I haven’t been excited about a new Jurassic Park movie since 1997
And I was wrong about that one anyway.
Ever since the cast was announced, I have been positively bedeviled by inquiries about whether I’m seeing Jurassic World: Dominion. (And by “the cast” I of course mean the holy trinity: Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ian Malcolm, and Dr. Ellie “woman inherits the earth” Sattler.)
Because I’m in my 30s and was a deep and avowed dinosaur kid, I absolutely love Jurassic Park. Every single thing about it. I love the characters who feel so lived-in that I have the same parasocial relationship with them that I do with my favourite podcast hosts and Peloton instructors. I love the genuine power rippling out of every T.Rex roar. I love watching a generational talent working at the top of his game and having a blast.
Every subsequent movie in this franchise has strayed further from the light.
My parents were reasonably strict about movies, including limiting the number of PG-13 movies I could watch in theatres before I turned 13. When I asked to see The Lost World: Jurassic Park, my mom said yes, on the condition that I would see no more PG-13 movies in theatres until I turned 13. I was 9 years old, and 4 years was half a lifetime to me. But I accepted these terms because I knew it would be worth it to see opening weekend. It had everything - dinosaurs, my crush from the first movie (obviously, so obviously, Dr. Ian Malcolm), and thee 90s preteen It Girl Vanessa Lee Chester.
It was not worth it. Even at my small age I felt a huge difference between the OG and this sequel. The Lost World is unfocused, awkward, and cynical where Jurassic Park is tight, seamless, and earnest. There are still some absolute blockbuster set pieces—the T.Rexes attacking a camper with Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn, and Dr. Ian Malcolm inside; “stay out of the long grass!”—but it’s just not what nine-year-old me needed from a Jurassic Park movie.
Jurassic Park is about the awe-inspiring power of nature and its triumph over human arrogance. No other movie in the franchise tries for awe-inspiring. None of them lets you sit in wonder. Instead, each one of them doubles down on one of the flaws of The Lost World. Jurassic Park 3 is phenomenally awkward, Jurassic World is caustically cynical, and Jurassic World: What The Fuck Ever is wildly unfocused.
There are two small but mighty examples I often point to when people ask me why I dislike Jurassic World in particular so very much. The first is that I bet you my entire student loan debt that you can’t give me a single human character name from the movie who wasn’t in the original. For all anyone knows they could be Harriet and Blah Blah Nyborg. And it’s not just a nostalgia bias at play, because fans can name characters from the newest Star Wars movies just as well as they can from the original trilogy. It’s indifferently drawn and poorly cast characters.
The second is that the protagonists of the Jurassic World movies aren’t the humans. They’re the raptors. You know, the pants-shittingly terrifying monsters from the first movie. The ones who Dr. Alan Grant questioned even breeding well before he condemned the whole idea of a dinosaur park. Like, look at the different relationships the protagonists of Jurassic Park vs Jurassic World have with these things:
The raptors aren’t even on screen when Dr. Alan Grant has his dramatic reaction to their existence. And to be clear - he’s responding to a just-hatched baby right there. The camera swoop, the lighting, and his face all let you know: raptors are not to be fucked with. The rest of the movie plays that out quite emphatically; ultimately the only thing that can permanently take down these Big Bads is a whole T.Rex. Meanwhile, the raptors aren’t chasing after Chris Pratt on his motorcycle. They’re running with him. He self-describes, very annoyingly, as their alpha. And the main character arc of the movie isn’t his, or Bryce Dallas Howard’s. It’s Blue the raptor, who has to choose between two choices for an alpha - Chris Pratt or the Indominus Rex - and ultimately chooses herself like a true #GirlBoss.
So yeah, I’m not excited about this Jurassic World Dominion movie. And I frankly rebuke their transparent efforts to get me excited, including carting out my beloved trio and putting them front & center in their promo work while hiding The Worst Chris until the L.A. premiere. I don’t want to see the characters I have genuinely loved for nearly 30 years shuffled around this movie that I guarantee has no idea why I love these characters or even dinosaurs. For one thing, I’ve seen all three of them do that already in the middling-to-poor Lost World and Jurassic Park 3. And for another, this is a series about humans’ arrogant overreach in resurrecting things that should be left in the past. At my big age, the irony of this series doing exactly that itself is a bit too much to for me to stomach.