Ivan Radford | On 17, May 2024

Director: Colin Trevorrow
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, DeWanda Wise, BD Wong
Certificate: 12

“It never gets old,” sighs Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) as she encounters a dinosaur close up in Jurassic World Dominion. That sense of awe and wonder has always been a cornerstone of the Jurassic Park franchise. Fallen Kingdom, the middle (and middling) sequel of the Jurassic World trilogy still retained those things, despite its flaws, and ended with a bold mic drop that opened up the Dinoverse for all manner of inventive ideas. Jurassic World Dominion doesn’t really deliver on that promise, opting instead for a fan-pleasing union of the World and Park casts.

We pick things up as former Jurassic World staffers Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) are holed up in the woods with Maisie (Isabella Sermon), their adopted clone daughter. With poachers on the hunt for both her and velociraptor Blue (who also has a ward of her own), it’s only a matter of time before they’re sucked back into the orbit of the dino-trade. Elsewhere, Ellie has turned to focus on botany, but finds herself investigating a suspicious strain of locusts that seem to originate from genetics company Biosyn. She recruits Alan Grant (Sam Neill) to help dig into the dastardly goings-on, leading them to Biosyn’s high-tech HQ, where none other than Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has a regular gig as a corporate speaker.

Just as humans and dinosaurs now unavoidably live side by side, it’s inevitable that the two ensembles’ paths should cross, and Biosyn unsurprisingly emerges as the big bad carrying on in the footsteps of InGen and Dr Henry Wu (BD Wong) – in a nice touch, Biosyn is run by Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), who briefly appeared in the original 1994 blockbuster. What’s impressive is how much fun there is in watching the two groups collide. Owen and Claire epitomise the potential thrills of the modern, expanded premise by combining raptors with motorbikes across Malta, while Ellie and Alan bring grounded, quiet peril as they infiltrate secret labs and wind up trapped in a buzzing prison.

By water, air, forest and underground tunnel, the variety of set pieces is juggled with enthusiasm by director Colin Trevorrow, who has a knack for keeping the tone light without losing the toothy edge of the central threat. There are even feathers on show as the cornucopia of creatures continues to broaden, offering both winged and amphibious dangers alongside the familiar car-crunching land-stompers.

But once the gang are all together, Dominion struggles to know what to do with its super-sized cast. They’re all individually enjoying themselves, with Pratt and Howard sinking their teeth into the most emotional material they’ve been given to date, and Dern, Neill and Goldblum effortlessly reigniting the sparks of chemistry between their conflicting trio. But the script is so keen to give them moments to connect and share banter that it forgets to keep the momentum going, which leaves just enough time for events to begin to feel predictable – something that has never really been true of the Jurassic Park, or World, films before.

As far as legacy sequels go, then, it’s an uneven but undoubtedly entertaining ride – a bloated beast that bites off a bit too much for its own good. The result is that, for the first time in the franchise’s history, there’s more awe and wonder surrounding the humans than the dinosaurs (although the door is potentially still open for new, inventive ideas in the future). Nonetheless, as Ellie, Alan and and Ian reunite, it’s hard to deny the pleasure of seeing these characters back together – that, at least, never gets old.

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