The Reel Rejects - JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION Movie Review!!

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

This is our RIGHT OUT OF THE THEATER REVIEW from The D-Box Experience for Jurassic World: Dominion! Head to a @Cinemark theatre near you and try D-BOX! Learn more at: https://rb.gy/63yvuw We gave our Jurassic World Dominion Trailer Reaction, and now we react to the latest Jurassic Park movie featuring the giganotosaurus, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Pratt, Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Bryce Dallas Howard, & MORE! ...is it the best of the series so far? LET'S FIND OUT!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/the-reel-rejects/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Other than the fact that this frickin' hand thing seems to work of, like, on any given occasion. That's the meme. It's like, anytime he does that. Every time a dinosaur shows up, I just half expect that. These dinosaurs are always like, whoa, what is? Whoa, whoa, this guy's got something else. I've never seen this before. He'll encounter dinosaurs.

He's never met before. And they're always like, whoa, what, what, what's, you got the hand up. Let's, let's see what this guy has to say. Every time. What has happened in their Reject Nation? Greg and John back at it at The Cinemark. We just watched Jurassic World Dominion, but this time

we watched it in a very specific format which is D-Box. They wanted us to watch it in D-Box, and for a reason, I mean it sincerely. We even watched Top Gun Maverick in D-Box as well. Watching D-Rassar World Dominion in D-Box I do think is one of the

absolute best ways to experience this film. It's been a while since we've done anything of this type of more immersive theater experience, but They have completely fine-tuned. They have mastered the timing and the movement to be in sync with the audio and video of the movie. It does make it more immersive. It feels much more calculated.

It doesn't just feel like repetitive go through the motions of what it is. It's super duper in sync, and I loved it. Also, that you can control the intensity because sometimes it could be a little too much for certain people. And that was fun and just kind of messed around with time with time during the movie. So guys, this is a great way to experience Jurassic World Dominion, especially with the kind of visuals and camera movie this film has. So go to Cinemark.com, get yourself some tickets today and find the nearest D-Box near you because it's absolutely worth it. Now, how is the movie itself, though, as a whole? Let's talk about it.

If you've seen our trailer reactions, you know we were both very much looking forward to this film. Just a quick recap on thoughts and feelings of the Jurassic World franchise specific. I really like the first Jurassic World movie a lot. I think it's a fun roller coaster, all right? There's the original Jurassic Park, and there's everything afterwards. But Jurassic World One, I think is a lot of fun. Jurassic World Falling Kingdom, I loath that film. I know you like it a tiny bit more.

I like it more than you. I like it more than Jurassic World, honestly. I loathe that film. But Jurassic World Dominion, I was very much excited by the trailers for this, because it seemed like they had something so much more different to explore, something so much more new as opposed to being locked off at like an island again or some shit like that this would take place around the world essentially you would see a world where humans and dinosaurs are learning to coexist with one another that's the world this movie is so

this film basically has two plots there's a lot of plots there's like 45 plots in this movie but there's two main plots you can boil it down to all right so the first main plot is you have owen Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas, Howard, Claire. And do you guys remember Clone Girl from the last movie? How could you forget? Well, if you did forget, don't worry. They're going to recap their shit out of it for you.

There is a last time on Jurassic World, if ever I've seen one on this movie. They're going to remind you to the core. If this is your first time, don't even sweat. So in that plot line, they have to keep the Clone Girl, you know, separate from the world. Everyone's after her. We need her DNA.

And while they're living out in the wilderness, There's Blue, Blue's back, and Blue has a baby. Beta. Beta. I loved this dinosaur, all right? Blue's always been the best part of Jurassic World franchise. And Beta, the Baby Blue, love Baby Blue. You hear all of those plushies being sold right now.

So part of this world now is that there's a lot of poaching going on. Baby Blue gets kidnapped. Clone Girl gets kidnapped. Owen and Claire have to venture across the globe to go find them, rescue them. Second plot, which I won't go into too much detail about because the trailers actually didn't reveal much about it, but it's heavily, heavily, heavily focused on Alan Grant, Sam Neal, and Laura Durence, Ellie Sadler. They are such a predominant part of this film. It's not like they're just a cameo, and that's kind of a cool thing that I thought they did with it,

because you did have two different films in here, where it's like Jeff Goldblum's not featured as much as them, still an important supporting character, but not featured as much. There's basically something with science, corporate batty, and they have to go stop it. They're going to go stop it. That's the plot. And then eventually you'll see these two plots converge together into one. What I'll say is that in the first 20 minutes of this film, I was completely on board for it. It was exactly what the trailers were omitting to me and now watching it play out, where it had a sense of awareness of kind of how fun.

this could all be a little cheesy, but a really good, like, fleshing out of here's what the world is like now and how difficult and challenging it is for the dinosaurs and humans to coexist with one another. It really had a good handle on it in a way that was really entertaining to watch. I was all for it. This one had a different setting in the sense that it wasn't just one setting, at least for the first half of this movie. It wasn't just one setting. It was exploring the world, and it's a little cheesy. but I'm enjoying it.

I'm for it. From what I'm about to say, you'll probably go, isn't that what you expected from the trailers, though? Isn't that what you kind of expect when you watch this movie? I don't understand how that's a criticism.

That's what I want, Greg. That's what I saw the trailers. The problem is it becomes numbing. It becomes a little tone deaf. Yeah, there's a rinse repeat cycle of like, okay, here's a few lines either pertaining vaguely to an interesting idea that's plot oriented,

or here's a couple of kind of boilerplatey character dialogue bits. Then, oh, wait, there's a threat. Moment of suspense to pay homage to the fact that these used to be monster movies and now we're doing a big old action scene because we just found out the next location and what's between us in that location?

An action scene pretty much spirals down a cacophony hole after a while. Yeah, and you get so used to it. It's never scary, first off, because of the fact that everyone who's put in these situations is often either the same people over and over and over again or it's just returning main characters. So I'm not going to say who lives or dies

by the end of this film, but for the runtime of this movie, you're pretty much guaranteed that they're probably going to be fine. So it's not even scary and it's not that exciting and there's not much tension due to the fact that, you know, there's safety and plot harbor with these guys. This is basically their job now is to be in these situations. Yeah. As far as the returning characters go, what I'll say is that, like, Alan Grant weirdly was, Sam Neal was, is just always a pleasure to watch, and it's not seeing him and Laura Dern have a bunch of scenes together. They still have great chemistry. But Alan Grant ultimately felt unnecessary to this movie.

Like, he just kind of grumped his way throughout the whole film. And it felt like it was going to arc into something or he would do something super vital and important, but he doesn't. Laura Dern, though, I thought she was excellent. I think Laura Dern, out of the returning cast members, is the best one of the three. Jeff Goldblum was very fascinating because here's the weird part about Jeff Goldblum. He was making the theater laugh.

At the same time, and I heard other people saying this too, he really didn't seem like he had his heart in this film and he seemed like he didn't give a shit throughout it and that's part of what made it funny because there's no must go faster must go faster you know uh jeff goblum it's just kind of mocking the material in a lot of ways yeah there's a weird quality to these characters where i feel like especially with the Jurassic world movies to me

and especially with characters like Owen and Claire there's a quality where even though they're played by the same actors and technically they're carrying on the same storyline they always feel like they could be any two people people. And I feel like that almost sort of starts to seep into characters like Jeff Goldblum, who has appeared in multiple sequels. And in the previous one, he's only in there for one scene. So I feel like out of everyone, it is a little bit of a bummer. He shows up. So it's fun to watch him, but it is a little bit like, you're used to this, I can tell. Well, the setup of this movie does have a great debate. And it does try to like bookend it with it of how do we

coexist? Like, create this fictional world. And then let's have conversations about it. Let's have a debate about it. But halfway through this movie, it essentially just becomes another Jurassic Park sequel again, where it takes place at this isolated location. There's bad scientist guy. That's it. It's just setups of like encountering dinosaurs. It's so repetitive in the way it goes. Like, they just keep stumbling into the same setup like John described and the same type of like they mix it up. Don't get me wrong. There are some really cool shots. And I really feel like Colin Chavarro really cared. I feel like he really put his all into crafting these action scenes, but the emotion underneath is just not there. And it's not in the script either.

And unlike Jurassic World One for me and for a lot of people, that was at least fun. Even though there's more of it, it's not anywhere near as fun. It actually feels like it takes itself even more serious this time around. And it feels like if you trimmed out 20 minutes of action and maybe A couple of plots and maybe shifted some of that focus to our classic returning characters and our recent returning characters. You could have had something that is as fun as it wants to be and as satisfying as it wants to be. It's like the first Jurassic World movie was commenting on it. It's like it almost gets boring because you're like, I get it, dinosaurs and chaos. Cool.

Give me something to care about with the characters I am happy to see back. Well, it's kind of crazy how Chris Pratt has become progressively more boring in these films. He is like dead on the inside in this film. Please, not entertaining in the slightest bit. Bryce Dallas Howard, I think they try to make her character better here. And I like, this is weird because I like them both as actors. And I like Bryce Dallas Hard a lot as a director, especially. But, man, they have no chemistry.

There are a couple new characters who are a lot of fun. There's this pilot girl you've seen in the trailers when they're on the plane, and then the taradacto comes flying down, or I don't know if it's a taraducto, but whatever. That girl, she is great. Great. I was like, she should be the main character. She should. She's great.

Her and the guy who's the assistant to Jeff Goldblum were both great. But her especially. Her especially. And when she showed up, I was like, oh, no, I could easily see how this character could be written totally obnoxiously. She won me in every moment she had, yeah. She elevates it. If you're going to watch it, you're already going to watch it. You already kind of know what you're walking into.

I was a little let down by the fact that the first 20 minutes seemed to be, this is it. This is the film. This is what the trailers are. This is good. But then it just becomes typical Jurassic Park sequel. And that's probably the biggest letdown of it is not that interesting whatsoever. It's like a lot of just science mumbo-jumbo,

and some of it is based in realism, but there's no impulse to it. There's no personality or passion behind the script to really make that stuff sing. No, it's just information being thrown at you. Yeah, and too, if you wanted what the trailers were giving us, which is like we're going to see these sweeping shots almost sometimes with no dialogue or no humans whatsoever,

there are moments, little moments where the movie, does do that, just goes into these little visual sequences, but they are not at all like the trailers would have you expect. Like, you do descend pretty fast into Blockbuster Action Cacophony. And I feel like the thing that is kind of stepping on its own feet about this franchise is the fact that they want to force it to be an action movie instead of... Like, you can get a lot of action out of monster movie aesthetics, but I feel like they go full-on action movie, again,

with just that one little beat of suspense to pay service, and it does diminish the return. of the thrills of the movie across the board. That's our thoughts on it. I genuinely mean that DeBox does make it a better experience. Yes. And some decent ideas at the core. Yeah, yeah.

And if not, DeBox for this, debox for something else, because, like, Top Gun Maverick is a great film and a great deboxer, too. But Jurassic World Dominion, yeah, pretty let down by it. What do you guys want from this franchise? Did you watch it?

Did you like it? Leave your thoughts down below. Subscribe. click that bell. Thank you to D-Box and send a mark. We'll talk with you all soon.