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Jurassic World: Dominion (Colin Trevorrow 2022)


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5 hours ago, Romão said:

People on the internet are too apologetic of multi million dollar productions with zero artist integrity that aim solely of making money out of a pre established brand

 

I am wearing the skin of the previously existing thing! Unconvincingly like Vincent D'Onofrio in Men in Black! Give me sugar!

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9 hours ago, Naïve Old Fart said:

Do you mean Dodgson?

The actor who played him in JURASSIC PARK, is, currently, serving six years, in jail, for sexually assaulting a thirteen year old girl.

Campbell Scott is a very able actor, with a proven track record.

I know, it is just that they could hace used prostetics to make him look similar…. I mean, dogson was bald!

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On 09/06/2022 at 11:38 PM, Matt C said:

It’s not as bad as the reviews say it is, but the subplots involving giant mutant locusts and the whole Malta sequence (basically a Bond opening with dinosaurs) show that this franchise has been running on fumes. And the whole second half is basically Trevorrow doing a “best of” compilation of sequences and homages from previous JP movies. In fact the whole big climax basically recycles JW and FK’s.

I lost count of the number of fanservice callbacks to JP and even TLW now and again. Total overkill. Like that pointless Nedry lookalike for that one scene—why?? And why did the geneticists repeat nearly verbatim the same mistake they made back in JP??

 

Also, why did they make Dodgson look like Tim Cook? He’s literally the least vilifiable of the big tech CEOs. They couldn’t make him look nondescript—or at least like Zuckerberg or Bezos or even Musk??

 

The cleverest moment in the movie for me was the T-Rex walking behind the big circle. Otherwise, it was a fun enough movie to watch once on the big screen, but it mostly vanishes from the mind the moment you walk out the theater. It could have been so much more.

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This movie was stupid.  

 

It's perfectly acceptable summer popcorn fun, and is well paced and never boring, for sure.  But if you think about the plot for too long it's all just rather silly and inconsequential, which I guess can be said about all the movies after the first one...

 

 

Some thoughts I had as the movie went on:

 

 

Cool prologue!  Nicely explained the world the movie is set in, helpful for someone like me who saw JW and JWFK once but didn't remember specific plot details or character names.  There was a cloned human in the last movie?  OK yea, I remember now that I think about it

 

Wait, why does Dodgson look completely different than he did in the first movie?  Wait, why is this character even named Dodgson? This guy is so completely different in every possible way from the first film's character, they should have just invented a brand new character for this role instead of attaching the Dodgson name to him.  Lame!

 

The special effects in this movie are basically perfect, the CGI dinosaurs are integrated into the live action plates perfectly

 

Locusts? Giant locusts?  About to destroy the entire earth's food supply?  This plot is both simultaneously ridiculously over the top and kicked up to epic proprotions, and also inconsequential as its resolved so swiftly, and you never care about it as much as the fate of the main characters, who are barely involved with it

 

Dodgson is actually a good bad guy in this, along with Biosyn being a good choice for the final evil corporation.  They just shouldn't have called him Dodgson!

 

Going back to corporations heavily involved in genetics being the biggest corporations on the planet goes back to Crichton's original novel, which is pretty cool.  But everything else about this movie is so 2020s and not 1990s in the slightest

 

Laura Dern doesn't remind me of Sattler at all, just... modern day Laura Dern.  Sam Neill doesn't sound like Grant AT ALL!  He sounds like a New Zealander!  What happened?  Oh man, their reunion scene has the most awkward exposition dump I've ever witnessed in my life

 

The Malta sequence was fun and probably the best part of the movie

 

Dichen Lachman!  Where have you been since Dollhouse!?  Her character is so riduculously over the top, standing there in her white outfit striking all these poses, laughable, but so far into over the topness, it circles back to just being goofy fun. The whole thing with laser beams being used to tell dinosaurs who to chase is silly. 

 

I also liked the underground gambling world scene with dinosaur fights, guys spit-roasting dinosaur meat, etc.  Felt Star Warsy kinda, and these films need more goofiness like this at this point!

 

The Biosyn valley in the Dolemites is freaking ENORMOUS, it looks bigger than the islands!  

 

Dodgos is like Tim Cook eh?  Kinda funny.  I like this Ramsay guy, I hope he's not setting Grant and Sattler up to get captured.  Malcolm seems basically the same as in the original movies, but Goldblum is always that quirky in most things I've seen him in so that helps

 

There's a ton, just a TON of action/chase scenes in this movie, and I don't mind it!

 

Conversely, there's WAY too many scenes where dinosaurs have our main characters surrounded, and just open their mouths and roar at them instead of instantly killing them, and our heroes manage to escape.  Overall, come to think of it, there isn't enough deaths in this movie!

 

I like that we're not in another amusement park; The Biosyn valley makes it feel more like the second movie which is nice

 

I like the variety of new dinosaurs; I always like that the first 2 films stuck to all the big classic ones, but by now on movie 6 it's nice to get random stuff like the one with the long claws and different kind of flying ones and stuff.

 

What the hell was up with the burning locusts setting the whole valley on fire? That's not how fire suppression works....

 

Dodgson being killed by the same species that his lacky Nedry was killed by in the first movie is kinda fun

 

Blue and Beta are cute and I am glad they survived the movie

 

This doesn't really wrap everything up, they could make more of these things...

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The movie wasn't a disaster like Last Jedi, Age Of Ultron or No Time To Die...but it felt like such a wasted opportunity.

 

Seriously - you get a cast like this together and have a massive effects budget...and this is the best you can come up with?

 

It should have been called Dinosaurs By Apple or iDinosaur. Dodgson had far too much screen time and the whole Tim Cook/Apple HQ thing was ludicrous.

 

And did I have some kind of fever dream half way through as I could have sworn there was a Star Wars cantina scene followed by the rooftop and bike chase from The Bourne Ultimatum, and Dichen Lachman was there for some reason. What was all that shit about?!

 

Honestly, for the first two thirds it felt like two entirely separte movies. It became immediately apparant how bland Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard's characters - "man" and "lady" if I remember correctly - were as soon as the original cast showed up.

 

But even then, Laura Dern and Sam Neill are just sort of...there. The absolute highlight of the movie was Jeff Goldblum. It was as if he'd ignored the script and decided to instead just point out all the stupid shit that was going on around him. Only for the movie to continue being stupid.

 

There were too many characters to begin with yet they just kept throwing more and more in.

 

This is one of those movies where if you ask me "So what was the plot?" my response will be "????" and "What did you like about it?" my response will also be "????".

 

It was just a bunch of random ideas thrown together in a barely coherent fashion. It totally failed to live up to the promise of Fallen Kingdom's ending of showing dinosaurs in the wild. Battle At Big Rock is better than this movie.

 

2/5

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Personally, I don't think there is much of a story to tell with dinosaurs just loose in the world. Which was my problem from the beginning that people even wanted that kind of story. After a while it just becomes a string of random dinosaur attacks in various places. What is the driving force of that story? I guess a story COULD have been made solely focused on just rounding up the dinos and putting them in the sanctuary location, and just cut all the BioSyn stuff out mostly. But would it really have been THAT interesting with another hour of random dino attacks in different locations? I think with Battle At Big Rock and the Prologue combined with what is in the movie, you get just enough of that. I will say that I love the Malta stuff with the underground dinosaur trading and etc. Maybe more could have been done with that.

 

I should note there actually is going to be an extended cut on home video release. From what the director recently said, it will be 14 additional minutes. However, from what I also know about 5 of those minutes will be the Prologue reinstated into the film as it was originally intended. That leaves about 9 additional minutes of whatever deleted scenes there may be. Battle At Big Rock is said to be one of the bonus features (but not integrated into the film).

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The movie is pretty terrible. But at least it's bad in a goofy, schlocky way. You have fun laughing at the sheer idiocy of the script. It's kinda like watching a big budget Sharknado film.

 

Giacchino's score was too loud and overbearing. Which is unfortunate, because too many moments would've been much more effective with a calmer score or no score at all. 

 

Anyway, among the "World" films, this one is as bad as Fallen Kingdom, but I did have more fun with Dominion than with the 2018 flick. But I guess this is mostly my fault, because when I saw FK I was expecting a decent science fiction movie and I got one of the most idiotic blockbusters of the century. With Dominion, I walked into the movie theater kinda expecting it to be bad anyway, so I managed to have some fun.

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I remember that, when FK was on theaters, in July of 2018, I invited some friends to go to the movies. Due to time constraints, I chose to let them decide what we should watch: Fallen Kingdom, Incredibles 2 or Ant-Man and the Wasp (Dwayne Johnson's Skyscraper was also there, but the terrible reviews made me rule it out as an option).

 

Out of these three films, FK was the one I was looking forward to the most, and I already had watched Incredibles 2 a few days before (though I wouldn't mind watching it again, because it's a fun movie and my friends hadn't seen it). However, after much debate, they ended up choosing Ant-Man and the Wasp.

 

Sometime later, I finally saw FK. And oh boy, after I saw it, I was glad my friends chose the Ant-Man movie back on that day, because, as forgettable as the MCU movie is, it was certainly better than the mess that was Jurassic World 2.

 

Also, Ant-Man 2 ended up becoming "essential" homework for Avengers: Endgame, which we saw months later, and it has a fun Christophe Beck score ;)

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Having seen this in IMAX just once, here are my assessments: this whole Jurassic World trilogy is pretty bad. In fact, I was so disappointed with Dominion that I gave away the Jurassic Park 25th anniversary 4K Blu-Ray set that included Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Jurassic Park III, and Jurassic World, along with Fallen Kingdom; after that, I purchased Jurassic Park and The Lost World in their recently released individual 4K slipcases with the 4K and Blu-ray discs. Those two films are all that is needed.

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I'll see this one in a year or two when it's on streaming, but I've seen the first two - the first is just dumb, with characters making stupi decisions even by Hollywood standards. I could probably just about live with it as a background view.

 

I rather enjoyed FK - again still rather silly, but the more gothic aspect worked plus I think Gia's score is better.

 

It does sound like story-wise they've messed up their opportunity with Dominion, but what I get out of these movies is the potential for thematic action scores and this trilogy has definitely delivered that for me. In fact, the only thing stopping Jurassic being a closed book musically is still not having Davis' score expanded.

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You may as well ban me from your life then! Hahaha. ;) I know the "World" films are pulpy bad fun, but I still like them. And from what I have been told, the director made them for younger audiences in mind, not us adults. Which is a shame.

 

But now that this trilogy is done... I would LOVE a darker spinoff film. Something akin to the terror of A Quiet Place, but with dinosaurs. Like a family that has to deal with dinosaurs attacking them at their home or something. A smaller film with more personal stakes and actual scares. I doubt they will ever take this series into R rated territory (compies eating babies! guts spilling out of bad guys! raptors being hit by a rocket launcher and exploding into a bloody pulp!), but I think they really could push that PG-13 to its limits like they used to try.

 

Because otherwise, the only stories you can tell with this franchise at this point are random dino attacks in the world, otherwise you are just repeating the same story over and over again. OR, you can do prequels set during the time before JP was visited by Alan and co, or you do a prequel of JW before the Indominus shows up. But would those even be compelling enough stories for a movie? Maybe more for a TV series?

 

That's why personally I would be fine if this IS it. It's my favorite franchise, but all good stories have an end. But if they do keep going... they need to change it up and not cater to kids anymore like they have for 3 films now (4 if you count JP3, which was definitely made in a rush to appeal to those damn kids and their toys).

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  • 4 weeks later...

I finally saw the film.  I liked it!  Definitely not perfect.  I haven't read a single post in this thread since I'm anti-spoiler but thought it was overall fun, just wish they had a bit more character nods.  For example, how Spiderman No Way Home had the three spidey's banter in a very fun way about their character traits.  This helped tell the story and gave the fans of each franchise much to love.  I wish there was way more of that in this film.  They did a little bit of it, but added new characters too that didn't really serve too much purpose while also underusing other characters.  I overall felt satisfied though there were noticeably missed opportunities.  I thought the music was good, maybe could have used a tip of the hat more to JW for creating the sound of the franchise.  I kind of liked how they redeemed Dr. Henry Wu.  It could have had more weight though.  He frankly wasn't that important, just a side character.  I really liked Ramsey's character.  Very glad he wasn't too flipping.  It felt real.  Dichen Lachman didn't have a completion arch.  That was the weakest part of the film, the spy sequence was just unnecessary or poorly executed with lots of characters we don't care about.   But overall, definitely not great but enjoyable which is frankly exactly what I thought of Jurassic park in 1993.  It's not a deep film, it's popcorn movie and this was fun.  

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Edmilson said:

 

Glad it's on Blu-Ray. Not a fan of the Marvel extensions not being released.

 

EDIT: Trailer from that link... are they really using the raptor call as a rhythmic element? I bet someone thought they were real clever for that one.

 

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1 hour ago, Edmilson said:


Crikey that film already felt bloated enough. I thought it would never end.

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I skimmed through it. Other than the prologue there's nothing major added. 

 

A scene with Ellie inside the farmhouse at the start of the film.

 

A small extension to Grant's first scene, where two girls mock him for digging up bones.

 

A scene where Owen meets the hunters chasing Blue/tracking dinosaurs illegally.

 

A scene where Blue attacks two hunters trying to capture her and Beta.

 

Haven't watched it fully yet but apparently there's a bit more stuff involving an Oviraptor in the dinosaur Black Market in Malta.

 

Don't think there's anything extra with the Giganotasaurus whatsoever, which makes Trevorrow's early comments all the more perplexing. I don't think that dinosaur eats or kills a single person in the whole film.

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On 11/08/2022 at 5:18 AM, crumbs said:

I skimmed through it. Other than the prologue there's nothing major added. 

 

A scene with Ellie inside the farmhouse at the start of the film.

 

A small extension to Grant's first scene, where two girls mock him for digging up bones.

 

A scene where Owen meets the hunters chasing Blue/tracking dinosaurs illegally.

 

A scene where Blue attacks two hunters trying to capture her and Beta.

 

Haven't watched it fully yet but apparently there's a bit more stuff involving an Oviraptor in the dinosaur Black Market in Malta.

 

Don't think there's anything extra with the Giganotasaurus whatsoever, which makes Trevorrow's early comments all the more perplexing. I don't think that dinosaur eats or kills a single person in the whole film.

 

There's lots of other little bits too. There's a short moment where Maisie sees Blue in the distance before she rides her bike into town. A short scene follows with her at a convenient store where the worker asks why she isn't in school. Then after the Apatosaur scene that follows, you see her leaving. Little bits.

 

Yes there is a scene with an Oviraptor (a heavily feathered dinosaur that you also see in the Prologue sequence) fighting the Lystrosaurus Kayla sold. It's really short, but unexpectedly graphic as the Lystrosaurus bites off the Oviraptor's head. It's body moves around a bit on its own before it falls over. There isn't any visible blood though. from what I recall.

 

During the Malta chase on the rooftop with Claire, there is a brief bit where she is running between clothes on clotheslines. The clothing is real close to her as she runs, and is followed by a shot behind her showing the Atrociraptor running through it as well. It's a couple of cool shots, not sure why they were even cut because they were so brief. Most people don't even realize this was added when watching the Extended Cut.

 

Once Owen gets back on the plane, he shares a brief scene with Claire who is tending to his wounds from what just happened.

 

There is a nice scene with Grant, Sattler, and Maisie added right when their transport gets "stuck" at the old amber mines. Maisie doesn't want to go into the mines and would rather stay in the tube, but Grant convinces her to come out and says something like Ellie is a good person to have in a tight spot, and etc. I'll take any extra Grant/Ellie I can get.

 

One of the longer added scenes is actually one with Dodgson and Ramsay. It's placed in a weird spot (right before the Dimetrodon attack in the tunnels), but it's a good scene with Ramsay confronting Dodgson about everything wrong that is going on. In a way it makes Dodgson even more oblivious when he realizes Ramsay had "betrayed" him near the end, but it's a well-acted scene.

 

Apart from the prologue, no there doesn't seem to be any extra Giga scenes. However, during the tracking shot to the T-Rex's head after it has fallen down in its big battle with the Giga in the finale, there is a flash of lightning and for a moment it has the feathers it had from the prologue. It's meant to harken back to its death from that sequence. But then of course, she gets back up in the finale and "seeks justice".

 

Those are all the other scenes I can think of that you didn't mention yet. It should be noted that bits of the theatrical version's Mosasaur attack in the opening sequence are trimmed down in the Extended Cut, but not by much. The new arrangement is like this: Prologue from 65 Million Years Ago, The Drive-In scene, the opening logo (which uses the Theatrical version's music instead of what we heard on YouTube), then the "Now This" reel which leads into a bit of the Mosasaur attack before cutting off. Then the rest of the film plays out.

 

Overall, I feel like the Extended Cut is better than the theatrical. Kind of allows a bit more breathing room in certain areas (this film has a strange pace where it either feels too dragging or too rushed) while adding a little more interesting moments to keep things lively. Most of it is, as expected, more character-based.

 

I think them cutting the prologue and the drive-in sequence from the theatrical was a huge mistake. It's a far more engaging opening to the film, and a lot more thrilling once we get to the drive-in (did you know it was one of the few sequences shot before COVID happened?). I mean the T-Rex is barely in the film without these two sequences, and given all the hype for it to be treated more as a "character"... it's weird they cut all this. Especially when they continued to use the drive-in sequence moments in all of its trailers. No wonder people felt cheated. I think if all the extended cut had was this original opening, that alone would have been enough for me to prefer it. Everything else is a bonus.

 

Also: The Blu-Ray/4K includes the short film "Battle at Big Rock" as a bonus feature. For those who haven't seen it but wanted more "dinos in the real world" mayhem, check it out. What I find kind of cheap in Dominion is that they actually used most of the fun bits from this short film's end credits in the "Now This" reel (where you also see alternate views of this film's attack). Cheap, cheap. I honestly wished, and had expected, more of these short films.

 

 

EDIT:

I will say however... while this cut is extended, this is by no means the full cut of the film. From what I am privy to, there was definitely still a longer version with even more additional scenes and different layout of scenes. This film is still recut from how it originally was at one point. But that's kind of par for the course of any film these days.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I still haven’t seen this. I’m considering catching it in cinemas while it’s still playing. If anyone has seen it, is the extended cut better?

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4 hours ago, HyenaBoy said:

Does anyone know when the movie will be released on DVD and Digital (ITunes) in the UK?

Nvm, just found out it's 26th September. I'd love to hear what the studio's excuse is for delaying the DVD release date in the UK by an entire month. 

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3 hours ago, Mr. Who said:

If anyone has seen it, is the extended cut better?

 

On 12/08/2022 at 12:45 PM, scallenger said:

Overall, I feel like the Extended Cut is better than the theatrical. Kind of allows a bit more breathing room in certain areas (this film has a strange pace where it either feels too dragging or too rushed) while adding a little more interesting moments to keep things lively. Most of it is, as expected, more character-based.

 

I think them cutting the prologue and the drive-in sequence from the theatrical was a huge mistake. It's a far more engaging opening to the film, and a lot more thrilling once we get to the drive-in (did you know it was one of the few sequences shot before COVID happened?). I mean the T-Rex is barely in the film without these two sequences, and given all the hype for it to be treated more as a "character"... it's weird they cut all this. Especially when they continued to use the drive-in sequence moments in all of its trailers. No wonder people felt cheated. I think if all the extended cut had was this original opening, that alone would have been enough for me to prefer it. Everything else is a bonus.

 

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It feels like a million years since I saw this film in the cinema. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more forgettable film. It just exists. It was exciting, it wasn’t boring. It was just bang average and stank of everyone phoning it in. Maybe Covid did that. I don’t know. But I don’t really have any desire to see it again. 
 

which is mad because I actually really enjoyed the first Jurassic World film. It was a nice nostalgia trip and a fun time in the cinema. The other two that followed were just diminishing returns. 
 

I think the only thing they could do with this franchise is to adapt the book as a TV show and have it closer in tone to its source material. Aside from that, Trevorrow has caused it to go extinct. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I saw Dominion in the cinema the other day and given the reactions and bad reviews I wasn't expecting much but I enjoyed it. It's not as good as Jurassic World but it was a fun movie with cool action sequences to see on the big screen and the visuals and effects looked great, especially the sanctuary. Nothing deep or scary but definitively enjoyable and Giacchino did a good job, the Malta chase music being a standout.

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JWD currently needs $5 million in order to pass the $1 billion mark. But since now it is available to watch at home I don't think it'll make it, unless Universal re-releases the movie (maybe the extended edition?) in theaters.

 

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/releasegroup/gr1700221445/?ref_=bo_ydw_table_2

 

So close, yet so distant.

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Yeah I am not sure why they didn't just release the extended cut in theaters before putting it on streaming. They totally would have pushed it to the billion dollar mark if they had. Look at what happened with Spider-Man No Way Home when they did that.

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Not by a big margin, but it allowed the film to breathe more. Pacing was one of its biggest issues, and the extended cut fixes that a little. That and it has a substantially better opening (the prologue 65 million years ago plus the drive in sequence that was already on YouTube).

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You mean the scene where it attacks the hunters? Eh, I thought it was okay. I've seen FAR worse lol. Probably could have been executed better, still.

 

Also, here is part 2 of my review with Seamus Blackley. This part may blow you away a bit. And even more next week when the third and final part drops...

 

 

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