflection on the film. But the fact that she had time to sleep is probably reflection on the length of the film, which we'll talk about in a minute. So that was my experience about it. I saw it on release, but it was a baby-in-career screening.

and then I haven't actually I hadn't actually revisited it until this recording The short film So the short film We might talk about Battle of Big Rock I saw that online when it came out And then I think the

Prolog I think I actually saw it before Fast 9 I think when I went to see that I think I saw it as part of that But the film itself, baby and care are screening Yeah, I just saw this at home, kind of second screening, the same way I did with Fallen Kingdom. And this came out during the time when I started using Letterbox, so I can say I actually watched it on the 16th of July, 2020.

Which I was quite surprised by, since I knew the film came out in 2022, and I definitely watched it at home. But yeah, there was like a month between theatrical release and, you know, home release. partially I guess because of the pandemic this is this this film was made during the pandemic and released kind of at the tail end of it but um it brought to mind how we talked about how I waited for a year for Jurassic Park

to come out on VHS and now it's what a month a few weeks yeah but yeah in terms of production so we've talked on previous episodes about how Colin Trevoro and an executive producer Stephen Spielberg always had plans for this to be a trilogy.

They wanted a sequence of films that were more related and less stand alone than the original Jurassic Park movies. So Trevor O and Spielberg had the story idea for this and then bashed it out with Trevor O's writing partner, Derek Connolly, and bringing in someone new, Emily Carmichael, a script writer from Pacific Rim Uprising. Reading Between the Lines, I don't think Trevor was always slated to direct this film,

But after he left the Star Wars Episode 9 project in September 2017, it seems like he had some free time. I had nothing to do. So went into directing this one, was announced as director in 2018. This seems to have been an idea that he wanted to depict all along. He talks about earning the right to make this particular dinosaur film, which we talked last time about Trevor O's odd comments, it's an odd thing to want to make this dinosaur film, since in the actual plot, dinosaurs are so incidental. It's incredible. We'll talk about it more as we get into it, but it's the, this sort of Erzat's family that we kind of opened the film with. It kind of reminded

me again of Jurassic Park 3 in a lot of ways, and again, your comments about it kind of beginning to focus on family and found family. It really, really goes for it this time. But they knew they wanted to include the original cast from Jurassic Park, the original film, and we'll talk later on about how much the film is in dialogue with the original Jurassic Park. But they wanted the original cast, and they wanted the new cast, and it's kind of these bringing together of these casts. They also seem to have taken a very collaborative approach, and I'm saying collaborative as a pejorative in some senses.

So in an interview with Indie Wire, Trevor says, I worked very collaboratively with not just everyone in my crew, but specifically with the actors in building the story. This film was informed by what Laura Dern needed from this story and what Sam Neal and Jeff Goldblum needed, and Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, and also my co-writer Emily Carmichael needed. So no, I can't say it's exactly what I envisioned

because it's a product of all of us. He's also specifically talked about what Laura Dern needed from the character of Ellie Sattler and how. Laura Dern had specific ideas that Ellie Sattler is, you know, combating climate change, is working on climate change problems and global warming and is, you know, using her education, her botany skills. But I mentioned this because of how disconnected, I think, the final product is, and how assembled by committee it feels,

because I think some of these production notes speak to that. I also mentioned it was a pandemic movie. They started filming during the pandemic and were interrupted. They were one of the first major films to carry on filming with COVID mitigations in place. But it also means that they had a lot of time before the cinema's reopened to do post-production stuff. And I'll mention this now because it'll be important for some stuff I raise later. In an interview with Empire, Colin Trevoro says, normally because we're always cramped and trying to make the release date,

we're finishing visual effects while we're mixing sound, and right after we do the score, this time we actually got to do all of those things separately, and on their own time, especially the sound mix. We'll be completely done with visual effects when we're mixing sound, so it's just a very humane way to make a movie. I wish I could do it this way all the time. It's definitely taken a bit of the intensity out of what that process normally is.

I think I'll come back to that later when we start talking about the film, because I have some thoughts on how that post-production interruption impacts the final product. But yes, once it's produced, it was released in June, 2022 in the United States and the United Kingdom. And as we said, came to home media very shortly after because a lot of theatres were still dealing with COVID mitigations and perhaps less open than they would have been.

In 2022, the highest grossing films were all sequels or franchise films, like every single one. Avatar, the Way of Water at number one. Top Gun Maverick at number two, Jurassic World Dominion, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Minions, The Rise of Gru, Black Panther, Wakanda, Forever, The Batman, Fall of and Thunder, the Battle at Lake Changjin 2, and Pussing Boots, the Last wish. Yeah, you have to go a pretty long way down the list before you get something that is

the first film I see which is not a primarily Chinese mainland release or a franchise film is Elvis Basil Lurman's Biopic

and that's in like 16 that's the idea you go and then after that you kind of get back to kind of franchise stuff you know you've got light ear DC you know then you start to get into films and nobody will

nobody really remembers after that frankly but yeah it is a far cry from I worry I sound like a grumpy old man when I say this but it's a far cry from when Dressick Park

was released in 1993 and the highest grew of scene films were kind of legal thrillers erotic thrillers original standalone films films for grownups yeah well that's the phrase

I was excited look I'll sound like a grumpy old man as well but I'm very much at home with that I've been sounding like a grumpy old man since I was like 14 years old but you know it's you know

and there's no harm in kind of like a film for you know kids being an extremely high grossing grossing film oh yeah you know films for grownups he says recording a podcast about the Jurassic Park franchise

yeah exactly right but you know but still like you know it's even like you know one film in that top ten I'm sure lots of people seem in love with it based on social media is the Batman right it was at number seven I've got here didn't care for it it's fine it's good I think it's quite good I think it's quite well done but everybody was fawning over it like it's this new and amazing thing I really enjoyed the scene where Batman rained glass on a crowd of people

and a crowd of innocent civilians hunkered down for the safety. But, you know, it's like, is it truly doing anything particularly different to, let's say, Batman McGiddens or what? I don't know if it is. The point is, we're at this stage

in kind of like the cycle of cinema where we really are recycling old ideas. And we, you know, we covered kind of the legacy sequel phenomenon when we spoke about the original, original, inverted Columbus Jurassic World, right?

They kind of rebooted and that came out at the sort of same time as the Force Awakens, in the wake of the Force Awakens. And you've got the same thing sitting here. I mean, the second High School's Top Gun Maverick is the sequel of the film from the 1980s, you know? You've got Thor Love and Vunders, the fourth

film in that series. You've got Puss and Boots The Last Wish, which, okay, it's its own thing, but I mean, like Puss and Boots was that long ago that, like, you know, that's been You know, it's like, the pattern is established here. The pattern is now established, you know, even more deeply than when we were doing the xenopod and we were talking about alien covenant, right? I'd say it's even more entrenched now than it was at that point in 2017, I think it was.

Yeah. So that's the kind of cinematic world that Jurassic World Dominion comes out in. And let's do it. Should we run through the film? So we open in the Bering Sea where the Mozosaurus attacks a fishing trawler and this leads into a montage of various scenes of dinosaurs in the real world on the mainland.

So this is actually the best bit from Battle at Big Rock, the short film which is the kind of found footage of dinosaurs roaming about the world and causing trouble. A global black market has emerged and Biosyn's Lewis Dodgson, the villain who hired Nedri in the first film, has created a biological preserve for maintaining and testing these dinosaurs. There's a kind of news footage recap, which is really clumsy and lays out the ecological

management questions, like straight out, just says them to the camera. So, not that I want to get, like, you know, because we're only talking about basically the opening sequence here, so I don't want to get too into the weeds and derail us before we get into it, but I hate this sequence. I absolutely hate it, and I hated it at the time. It's crazy, it doesn't work. Yeah, and I didn't like it at the time, even in, so we're into interesting territory here, and it's the, this is the first one of these films where I reviewed it at the time, right? So, the Sinatopia Radio Show, which you and I have both been contributors to for a long time. I reviewed this with the Synotopia co-finder, a man.

at the time. And I was a lot more leaning on this film, and I think I will be here. But I did highlight shortcomings, and I did describe this as really inelegant. And it is, it is, it's horrendous. It's like, it's taking a lot of things which, the end of the last film actually kind of set up as being what would be the main themes of this film, and then just kind of dumps them in this like mock viral video at the start and then that's kind of the last you hear about a lot of it. It's just, it's just nonsense and it's like you say, the best parts of it are lifted from that, the battle at Big Rock short, which I actually thought was quite compelling in a lot of ways. It's pretty good. It felt like it was going to be kind of like, you know, the walking dead but

with dinosaurs, you know? To just dump that in this like stupid mock viral video, it's just, It's horrendous. It's not good. Yeah. So, before we get too high into Jurassic World Dominion, the battle at Big Rock Shore shows a blended family who are out camping in Big Rock National Park and encounter a couple of dinosaurs.

I think it's a neseratops and conautosaurus, maybe, from memory. Yeah, I think so. I watched this a few weeks ago. But their trailer is attacked, and it's about them fending off the dinosaurs and surviving. And then it cuts to this found footage which is inserted into this news footage

at the start of Jurassic World Dominion. It's pretty good. It's pretty compelling. It's compellingly shot. It's sort of semi-getting close to Spielberg level of kind of action and I quite liked it. It doesn't overstay it's welcome, which this film does.

Yep. We cut to Claire and her accomplices, the kids from the last film, who are breaking into a form of importance. prison dinosaurs and get into a chase with some synoceratops and there's some discussion about this eco-terrorism and why they're doing it. This eco-terrorism stuff then goes away and he's never mentioned again and does not come up for the rest of the film. It is irrelevant to Claire's character. Owen and a gang of cowboys are herding a group of Parasarolophus in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Now, appreciating that this is a different context, it's striking that this is exactly the same sort of hunting that was used to establish the villains in the lost world with the same species of dinosaur. I think it's just testament to how much the protagonists in this series have changed and who we're now rooting for. Macy, our other main character from last time, is living in the wilderness, cycling to town, being a kid in a Spielberg film. She sees a lost apasaurus, encourages some construction workers to lead her away from town. It's a nice kind of brachiosaurus moment, which we've referred to throughout this podcast. Macy returns home to find Claire

burning some old blankets and Claire says I'm just burning some old blankets What? So I want to tell Is this like Is she meant to be like burning evidence from like her Kidnap like capturing the baby triceratops

Because it was lying on the blank I don't know it's a weird moment It's one of these things I don't know It's just you can tell you can tell The script hasn't really been like I don't know proof for it or something because it's like

even if there's a logical reason for it me doing it, that's not something a person says. Yeah, I'm just burning these old blankets. It's weird. What? Amazing just lets it go. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, you burn all. Oh, sure, burning old blankets.

That's what I do all the time. Yeah, I've got a few of these throughout my notes when I'm going to highlight them because there's just dodgy lines, just extremely clunky lines and exposition dotted throughout the film. And I'll come again to this idea of this film being made by committee and having too many voices contributing too much to the vision. It just feels like the script is very disjointed.

It's not as that at this stage, it's also, it's not really, it's not really set out stall very well about what it wants to be, because the whole thing with like, you know, Owen kind of like, taming the dinosaur almost like it's a wild horse, right? Owens out taming. First of all, that has done remarkably quickly, right?

You know, I don't want to, as I said previously with other, I don't want to get two cinema sins about it, but it's like it is unbelievably quickly. It's very convenient and I'm going to come back to this film taking a lot of convenient shortcuts, right? And there's one sequence in

particular, which I went into in detail in that original review, and it struck me again as I was watching it. But as this is happening, it's like, you know, there's a horseback chase and there's big dramatic music and drama, drama, drama. Why? Like, why? What, what is meant to be happening here? It's, it's this heroic intro for Owen, but why? Like, they're living at a cabin in the mountains. Like, there's not, you know, it's just weird. It amps things up ridiculously at points and it downplays other things and it's a very confused film. As Evans, by that, and also by, I'm burning some old blankets.

Yeah. Unclear what the problem with the Parasarolophus is being in this wild area of the Sierra Nevada Mountains is. Like if they're on farmland, I can understand, but this is just uncultivated land, it would appear. Anyway, there's tension between Claire and Macy because Macy isn't allowed to town, into town. There's vague threats of someone looking for her. Yeah, that's because Owen and Claire stole a child at the end of the last itself. no one and claire kidnapped the child and are now keeping her against her will uh in a small town yeah when you look at it that way it's kind of because like they're clearly like they're clearly

set up as this like erzat's family yeah um and you know that's a strand that's going on throughout it may it's quite funny when you see like how annoyed she is and how against her will she is like being kept in this sort of like secluded mountain points rather than going to town. Then you realise that she's not actually in her kid. They did actually basically, albeit slightly wailingly abduct her at the end of the last film. It's like, when you take that step back, it's like, oh, okay, from a different angle, this is quite horrific.

No, yeah, if you look at it without these being the protagonist, this is horrific behaviour. Yeah. But it's another one of the lazy shortcuts that the script takes. This is Owen and Claire. They know what they're doing. Blue, the Velociraptor watches them from afar and we see her and her juvenile hunting in the woods

while some shady fellow orsaw watches dun-dun. We cut to West Texas where there's some farm kids encountering a huge swarm of locusts. Then Ellie Sattler, Laura Dern turns up, she's wearing basically the same outfit from Jurassic Park so you know she's the same character. And there's some environmentalist chatter about corporations trying to destroy crops and how the locusts don't touch biocin produced crops. We go to Alan Grant, who is supervising another dig, just like in Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park

and Jurassic Park 3. Ellie goes to visit him, they reminness, Ellie's now into soil science and contemporary botany, and is divorced. That's why she's allowed to be a character again. So I've mentioned in previous episodes, this Lauren Chocchinoff article in Synergy, the Italian Cinema Journal, that says, By Jurassic World Dominion, Sattler's children are grown and do not require her attention, which allows her to once more join Grant on another adventure. But she shows Grant this giant Cretaceous period locust,

and we establish the threat of crops across the world being devastated. Biosyn wants to control the world's food supply, and she needs Alan as a witness. This is all in dialogue with the first Jurassic Park, and a lot of this film will be in dialogue with Jurassic Park. it's really attempting to be the last in a six film series by going back to the start so we've got finding Grant at a dig site

you know like Hammond found Ellie and Grant bringing back Lewis Dodgson from Biosyn as a protagonist bringing together the free leads you know Grant Sattler and Malcolm and even the fonts announcing locations are the same as those in the original Jurassic Park it's all very clear what it's trying to do so Grant and Ellie travel off to the Biosynne Sanctuary

Macy encounters Blue and her juvenile in the woods Juvenile and Macy are then immediately kidnapped by nefarious rednecks Blue is mad at Owen and Owen reasons with her saying Don't worry we'll get your baby back It's silly even by the standards of how this series has treated blue Yeah this is the next point where When we've spoken previously about The anthropomorphisation of the dinosaurs

I think before I started re-watching the films this is the one I had in mind and I think the film actually kind of realizes to an extent how silly this is because there is a quip later about it in the film and I don't I have more thoughts about this when we get to when we get to a kind of a later sequence

about the effect this has had on the film and the writing of it which I'll go into more but I think this moment is silly but more importantly that is silly and has consequences for the rest of the the film, I think. Yes. It was in this scene, I think,

that I noticed how Shonky the editing is, and this is something that will come up throughout the film. The editing is noticeably shonky and noticeably amateurist. So we have lots of characters and objects not framed properly. We have poor blocking. There's lots of characters saying things off-screen,

presumably A.D.R. in later. You know, additional dialogue recording where they go back and record more dialogue to explain things in a scene or whatever. And I don't know if this is down to the post-production, and how long they, how disconnected the processes were, as Trevor said in that quote, how they did things separately instead of together, but it feels, it just feels disconnected and disjointed. For a blockbuster film, it feels very amateur. So they go to Franklin, who works for the CIA now, and they use him to track down Macy's kidnappers.

There's a scene with Caleb Hereon, the American comedian. Great. Love to see him. Omar Sy, we learn, from Jurassic World, is now French intelligence undercover in Malta. Franklin says to Chris Pratt, promise me you won't go in there with your vest and mess things up. It's another weirdly shonky line. It also speaks to like just how tragically they want Owen Grady to be like an iconic character. You know, like you could basically take it either of. of the other kind of historical male leads

from this franchise and do that. You could say it to, you know, Ian Malcolm, don't go in there with your leather jacket, or you could say to Algarat, don't go in there with your hat. And it would, you know, it's not, you know, I don't think it would make it a good line, but it would at least kind of make a bit of sense. It was like, you find yourself watching it and going,

oh yeah, he wore a vest in the first one, didn't he? Did he wear it in the second one? Is that his thing? You know, it's like, oh, come on. I was going to bring this up later, but I might as well say it now. They've also forgotten to make Owen Grady likeable in this film. So I

I've been on a journey with Owen Grady. I hated him in Jurassic World. I quite liked him in Fallen Kingdom. Now he's just nothing. Yeah, I have no feelings about it at all. In this film. He's not as annoying as Jurassic World, but he's also not likable and funny like in Fallen Kingdom. He's just

nothing. They've decided he's just Han Solo, so everyone should like him. But the problem is they also introduce Han Solo later in the film, as we'll get into. Yeah, mm-hmm. So Grant and Sattler arrive at Biosyn's Sanctuary. They arrive on a plane runway that is absolutely chocker block with planes and vehicles,

and completely impractical for landing and take-off. Biosyn's rep establishes that they have dinosaurs from Isla Sona and Isla Nubla, including the T-Rex. There's a kind of brachiosaur moment where they see a Dreadnautus, and there's a shot of a giganautosaurus, which will be important later. Lewis Dodgson meets them Dodgson is established and played as a bit of an eccentric

Steve Jobs type character he's played very strangely by Campbell Scott who didn't play him in the original Jurassic Park but since he was only in one scene it's not a huge problem but he's played very strangely like I say he's a bit of an eccentric Elon Musk Steve Jobs type

and the character also looks exactly like Tim Cook who currently is the CEO of Apple Yeah, and it's clearly going for this sort of like The sort of like big tech villain, almost Like, you know, like a Silicon Valley guy Yeah, and it's worth of remember Like we're a few years removed from it at this point But like, you know, this is in the era where

You know, the characterisation of Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman for instance Was very much in this sort of, like that character was very much a kind of combination of Big Tech CEO and kind of, Max Landis was a character was a person who was kind of like likened to that character. I think that speaks more to the time it came out than anything else, but it's like this is kind of the direction that these sort of like blockbuster

villains are going in, right? It's true. They're less kind of like, you know, cackling evil corporate CEOs and they're more these sort of like nerdy, you know, I have good, you know, it's a different flavor of the same thing

and this is a reflection of that. Yeah, in the 1980s, you had a rich oil man who had come to town to turn down the community centre. Now you have these benevolent tech CEOs who have secret intentions. So Malcolm now works for Biosin. He's giving a lecture about nature's ultimate dominion over humanity. I find it extremely unlikely that Malcolm would take this corporate job, but none of the original characters talk like or act like their characters.

from the first series, from the first two films. With the exception of one scene. Okay. Which I'll come back. There is a brief line about how he took this job because of the expenses of his five kids, but this still doesn't sound like Crichton's Malcolm. Malcolm is doing some corporate sabotage

because he's found out about the bad locusts that Byrosin has released, that Dodgson has released, and Grant Struggles to order a coffee. And there's a joke in this film from 2022 about how complicated coffee is it's extremely bad and extremely dated it's like somebody has taken it's like somebody's taken have you ever seen that scene from curvy enthusiasm where larry david kind of like just goes coffee and milk what a drink you know it it feels like somebody took that idea but is just not funny yeah and they don't know how to write comedy and i assume that was i assume

that scene was from the 2000s. Yeah, exactly. I'm pretty sure that might actually even be the first series of Curbier enthusiasm that's in. But no, to establish that Grant is an old man now, a grumpy old man, and I can't order a macchiato. Because, of course, he was a young, vibrant

hip, you know, character in the first film from the mid-90s, of course, so we need to make this joke 30 years later, but anyway. How long, Jim, do you think they spend at the Biosin Sanctuary? Are our three heroes here? Are we talking in sort of like the time line of the film?

It looks like it's a few hours. Right? And yet, our other characters have time to go to Malta, spend some time in Malta, and then travel to the Biosyns Sanctuary, which is in the Dolomites in Italy for the record. So this is where kind of like the editing, both the editing,

and also, like, I think this is probably more of a script issue than an editing one. I don't think the editing, actually, of anything, probably kind of covers up a bit, but it's very unclear what time scale these things are happening on. It's a script problem rather than an editing problem. Yeah. But I think having these parallel scenes, these parallel storylines, creates this narrative discontinuity.

So previously Jurassic Park films have had one central location, with one central set of characters, proceeding, you know, chronologically through time on their adventure. This one is the first one, I think, to split things up between two locations happening simultaneously and cross-cutting between the two. But it does seem like, because it must take a few days for Owen and Claire's storyline, that the original cast storyline must also take a few days, and yet it only seems like a few hours. the sun never sets during their brief tour of the Biosyn

sanctuary. It just creates this narrative discontinuity that, like I say, it's hidden by the editing fairly effectively, but that occurs to you later. Dodson meets with Wu, Henry Wu, in Biosyn's lab to discuss the locusts. Wu is now

wearing a chunky sweater rather than his lab coat. Thank you. I'm so glad. I'm so glad you aged. Because he's in his redemption arc. He's in his redemption arc, so we've got him in a nice A nice comfy sweater with a big collar. Yeah. His hair is kind of like less.

He says a little longer now. Less severe. He's not as severe, yeah. He clutches his bag to his chest meekly. He's a nerd now. Yeah. It might have been nice to see Henry Wu's turn towards, I don't know, good for lack or a better term,

and away from the kind of evil genetics he's been doing, but that would be too interesting for the film to show. We don't get to see his... We don't get to see his Darth Vader redemption. No, he's just redeemed now. He's just redeemed now. It's another part of how there's too many moving parts in this film and too many main characters.

It's a far cry from the narrative simplicity of Jurassic Park. Speaking of, we cut to Malta and established that Biosing kidnapped Macy and Blue. Owen and Claire meet Omar Sigh. And there's an extremely weird scene where Owen literally doesn't say a word. to his old friend, you know. These are friends meeting up,

and Trevor O'Say in production interviews, that he has more to do with Omer Sai. He doesn't really. But, yeah, O'In doesn't say anything to him. Like, not a word. It's really strange. But Oma Sai establishes that there's a black market dinosaur trade here in Malta,

and they go into this dinosaur black market, which is the Moss Isley Cantina from Star Wars just straight up but with dinosaurs instead of aliens it's kind of striking like quite quite and it struck me at the time like even my first viewing

whilst you know trying to take care of my five-month-old daughter whilst watching it right it jumped out even it and it jumped out even more this time this actually wants to be the Moss Iceley can'tina

frankly, even more than the similar scene in the Force Awakens did. Like, it's kind of remarkable, actually. You know, it's just ridiculous. We're going to get into this a little bit more, because it's a roundabout this kind of like sort of sequence in the film where they start to introduce the Kayla character, the pilots, played by Duonda Wise. And, like, the Star Wars pilot,

I just couldn't unsee it after this. Like, most nicely can't Tina. You're introducing a hand soul. low-like character and this is really the point where I think the film goes from being a little bit underwhelming to actually starting to really kind of go off the rails a bit

to be honest and but we'll get into that but yeah it's remarkable that like how much this is trying to be the most icely canteen even down to things like kind of like our heroes inverted commas slightly brutally maming and injuring

people within the setting you know if you think to kind of like, you know, the original cut of Star Wars when, kind of, like, you know, Obi-1 hacks the guy's arm off, like, you know, but I'm sure you'll come back to that, but yeah, it's remarkable how much it's really trying to go for that sort of vibe here. In an interview with sci-fi, S-Y-F-Y, Colin Trevereaux said, in the last movie, Fallen Kingdom, we had dinosaurs being sold off and did it in a very, I don't want to say, eyes wide, shut way, but it was a very different movie, and that was cool. but I felt that what would really happen is a hive of scum and villainy. I wanted to see that he's clearly referencing Obi-Man's description of the Moss Isley Cantina here and clearly has a very strange understanding of eyes wide shut apart from a scene taking place at a mansion. Yeah, when I saw that quote, I was like, okay, right, clearly I have completely not imagined this. Like it was so overt, I was expecting something to bust out the hive of scum and villainy line.

but, like, yeah, but he did. It's also a very weird way of looking at eyes while he'd shut. But anyway, yeah. It's got to be said that all the music and the vibe in these Maltese scenes is extremely orientalist. It is kind of plink-plunky music,

you know, people with thick accents doing dodgy dealings. It's like an Indiana Jones scene from the 80s or a James Bond scene from the 80s where these exotic, exotic Maltese people are doing dodgy dealings. Yeah, and all the villains are kind of, You know, all the villains, well, apart from one,

a lot of the villains are kind of, you know, swarthy folk with lank hair, you know, that sort of thing. So Claire meets Hans Solo, sorry, Kayla, in the dinosaur canteen and petitions for help finding Macy. A biosyn, a biosyn representative, is selling off some militarised atroceraptors to the redneck poacher guys, and things kick off. Dinosaurs escaping the canina,

Owen tortures a man like Jack Bauer who is being torn apart by dinosaurs The Atrosseraptors are set free And they attack Omar Sailles There's a chase scene across Across Maltese, rooftops and streets The film wants to be a James Bond film Or a Jason Bourne film at this point

Because this chase scene is just like those Except with worse editing And looks worse Yeah and this chase scene Right because it's worth lingering on it for a minute because I think it's a very good micro example to me

of what the film is doing well but also what is doing extremely badly. And I actually didn't mind this scene right? This is probably another one where you and I are going to disagree in the same vein as kind of like the San Diego sequence in the Lost World right? I quite like it as a concept right and I found it

reasonably engaging at the time right? I'm going to disagree a little bit on kind of the editing but I found it easy to follow, and I thought it was quite well done in that regard. However, it does speak to the problems that this film has in terms of the consistency of its concept, right? Because there's a big part of this sequence, which is the Atrosseraptor running after Clear, right? And it's kind of like battling through buildings, and there's a ridiculous, maybe slightly fun, but ridiculous, reference to the Boren films, I think. We're kind of like they're jumping across buildings.

This is why I mentioned the Born films. Also because Trevor O mentions them. Yeah. You know, I don't want to interrupt you too much. But there's an interview with Collider where he says, this is a big globe hopping adventure. It's got a little bit of Bourne and Bond and a bit of spy movie thrown into it too. Spy movie, science thriller with dinosaurs. And there's also another film this feels a little bit like is also the fast, like the thing that its prolog went before the Fast and Furious films, which of course have kind of become you know, weird kind of interpretations of

Bond films over time. But the problem with the sequence is that bit on its own is quite decent, I think. The chase sequence where she's then on the truck is okay and it has some inventive moments. But these are Atrosseraptors, and I'm going to come back to the

Atrosseraptors in a minute. They are always exactly as fast as the film needs them to be. You know? Like, it's chasing this woman across a roof top and it never quite catches her and it's kind of excused by it kind of stumbles into things and trips over things and man-made obstacles but it never quite catches this non-athlete like it's not like she's a professional athlete or something this non-athlet woman and then it goes

on to her being driven around by hand not so solo um in a truck and it never quite catches her and then the climax of this sequence is Odin, Grady racing down a runway trying to get on the back of a plane which is taking off and again it doesn't quite catch him

so how fast are these things you know like are they incapable of catching a woman a milk float or a motorbike which is it you know like it's just like any individual bit of the sequence

is okay but when you put it all together it doesn't actually make really much sense. And the problem with it is it completely removes any sense of peril from this. We're going through the motions, right? There is no peril here because these contrivances of a narrative obstacle are exactly what the script needs them to be at each point, right? And I have a broader problem with these atroceraptors, and that they're basically meant to be like the velociraptors from the first film.

They're weaponized versions of them, but that's kind of what they are, and the only reason they exist, and it's probably worth noting at this point, atroceraptor, it is an actual dinosaur name, which I was astounded to find out, but that's, you know, that's neither here nor there for this point. The only reason these things exist is because they've

metaphorically completely defanged the velociraptors over the course of this film series. You know, like, we've opened this film with one kind of like essentially, again, in conversation, with the protagonist and them, you know, making promises to one another and, you know, all the rest of it. The only reason these things exist is because they've so completely removed the threat of the things which were the primary antagonists of, certainly the first and the third films

and, you know, an underlying threat in the second one. So it's why I speak to this sequence is a good example of what the film does quite well, entertaining in moments, what it doesn't do well, consistency with its ideas and what the characters are up against, and also speaks to the longer term impacts of some of its decisions, which is these things only exist because of decisions they've made with the characterisations of other characters and portrayals of other kind of, you know, dinosaurs and antagonists elsewhere in the film. It's kind of a neat little micro example of what this film is about, really. Yeah, I read an interview, I think it was with Trevor where he says the Atrosser Raptors are.

meant to be like velociraptors, but more brutish. So, you know, they're less elegant velociraptors. And I think you're right. The kind of speedy chase with the atrociraptors really doesn't work for me. And I'm just thinking of the scariest scenes with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, where they're walking slowly through a kitchen or, in the case of Muldoon, literally standing still while they hunt, you know, secretly off screen. So, yeah, I just...

This Malta scene is a reel in the day for me. I just find it very tedious. The editing... There's also the ridiculous seed in the square because they're not like a carnatoris or something. There's like two carnivores. Yeah, cannatasaurus and something else. Just loose now.

Do you know what that reminded me of? Have you ever played Grand Theft Auto online? Not online, no. I've only played there. So it reminds me of that in the sense that you can have this kind of like otherwise calm like non-noteworthy environment and then you turn a corner

and it's just absolute anarchic chaos there's people driving supercars around that are bright pink and launching rocket launchers and there's somebody in an attack helicopter there's people hitting each other with baseball but like it looks ridiculous that's what this looked like if you could take Grand Theft Auto online

and make everybody's avatars like carnivorous dinosaurs that's what it looked like there was no logic to it There was no sense to it. There's no consistency, which is fine if you're playing Grand Theft Auto Online. It's not fine if you're watching a film that's essentially meant to be, well, what if dinosaurs were in the world? How do we deal with that?

Well, I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't all look. It's just, it's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous sequence. It reminds me of a Bond film and a Bond film, but without the production values, without the slick editing that the Jason Bourne films are known for. The original three anyway. so they have this motorbike chase

and the chase ultimately ends up like you said at the Millennium Falcon sorry the smugglers plane and they escape leaving wild atroceraptors and other carnivores roaming the streets of Malta exactly

this is never mentioned ever again it's just a bloody carnatoris wandering presumably Valletta just munching on British tourists who were just trying to get some in the world, except we don't care.

Malta is now Isla Sorda. It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. So back at the Biosin Sanctuary, Grant and Ellie are looking at some pure genome dinosaurs. There's a lot of quote-unquote pure dinosaurs in this film, which means that they have fur and feathers now. I quite appreciate this. I quite appreciate seeing slightly different designs for dinosaurs and the new dinosaurs. As you said, Atrosniraptors were real dinosaurs, and all the other dinosaurs in this were real, including the big gigonautosaurus, we'll see at the end.

But then they do some James Bondi sneaking into the Biosyn underground lab. And I found myself thinking, like, why isn't this a Jurassic Park film? You know, this doesn't feel like a Jurassic Park film. What, when they sneak into the dinosaur death star? Yeah. Yeah. I'll get something about that later. But yeah, every character is now a spy.

Like, it's gone to this globe-trotting action adventure film rather than a Jurassic Park film. You know, it's nominally science fiction. In the same way that the amorphous AI threat in Mission Impossible 7 makes that a science fiction film. It's just not a Jurassic Park film. The film almost seems embarrassed to include dinosaurs. Yeah, Sattler is squeamish about grabbing a giant locust,

which is not the Sattler that I'm. I know who put her hands in some dinosaur dung. And elsewhere in the lab, Wu is talking to Macy and the juvenile, a juvenile now named Beta, about how Blue reproduced asexually, thanks to monitor lizard DNA. And Wu explains that Macy is not actually a clone, but a child that Charlotte Lockwood made from her own DNA, and was actually pregnant with and gave birth to.

And I just want to linger on that for a minute, because, like, we look as confused as I do. The monitor lizard. DNA. I'm like, I heard that line, I think it must have slipped past me on first view, and I'm saying, so just to be clear here, Henry, you made the same mistake twice.

Yeah. Right? This whole thing that caused the whole disaster of the first film, with the whole unauthorized thing. Just to be clear, you made the same mistake twice. To quote here, Malcolm, he's making all nude mistakes. Because the dinosaurs

spontaneously changed sex in the first film, so presumably they were still two partners to reproduce. Whereas in this, Blue just reproduced asexually. Like, completely without another Velociraptor. Which also just speaks, that

Blue is now, you know, magic. The Raptor, Mother Mary. Yeah. And Beta's the Raptor Jesus. Anyway, you know, anyway. Yeah. Oh, dear. So Macy seems really happy to have

learned that she was actually birthed and that she's not a clone. And yet, I don't understand the distinction being made here that Charlotte Lockwood made Macy from her own DNA and that, you know, Benjamin Lockwood didn't make her after the fact. But she's still a clone.

Like, I always assumed Macy was birthed in some way. You know, an embryo that was... It was at least a surrogate mother. Exactly, implanted into a surrogate mother who gave birth. I didn't think she was just made in a tube or whatever. I do not understand the distinction here and why Macy is so happy to hear this

but it establishes that Macy's DNA is an important Mugphin for dealing with the locust issue I think we can get into the kind of family and ideal reproduction stuff that has been battered throughout these films you know Macy feels better for being birthed by a woman that makes her a more valid human in the logic of the film than something created in a lab

which as I've argued in previous episodes are still living things and still deserve respect anyway Dodson arrives and berates Wu for quote showing her classified things

on the computer Macy escapes and meets Grant and Sattler Owen, Claire and the smuggler are flying to the Death Star sorry, the Biosynne sanctuary they're attacked by a large

Tyrannadon-like creature and Owen ejects Claire because she is Macy's mom and has to go get her, the family themes. Yeah. Claire's parachute is instantly torn to shreds and she descends into the sanctuary. So Claire's lost in the Biosynne's sanctuary.

She's beset by a feathered carnivore a teresinosaurus. Meanwhile, Owen and the smuggler escape the plane crash and they encounter a pyro raptor. Dodgson fires Malcolm. Malcolm lectures the Biosynne's staff about capitalist exploitation. Malcolm was taking their money until a few

seconds ago. Dutson says that... You see, the thing is, though, I like this scene. I like this. I like the E. Malcolm monologue here. There's just something about somebody saying, it's another one of these things where, like, Trevor O seems to have

stumbled accidentally into making a good point, you know? Because there's a part where I think he says, exploiting your enchantment with these things, or you know, but he's referring to the dinosaurs.

I'm like, that's exactly what this film's doing. Yeah. That's exactly what this film is doing. It's like Jurassic World, you know. Is Trevor aware of the irony of what is happening in that film and what he has produced? There's just something about Jeff Goldblum's delivery of rapacious rat bastard, which, you know, I enjoy. Yeah. I like that scene.

This scene kind of skates by on Jeff Goldblum's charm. I don't think he sounds quite like. like Malcolm throughout the film, but he gets close enough. Dodgson says, I'm not sure I admire your tone right now. In another line that just seems completely off. Like, admire is not the right word, appreciate. Yeah, but it's another one of these things where I can't decide whether it's, I can't decide whether it's deliberate, right, and Dodgson's meant to be doing this

to reflect, you know, this idea of the text he doesn't really get people and it's a deliberate kind of but the thing is when you couple that with things like I'm burning some old blankets you don't really trust the script to be projecting like real characters forward

like when it can't even like properly recreate characters that have already been established over a series of films before this why would it be able to do it for the you know so again it's another weird little interaction that did occur to me that maybe this is like Ed Norton's character in

glass onion, where he's continually using the wrong words, but that is a plot point to show that he's not as smart as he thinks he is. And Dodson is very strange in this. He's a very strange character. But meanwhile in the sanctuary, there's a brief fight between Rexy, our old trend, Rex is a T-Rex, and the Giggonautosaurus, establishing the Giggonautosaurus as the Apex predator. Yeah, at this point Grant and Sattler are lost in the old amber mines, and there's some scenes trying to make Grant and Sattler happen as a couple. Also, could we talk about that from it? Amber Mines. What? Like, where did that come from?

Like, it's just, you know, they've got, they established that there's like a hyperloop, right? You know, so again, big tech, kind of, anyway. But, like, oh yeah, it goes through the old amber mines. First of all, what old amber mines? What are you talking about?

And secondly, why would you put it through? Why would you put it through? It's just bizarre. It's just weird. It's kind of, and again, it's this, it wants have multiple strands going on and it keeps trying to put the characters in peril

but in the same way as the, you know, in the same way as it did with the Malta Chase thing, there's no real reason for any of this to be happening beyond kind of creating false urgency. Yeah, I think the Amber Mines are supposed to be in dialogue with the original Jurassic Park

where the Amber Mines were important to the premise, but it doesn't feel particularly earned. It doesn't really make sense. No. Malcolm goes looking for Grant Sattler and Macy. He rescues them from some spiny dinosaurs.

A lot of the anatronics, particularly of these spiny dinosaurs, look really good. And there's some really good animatronics stuff in this film. It makes a difference compared to CG shots. Mm-hmm. I'll say that. There's some Dylophosaurus shots upcoming that are very good animatronics. In fact, right now, Claire gets beset by Dolophosaurus,

and Owen chokes it. Oin just grabs it by the neck. You know, our heroes who look after ecology and want to preserve dinosaurs, he just chokes it out and chucks it to one side. Dodson sets the locust in the lab on fire. I guess because he wants to destroy the evidence of his misdeeds. There's no reason for this. Right, I'm not sure why he did this.

There's no reason for what subsequently happens, let's see. Yeah, Ellie later tells us that he's burning the evidence, but yeah he sets them on fire and they escape in a big fiery swarm so they escape the lab still on fire and fly over the sanctuary which sets the sanctuary on fire our casts finally meet up in the sanctuary we get the iconic scene of the old cast meeting the new cast and it's underwhelming they're kind of there's a few scenes coming up where they'll pair them off and be kind of parallel people so you know grant gets paired with Owen

Ellie gets paired with Claire and they go off and have their own mini-adventures where they establish how similar they are to one another and all it highlights for me is how there's not been a Malcolm substitute in the new films which is why they had to bring in Malcolm for the last film

but there's been no kind of voice of reason no intelligent voice critiquing these practices through these Jurassic World films it also because we've now brought everybody together right? I mean, first of all, the very fact that they find Maisie and they're all together, it feels horrendously contrived anyway, but you know, you kind of need to accept that's going

to happen at some point, but it sets up the first of, it happens, it must happen at least half a dozen times, where there are just these horrendously inelegant framings of, like, let's get all the characters of which we've got the original cast and the new cast and some kind of two supporting characters we've introduced in this film let's crowd them all into the frame

so that they can all be together in the centre of the image and I hate it it's just I cannot think of a single I cannot think of a single shot or camera move

or anything from this film where I'm like, that's really neat. I really like that. Like, you know, just, even just something as simple as, you know, the clever girl moment and the way the camera kind of like swoops around in the first film, you know, even some of the stuff in The Lost World. And it's just, and it just feels so artless. I don't want to use that word, but it really does.

It just feels so artless. It's just ticking the boxes. going through the motions. I alluded to it earlier, but the editing and the cinematography just feels amateurish. Like the blocking, the framing of people within shots,

it all just feels very perfunctory. And that shot that you mention of the old cast and the new cast just feels designed for the trailer. Like that is just designed to put in the trailer. But our cast is attacked. Our dual castes are attacked by

a giganautosaurus, who we are told for the third time in the film is the biggest carnival that the world's ever seen. Was it three? I thought it was only two at this point. I think it's three. I think it's when they fly over, when Grant and Sattler fly over and see the Giggonautilus below, then it's...

No, you're right, because they're right. Because again, when they fly over, then Kayla says it... Kayla says it when Claire... And then Alan Grant says it again, I think. The point is, like, it's one of those things. it's like, you know, it's if I had a pound for every time they gave it its full name,

I'd only have two pounds, but it is weird to happen twice. It's a lot, yeah. It's that meme, right? Because it does feel like the full name of this dinosaur is giganautosaurus. The largest land carnivore, which ever lived, you know, it's just like,

God, I don't get it. It's cool. You don't have to keep establishing that he's bigger than the T-EX. Again, it's a horribly, horribly contrived and inelialance, Yeah, they escape onto a structure, and Malcolm swings about a flaming locust to distract it,

like when he tried to distract the wrecks in Jurassic Park. He's kind of redeeming himself for that error. Biosyn remotely herds all the dinosaurs in the now burning sanctuary towards containment, and our heroes head through underground tunnels back towards the control centre. They split up to attempt to get the aerial defence system back online, and to go find beta. To get the shields down, you mean? Yeah. I didn't have that one, but good, good, good spot.

Yeah. So Ellie and Claire go to get the power back on and they connect over there, their shared trauma, even though their backstories are wildly different where Claire actively worked for the capitalist exploitation, people and Ellie has devoted her life to fighting capitalistic exploitation through paleobotany. Owen Grant and Macy find a beta,

and there's a scene where there's all too much, holding hands out to control raptors. They all hold their hands out to keep beta at bay and Owen does it with multiple carnivores. Beta has of course been raised in the wild and has never been conditioned to react to that gesture,

but nonetheless, I guess genetic memory or whatever keeps her from attacking. There's another moment that was horrendous. So I watched this at home, on my TV, on my own. And the point at which

Maisie kind of like lurches forward, puts her hand out, you know, flat palm up in the manner of Owen in the first film says, eyes on me, I audibly groaned. I audibly groaned. It's silly. Yeah, it's daft. It also, it's also another one of these things, and this is a major problem I have with modern blockbuster sequels, right? In particular, in particular legacy sequels, but this one's kind of guilty as well. And it even speaks to kind of like the moment with, you know, Malcolm with the, you know, the flare in the giganautasaurus, right? That scene means nothing in the context of this film on its own. It means nothing within the context of this narrative.

This is your complaint about Khan. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I mean. It's exactly the same as Cumberbatch saying can. It's exactly the same. same problem I had with Romulus and, you know, the whole Ian Holm thing. It is

relying on the iconography of old films to make things that they linger on mean something, right? If you've not seen that, and admittedly, there is as with any of these things, there is an argument that kind of like, well, why wouldn't you have seen that? But it's,

it affects the pacing of the film, it affects the way the film is shot, it affects everything with how well this film hangs together. I'm not against callbacks, right? You know, and there are films that have done it quite well. There are some films in recent history, which I think have done this kind of nostalgia baiting better than others, right? You know, there's degrees to this. And I don't think this is the worst example, but it is again an example of how kind of poorly conceived the structure and flow of this

film is. You know, and you've spoken about the editing. We've both spoken about the kind of the framing and the blocking is just not a particularly it's just not a particularly well-conceived story telling kind of device it doesn't hang together in terms of script and pacing this is the longest film that we've watched for this for this series but it's also the film where I felt the length so I haven't checked the runtime of any of these films

apart from this one and when I checked it it had an hour left I think I checked it when they were on their way to the Biosyn Sanctuary, and it feels like a third act is incoming, but then it takes an hour in the sanctuary of just these action scenes and whatnot that really feel long. So Dodgson attempts to escape with embryos and the old shaving can from the original film. Again, why? Yeah, unclear. He gets stuck in the Hyperloop and he gets killed by Dolophosaurus as like his old pawn. Nedri from the first film. There's even a shot of the shaving can rolling away. It's unclear why he has the shaving can and what significance it has since the

embryos within it would long be dead, long be dead. I mean, this is the thing. This is my problem with that. I'm not averse to a callback, right? You know, it's a sick film in a series that's been going for at this point, you know, 30 years, fine, right? There's going to be references and it's stupid. to think there wouldn't be. But why is it, why do we linger on it? It makes no logical sense, but it also doesn't really make any symbolic sense. You know, like there's a kind of an element of, like, you know, he has a similar death to

Nedri, right, who he was effectively kind of meant to be indirectly responsible for the death of in the first film. But again, why? Like, what is the thematic residence here? What is the idea for the, like, why? what is the point it's not and it's this entire film at this point

but the time we get to this stage and now this film has dragged on about half an hour past where it really probably should have and there's no reason for this no reason for it at all I suppose it's to connect Dodson with his only scene in the original Jurassic Park

and again this film's in dialogue with Jurassic Park but to connect him with his only scene where he gives Ned with the shaving crank cream and they've brought Dodson back because Dodgson is more of a presence in the Crichton novels in Jurassic Park and The Lost World, but they haven't done that build-up over this series. They just forgot him after that one scene. So it's trying to make a big bad, you know, a big bad at the end of the series who has always been here and has always been responsible, but who actually only has one

scene previous to this, which is why it feels clumsy and why ultimately it doesn't work. The The gang is now escaping the burning sanctuary, and they find Henry Wu, who says he can undo the damage of the locust plague. They attempt to flee in a chopper, but they are confronted by Rexy, the T-Rex and the Gigonautosaurus. There's a very on-the-nose shot, again, built for trailers, where Rex's head forms the Jurassic Park logo in a circular sculpture. The two fight in a climactic final battle. It looks like the Gigonautosaurus has won, but we zoom in on Rex's eye and. She comes back to life and finds a second wind and establishes herself as the apex predator once more as the gang fly away from the sanctuary. So this is a good point to talk about the prologue to this film, because the prologue, which was filmed and shot and whatever and was part of the film for a long time, what was edited out, is a kind of three to four minute series of shots from the late Cretaceous period, showing dinosaurs in their natural habitat.

and it culminates with a fight between a T-Rex, a slightly feathered T-Rex, a slightly fluffy T-Rex, and a giganautosaurus. And the implication, not even the, the implication in the in the film, but Trevor O says it explicitly in an interview of empire, that canonically, the dinosaur that we love, the T-Rex, was brutally murdered by the giganautosaurus. And that's part of the story we're telling for the film, Trevoro said. So it is this million year-spanning revenge story where our original T-Rex, who gets cloned into Rex of the T-Rex, gets revenge on the Giganottosaurus for killing her in a previous life.

It's just nonsense. I'm sorry, it's just like, I read this quote as like, you know, we're setting that, I was kind of like, your prologue was millions of years ago they're different animals what are you talking about yeah like it's just nonsense

suggesting some kind of genetic memory or whatever I don't know but I actually liked the prolog I actually like the prolog is this our inverse of the San Diego well maybe because I can see it's a

I fully see as an editor if you've got a two and a half hour film getting rid of the four-minute no-dialogue sequence just featuring dinosaurs wandering around a kind of late-Cretaceous landscape that really does nothing except for speak to a character motivation for a dinosaur later in the film is a very easy three minutes to quote.

He does also have a bit of a sort of like Jurassic Park as directed by Terence Malick feel to it. And that's why I like, yeah, that's exactly why I like it. So, no, as a stand-alone thing, actually, so let me clarify, as a standalone thing, like, the prologue I actually quite like it in that regard. The minute I read anything Colin Trevereaux has to say about it, I dislike it. Yeah. You know, that's unfortunate, you know, which sounds very harsh, but it's unfortunately true. Yeah, I can see why it's an easy cut for an editor, but I did like it.

I discovered when I press play on the Blu-ray copy of Dresset Will Dominion that I'd acquired that I could play the theatrical version or the extended version. And I went for the theatrical to kind of put this film in context, but I am curious about how it would play with that prologue in place on the extended version. There's also a bit where the T-Rex goes to a drive-in cinema that I don't care about. I quite like that, but I just like, clearly I mean, I just like T-Rex. It's rampaging around things where, you know, you don't. San Diego driving movie theaters

chuck a T-Rex in there chuck a T-Rex in there make it a five-minute short film I'll lap it up so anyway my point is that the prologue scene in the late Cretaceous ends with zooming in on the dead T-Rex's eye and this has a shot of the dead T-Rex's eye

when she springs back to life when she's not actually dead she springs back to life and kills the Gigonautasaur so our heroes escape the sanctuary Grant and Sattler get together after 30 years or whatever and Macy rejoins her chosen family with her surrogate parents. Grant Sattler and Malcolm testified before Congress,

and Wu saves the day by altering the locust DNA with Macy's DNA. We have a few lingering shots of Rexy, wandering the Biosin Sanctuary in meeting up with two other T-Rexes, who, Colin Trevoro says, are Buck and Doe, the T-Rexes from the Lost World from Isla Sona, the T-Rex parents. Oh, fuck off, no he does. He doesn't. Did he actually...

Yeah, is that news to you? Yeah, well, I've not seen that going off. For fuck sake. Nothing could be an animal. Dinosaur friend. Oh, dinosaur friend. I learned about this about two months again, and God, have been keeping it from you. But I also had this exasperated reaction. I hate it so much. You know, you know, like, we're going to be finishing off this episode.

I think, by doing our ranking like we did the Xenabon. I've actually gone and edited the private letter box list I have right now, as we've been having this discussion, I've demoted Jurassic World Dominion down the place compared to where I had it before. It kind of occupies the

it kind of occupies the Prometheus kind of trajectory here, and the more I think about this film, the more you think about it, the worse it gets. Yeah. Yeah. The smuggler gets a new plane, Hans Solo gets a new Millennium Fulton. and beta is released back to blue. And then there's last words from Charlotte Lockwood,

a character we've never actually met and who I don't care about talking about nature and balance and there's shots of dinosaurs in the wild coexisting with various real world species of animal. Yeah, and there's a lot about we'll have to depend on each other. Coexist. Da da da. It was like, that's what this film was made to be about.

That's what this one was made to be about. You ended the last film with a raptor overlooking a southwestern residential community. That's what this film was meant to be about. Instead, you've done some weird Jurassic Park Star Wars thing with a Biosyn Sanctuary anti-death star. Like, what are you doing? It's a bloody film. Yeah, the way it...

I think what I find most frustrating is the way it... diffuses the threat of dinosaurs on the mainland from Fallen Kingdom, and how clearly it doesn't want to deal with that, which was kind of the sequel hook of Fallen Kingdom, which actually just said doesn't get dealt with in this film. You know, the film starts by saying, how will we live in harmony? Then the film ends by saying, we now live in harmony. But nothing has been done to create that harmony. There was just some locus. Yeah. Also, it's there in the title of the film, right? It's called Jurassic World Dominion, no colon.

Yeah, right? You know, the world is their dominion. Well, no, it's not. You've taken us to some valley in the Dolomites. They've taken us to a sanctuary, which is, for all intents and purposes, just another dinosaur island.

Because it is isolated, the dinosaurs cannot get out. That's just another dinosaur island. You're just doing the same thing again. Except you've disguised it in a different way. They need to break into it this time, as opposed to somehow get out, although it eventually then just kind of like completely flips around on itself, and of course they need to

get back out again, but like, it's just nonsense. But nonetheless, the film makes it clear how eminently controllable the dinosaurs are by humans. Yeah, even down to, we haven't even spoken about the microchip in their heads that makes them all come to the central location. Like, completely, you know, and this is only a few years after we've had, the microchiping their heads the Jurassic World disaster where the entire conceit was

that they couldn't stop a dinosaur rampaging around an island whereas a few years later we've got this microchip in their head where you just do it and it comes back like a homing pigeon it's ridiculous it feels to some extent like there is a kind of capitalist realism going on

you know Mark Fisher's idea of capitalist realism where you can't imagine the end of capitalism where they've released these dinosaurs in a world changing paradigm at the end of the last film and yet in this film the dinosaurs are immediately controlled by capital you know they are immediately exploited by capitalist enterprises corporations and black markets and it hasn't actually

caused a paradigm shift in how we live on earth it's just capitalism but now there's some dinosaurs in a canteen or in malta it feels like a real lack of vision and a real lack of engage with the ecological questions that were raised at the end of the last film. It all feels very small scale. Even the locust epidemic feels very small scale for a global threat. It affects

one form that we see on screen. Another case where the film is weirdly preoccupied with, like, middle America, like flyover country as well. One American film. A lot is made about the effect it has on like Idaho and Nebraska or something.

It's like, you know, let's not let's not worry about all the the play you know but no yeah it's weird we're told it will affect

global global food supplies we are told but we don't see that and it doesn't feel like it will because it affects one cornfield in Idaho or whatever in West Texas

it's a globe trotting film that has very little interest in the global effect of what they're talking about well it's noticeable that there is not a single Italian character

in the sanctuary in Italy in the Dolomite Mountains. Yeah, I didn't even thought about it, don't. It all feels very, very pat and quite, yeah, conservative in the way it's going back to what has already been done. But I found some articles,

these are articles I've already referred to in this series. The Catherine Pugh article on Eco Horror and the Gothic talks about how transgress this is compared to the end of Jurassic Park, because at the end of Jurassic Park, the nuclear pseudo family is reformed with Grant and Sattler, you know, taking on the kids, to some extent, whereas the end of Dominion, she says, is more transgressive. A formed family includes the mixed species family of Owen, Claire, Macy, Beta and Blue,

while Grant rejects his paleontology slash dinosaur children for a child-free life with Satler. I disagree that this feels transgressive. It just feels like another form of the nuclear family, especially when there's two white people, a white man and a white woman getting together, stealing a child, and having some animal pets away. I also think, like I take the point about kind of like this idea of the mixed species family, but I have two observations about that.

The first one is this is actually surprised, the deal that was made with the blue, right, and the way this goes to the raptor, is actually surprisingly similar to Jurassic Park 3 again, right? You know, it's kind of the returning of the rapture children to the raptors, and that's kind of the understanding

they form with the humans, right? So it's actually quite amusing, like, quite how similar that is. But the other thing is, calling this a mixed species family kind of overlooks the deep, deep anthropomorphization that those two creatures have gone through.

over the course of, in particular, the end of the first world film and the previous film, right? It is not, you know, they're not animalistic in the way that they were in the first two films of the entire series. So I would agree with you in that I don't think this is particularly transgressive, you know, particularly when you factor in, they're clearly drawing parallels between, beta the kid

Velocerator and Macy you know and that sort of thing so I don't think I particularly agree with that I also think the resolution of the Grant Sattler relationship is

actually a little bit of a I'm not going to say disappointing but it kind of speaks to a modern requirement for clarity over relationships between different genders. Yeah, it's not clear that they're together in the first film. You know, Grant sort of

says they are, but are they? And yeah. Yeah, whereas here, it's like, okay, we need clarity, right? We need moral clarity, and that's why we're doing this. So I don't agree that it is transgressive. I actually think, I actually think compared to the first film, in particular, I would see the second film I would actually argue it's pretty regressive to be perfectly honest

Pugh goes on to make similar claims about Dominions rewilding and Dominions progressive possibilities she says that human kind and nature exist in balance and therefore unexpected disruptions such as the rewilding

of dinosaurs can be accepted and even adapted into a harmonious dynamic and again I disagree I don't see that the film has done anything to earn that or to establish a new paradigm. As we've said, the dinosaurs are just being controlled by capital, ultimately. They have not disrupted anything, really. So yes, I think this film is frustrating for me.

It has specific narrative problems and discontinuities, specific editing problems and cinematography problems. it all feels very amateurist for a big blockbuster film and he's very disappointing for me mostly because it doesn't feel like a Jurassic Park film you know like I said every character is now a spy they have these James Bond and Jason Bourne action sequences and perhaps most importantly it feels like Star Wars

like he just wants to make a Star Wars film so Trevor O got fired from Star Wars episode 9 and Jewel of the Fates, which was the title of his proposed Star Wars film, which I won't go into detail of, but you can read the script online and it's kind of bonkers. But he comes to this and he says, what I appreciate, he says an interview with Games Radar, what I appreciate about having worked on Star Wars is that I really got a practice run and making a new version of something we loved when we were kids and bringing it to a satisfying conclusion, which I guess is what he's trying to do here, but it's noteworthy to me that he didn't

get to do that on Star Wars because he didn't make his film and the film that was made, Riser Skywalker, was not a satisfying conclusion. And to my mind, neither is this. You know, it's attempting to finish off, to cap off a six

film series by going back to the original and by thinking about the legacy of these films and it completely fails, in my view. I think what's interesting, not necessarily in a good way, what is interesting about this film is

just quite how much it seems to reject the very things it's predecessors set up right and that I find very strange because basically Jurassic World's whole thing was kind of like you know we need to

we need to kind of manage this power responsibly right the Jurassic The Jurassic Parks thing was, like, should we even be wielding this power at all? Jurassic World kind of focused on, you know, we need to wield it responsibly. And then when we don't, there are consequences. And then the two subsequent films, which have ostensibly meant to take that idea and run with it, then do nothing to interrogate it.

You know, we spoke about Fallen Kingdom on the last episode and how it kind of gives up on that about halfway through the film, really. like what are our responsibilities at this point and then goes off into this kind of weird pseudo-gothic horror and this one it sets up the world with dinosaurs and that's the entire conceit of that rubbish viral opening video

right dinosaurs in the world how do we learn to go and it does absolutely nothing with it it does absolutely nothing with it and it's just such a confused film it's such a confused film so yeah I said at the start this idea that

Trevor talked to everyone in the cast and his fellow screenwriters about what they wanted from the film and it seems like he has tried to please everyone and to get everyone's ideas into it and it feels like a shoe that's got too many ingredients you know it's it's a film made by committee that doesn't actually have a singular vision that doesn't have a central story that feels like a lot of elements that don't work together too many moving parts Yeah, and when I take a step back and look at all the films kind of together, the film that actually reminds me the most of is Jurassic Park 3, right? Not in the sense that kind of like, it's the third entry in the trilogy, and it's clearly the weakest of that trilogy. The way in which it basically reminds me of it is it doesn't have a lot of interest in the weightier questions that the other films had.

Even Jurassic World, right? and we had our problems with Jurassic World, but at least had some coherent ideas in there, right? But this seems to abandon them in the same way that Jurassic Park 3 does, right? It suffers from the same issue in that regard. What is different is this is nearly an hour longer than Jurassic Park 3 is, right?

You know, if there's nothing really between the ears for you to ponder, right? You can kind of get away with that if you're going for a fun dinosaur smasher, that takes less than 90 minutes. Yep. You know, like, I think you can get away with that. And I think to an extent Jurassic Park 3 does in the sense that it achieves what I think

it wanted to do. It just didn't, you know, we said this during that episode, I don't think it was particularly ambitious. I don't think it had particularly lofty goals. Jurassic World Dominion is kind of similar in the sense. I think it does what it wants to, and it achieves it to a certain extent. But it's a lot more disjointed. And it drags on a lot longer than that other one does.

And for that reason, for that reason, I do think it's a worse film than that, you know, because it outstays, it outstays the welcome. It's very simplistic in its ideas, but it drags them out really pretty substantially.

No, agreed. It's, um, it doesn't work. A disappointing failure for me. Well, thank you for joining us for our discussion of Jurassic World Dominion, no colon. We've now completed our journey through the Jurassic Park slash World franchise,

and we'll be returning for one more episode, similar to how we did with the Xenapod, to discuss the franchise as a whole. And to go through our rankings for the films, we already know that this discussion has dropped Dominion one place for Jim's ranking. So we'll see where that ends up, but it might be fairly predictable. Yeah, I think you can maybe get this one of my last little Jurassic Park. 3 is better than this rant there but anyway but we'll be back for a shorter episode discussing

the franchise as a whole and what we've learned through through this rewatch through this sequential rewatch until then please do tell people about a podcast please do listen to old episodes of the xenopod and you can follow us and take one on on blue sky and on mastodon until then we will say goodbye thank you jim thank you and see you next time No, what are you one.