Dino Flicks/Franchises: Jurassic Park. Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Looking at the initial Jurassic World trilogy in retrospect, it's interesting how it played out in a very similar manner to Disney's Star Wars sequel trilogy. Both began in 2015, with initial films that were huge crowd-pleasers and made over $1 billion, but were also seen by many as re-introductions that played things a little too safe. Both films also introduced some new characters to the respective franchises who would serve as the protagonists for all three movies. Then, the second entries, which were released within less than a year of each other, were made by different directors who took things in vastly new directions, for better or for worse. You could also argue that both trilogies had spinoffs in the interim; in this case, there were the two Lego Jurassic World TV specials/miniseries, and the Netflix animated series, Camp Cretaceous and Chaos Theory. And the finales each saw the return of the first film's director, who were now tasked with bringing it all home for a grand conclusion... and for the majority of audiences and critics, both of them dropped the ball in that respect. For my money, while both trilogies were far from perfect, I think that Jurassic World was a little more consistent throughout in terms of its development. Unlike what Rian Johnson did with The Last Jedi, when J.A. Bayona made Fallen Kingdom, he wasn't trying to completely undo what Colin Trevorrow had done or subvert things purely for the sake of subverting them. Also, whatever you may think of Dominion, it definitely wasn't trying to erase the path its predecessor took, or pander to the fanbase the way The Rise of Skywalker did. And unlike what happened with Finn and Poe after they were introduced in The Force Awakens, Owen and Claire were never completely side-lined or made to look like total fools (at least, not to that degree). In any case, finally getting into my actual review of Jurassic World: Dominion, I was just glad it was coming out, given how, a couple of years before, the movie industry's future, not to mention so much else, was up in the air. I wasn't looking forward to it as much as stuff like Godzilla vs. Kong or No Time To Die, but it was still good to know that this trilogy was going to be wrapped up. And the trailers and TV spots looked promising, as it not only showed the dinosaurs free in the world, as so many, myself included, had hoped to see for a long time, especially after the end of Fallen Kingdom, but Owen, Claire, and Maisie were now going to be featured alongside Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm. It was like the perfect way to bring this decades-long journey full-circle. (However, I don't think anybody really believed this would be the end of the franchise altogether, and it wasn't.)

While I still saw Dominion in the theater, unlike the previous two, I didn't get to it for quite a while after it was released, as in the end of July. I was visiting a cousin of mine and her husband in South Carolina the weekend it opened, and we did plan to see it at the nearest theater while we were up there (it could've ended up being my first ever time at a drive-in), but we had to leave sooner than expected because the husband came down with COVID-19. After that, I had a house-sitting job that lasted a whole week, and then right after that, I was going to G-Fest, which was back after being gone for two years due to the pandemic. So, by the time I got around to seeing Dominion, it was no longer at the top of the box-office, and I had to settle for a matinee one Sunday afternoon in Murfreesboro. Going in, I'd heard the bad word-of-mouth and what people said they didn't like about it, specifically how the focus was more on giant, prehistoric locusts than the dinosaurs, as well as that the plot was very convoluted, and the main cast of the new trilogy didn't meet up with the legacy characters until well into the third act. While that was certainly disconcerting to hear, I always try to keep an open mind and form my own opinion. Unfortunately, when I went to see it, I, once again, had to deal with an aggravating group of people sitting right behind me who wouldn't shut up. When the movie was over and the credits were rolling, I saw one of those morons slide down the stairwell leading to the bottom of the auditorium and was I really hoping he would break his neck. And when I was leaving, I saw them in the lobby and I, so badly, wanted to go over there and chew them out, but realized I better not. Knowing my luck, one of them would be a psychopath who'd pull a knife or a gun on me. I know I'm not the only one to say this, but I don't understand, especially with how pricey movie tickets are, why you would pay your money to go in there and just talk, or fiddle around with your phone, or something else that's annoying to those who are actually trying to enjoy the movie.

Regardless, as for the movie itself, like all of the Jurassic Parks, I was entertained at the end of the day. As was the case with Fallen Kingdom, I think that there is a lot to like here: very high production values and an appealing visual style, a number of cool action sequences and great spectacle, interesting locations spanning the globe, more dinosaurs than ever before, a greater mix of CGI and animatronics than had been done in the two previous movies, and not only seeing Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm again, but also seeing them paired up with and playing off of Owen, Claire, Maisie, and some other characters, old and new. But still, many of the most common complaints are very valid. It would've been nice to see the characters come together a lot sooner, the story is very scattered, consisting of two main plot-lines that feel like they take an eternity to converge, and while it's cool that the dinosaurs are now free in the world and we get to see a bigger amount of different types than we ever have, it's disappointing that the impact they're having on the planet, and the trials and tribulations of people coexisting with them, aren't really the focus. What we really have here is a Mission:Impossible-style espionage action movie that happens to take place in a world of dinosaurs, so they mostly just get caught up in the mayhem. That may sound cool, and it kind of is, but, akin to the direction that Halloween Ends went in to close out the Blumhouse trilogy that same year, that is not what people were expecting or likely wanted for what was supposed to be the finale of the Jurassic Park saga. Also, some characters are better written and utilized than others, the tone is not nearly as dark as the last one, and at 147 minutes (for the theatrical version, anyway), the movie is way too long and has definite pacing issues.

It's been four years since the destruction of Isla Nublar, after which the dinosaurs were transported to the Lockwood Estate in Northern California. Now, following their escape into the wilderness, and those who were bought at the auction being transported to other countries, dinosaurs live among humans across the entire planet. When they cross paths, the encounters are often far from peaceful, and a global black market for them has also arisen. In an attempt to both control their numbers and save them from poachers, Biosyn Genetics, headed by Lewis Dodgson, has been awarded sole collection rights by the U.S. Congress. The corporation has established a sanctuary in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, where the dinosaurs' immune systems will be studied for any unique pharmacological applications they may have. At the same time, others are helping them in their own ways. Claire Dearing, along with Zia Rodriguez and Franklin Webb, investigate illegal breeding sites, but after a harrowing experience when they steal an ill baby Nasutoceratops from such a facility in Nevada, the latter two decide they've had enough. In the countryside around their secluded cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Owen Grady, who's now officially with Claire, helps to relocate stray dinosaurs. The two of them are also raising Maisie Lockwood, the clone of Sir Benjamin's deceased daughter, Charlotte, and trying to protect her from being discovered by various groups who wish to exploit her unique genetics. However, Maisie is feeling smothered by being forced to stay at the cabin at all times, and is also suffering from an identity crisis. And not only is Blue the Velociraptor living in the woods near the cabin, but she now has an asexually-reproduced baby, whom Maisie names Beta. Meanwhile, in West Texas, a swarm of enormous locusts decimates a farm, the latest of many such occurrences across the Midwest. Arriving to investigate, paleo-botanist Dr. Ellie Sattler notes that a nearby farm that plants seeds produced by Biosyn wasn't touched. She takes a live specimen to her old friend, Dr. Alan Grant, at a dig site in Utah, and they confirm that it has Cretaceous-era DNA, meaning it was genetically-engineered. Ellie believes the locusts were created by Biosyn as a way of controlling the world's food supply, and she asks Grant to accompany her to their sanctuary, to which she's been invited by Dr. Ian Malcolm, who now works for them, to find evidence to prove it. And when both Maisie and Beta are abducted and taken there as well, it leads Owen and Claire on a journey that will bring the Jurassic veterans together to try to stop genetic power from being misused yet again.

Like all three films in this trilogy, Jurassic World: Dominion was co-written by Colin Trevorrow. But his frequent writing partner, Derek Connolly, wouldn't be involved this time, as he was busy with other projects. To help flesh out the initial story the two of them had come up with for the third film while they were developing Fallen Kingdom, Trevorrow chose Emily Carmichael. Having written and directed a number of short films since 2008, Carmichael had recently co-written Pacific Rim: Uprising, along with three other writers, and had also been attached to a remake of The Black Hole that didn't get made. Apparently, the latter was what made Trevorrow decide she would be a good fit for Dominion. Before the two of them got started on the screenplay, they were commissioned to create a short film that would be released beforehand to get people fired up for the next movie. That led to Battle at Big Rock, which was shown on FX in September of 2019 and was very well-received; in fact, many feel that eight-minute short was superior to this nearly two-and-a-half hour movie in every way, as it gave them what they wanted. 

(Speaking for myself, I'd never heard of Battle at Big Rock until I got Dominion on Blu-Ray, where it was among the special features.) It's clear from what I've read that, during the writing process, Trevorrow had a lot of ideas for what he wanted to do with this final film. So much so that, during development, he and Carmichael consulted with, among other people, screenwriters Michael Arndt, who'd worked on Toy Story 3, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and The Force Awakens, and Krysty Wilson-Cairns, staff writer for Penny Dreadful and 1917. They also consulted with David Koepp, who, along with Wilson-Cairns, performed some uncredited work on the script. Besides dinosaurs now roaming the world, Trevorrow also wanted an underground black market, other groups and people besides Dr. Wu having the ability to create them, to bring back the main trio from the original movie and give them a major role in the story, and to explore the idea of genetic power and its consequences. All of that, as expected, is what led to the final movie feeling bloated and the story so convoluted, and I think it's an example of why trilogies aren't always the way to go; sometimes, you need more than just three movies to explore everything to the fullest.

Back in my review of Jurassic World, I said that, according to his interview in Jurassic World: The Ultimate Visual History, when they decided they were making a trilogy, Trevorrow told Steven Spielberg that, while he wouldn't direct the second film, he would come back for the third. A part of me wonders how true that is, though, as it seems awfully convenient that he leaves Star Wars Episode IX during Fallen Kingdom's post-production and then, just a few months before the latter's release, he's announced as the third film's director. It is possible that the original plan really was for him to direct Dominion immediately after Episode IX, as he said the latter would've been a "practice run" for finishing the trilogy that he actually began. Still, I can't help but suspect that someone else was originally intended to do this film, but then Trevorrow returned after his Star Wars gig fell apart. In any case, little did he know that making Dominion would prove to be more challenging than the first Jurassic World, as in March of 2020, just over a month into shooting, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Production went on hiatus until that July, but they made good use of their downtime by editing the footage they'd shot and also adding the digital dinosaurs into it. When filming did resume that summer, they had to follow strict CDC quarantining and testing guidelines, doing the former at an English hotel for two weeks before they could get back to work. And the ongoing pandemic also greatly interfered with their filming in other countries, including Malta, and forced some cast members to either leave prematurely or drop out altogether. Plus, while Spielberg usually has minimal involvement with movies he produces during the actual shooting anyway, Trevorrow has said that safety protocols would've stopped him from visiting the main shooting at Pinewood Studios even if he wanted. (It does suck to think he wasn't able to have a small reunion with the actors he directed in the first two movies way back when.)

Dominion finished shooting in November of 2020, and ultimately cost a whopping $265 million, making it one of the most expensive movies of all time. Though its theatrical release date was delayed by a year due to the pandemic, like the two movies before it, it did make just over $1 billion, despite the not so great reviews and word-of-mouth. Having completed what he started, Trevorrow has said he will now likely take the same producing and advisory role that Spielberg has had with the franchise going forward. (That said, he had no official involvement with Jurassic World: Rebirth). He's also mainly focused on writing and producing since Dominion, and I think that, after his tangles with making huge blockbusters, he probably wants to focus on smaller-scale movies for the time being.

As opposed to where they were at the beginning of the two previous movies, Claire and Owen are now firmly on the same page. They're both helping dinosaurs in any way they can, with Claire, along with Franklin and Zia, working to stop illegal breeding and reporting cases of cruelty, while Owen helps relocate any strays he comes across in the countryside around their home in Nevada. They're also now officially a couple, and are raising Maisie Lockwood as their adopted daughter. However, the two of them struggle with the latter, to say the least, as their attempts to protect Maisie from those who would exploit her genetics have led to her feeling stifled and imprisoned in a different way. While Owen seems to have the better relationship with her, as Claire often tries a little too hard to relate to her and come off as understanding, he's not much better when trying to explain why she has to stay at the cabin and not go into town. When she asks why she can't have her freedom, he bluntly blurts out, "Because you can't." He makes things worse when, after they've encountered Blue and Beta near the cabin, he goes to look for their nest and rebuffs Maisie when she wants to come with him. This leads to an instance of rebelliousness that gets her captured, along with Beta. Owen witnesses both, getting shot at while the poachers drive off with Beta, and goes to tell Claire what's happened. They load up and prepare to go after her, when they're confronted outside by a very angry Blue. Using his training to keep her from attacking, Owen promises that he'll get Beta back. Claire then contacts Franklin, who now works for the CIA's Dangerous Species Division, and he identifies the poachers' leader, Rainn Delacourt. Learning that he's involved in an operation in Malta, Owen and Claire, despite Franklin telling them that they have people preparing to make a bust and asking them not to interfere, they, of course, head there. With help from Owen's old friend, Barry, they infiltrate a dinosaur black market but, despite getting caught up in a very harrowing chase, they miss both Maisie and Beta. They do learn that they were taken to the Biosyn facility in the Dolomites and, with the help of cargo pilot Kayla Watts, head there.

I think it's safe to say that Owen and Claire's character arcs are pretty much complete by this point, and that, unfortunately, makes them both quite bland. At the beginning, Claire seems to have now taken on the more radical mindset of Nick Van Owen, given how she recklessly takes the baby Nasutoceratops from the facility in Nevada, leading to a chase that endangers not only Franklin and Zia, prompting them to quit, but likely got some of the place's employees killed. But after that, she has little to do except fail to

connect and talk with Maisie, and after she's been abducted, it's pretty much all action for Claire, as she and Owen are on the move to rescue their adopted daughter. Like with the previous movie, I'd take Bryce Dallas Howard's performance here over the way she was in Jurassic World, and I really like the camaraderie Claire develops with Ellie Sattler during the third act, but there's not much to her otherwise. And while Chris Pratt is still cool and badass as Owen (although, that hand gesture he previously used on the Velociraptors, which he now uses to calm every dinosaur he encounters, is getting a tad overused), it feels like there's even less to him this time around. The only major change is how he's now a full-on papa wolf towards Maisie, which we saw a glimpse of back when he was protecting Zach and Gray, as well as when he protected Maisie from the Indoraptor. If nothing else, it is nice how much he and Claire care about and are willing to go through for her, and it doesn't matter at all that she's not actually their daughter and was created bio-genetically.

Speaking of which, I do like that they decided to follow up on the revelation about Maisie in the last movie and how it's personally affected her. A far cry from the innocent, happy-go-lucky child she was before, Isabella Sermon plays the now 14-year old Maisie as troubled and angsty. Feeling trapped by her adoptive parents in how they keep her at the cabin and insist that she not cross the bridge into the nearest town, she has a tendency to rebel and do so anyway, despite knowing the danger. This, of course, leads to conflict, with Maisie feeling that they don't trust her not to take care of herself, despite the survival skills and knowledge about animal behavior that Owen has taught her. She's also going through an existential crisis in that she doesn't even feel like a real person and has no idea who Charlotte Lockwood was, let alone who she herself is. Thus, she's quite intrigued when she meets Beta, and then learns that Blue gave birth to her asexually. But when Owen doesn't let her help him find their nest, Maisie angrily storms into the cabin, goes out the back, and rides off on her bicycle, telling Claire, "You can't keep me here. You're not my mother." However, this leads to her being abducted by Rainn Delacourt and his men. She's taken to Malta, where she's handed over to Biosyn, and is then taken to their facility in Italy. There, she learns the truth about her conception: rather than Sir Benjamin Lockwood being behind it, it was Charlotte herself. Dr. Wu tells her this while showing her video logs that Charlotte made throughout her lifetime, and explains that she used her own DNA to become pregnant and give birth to her. Just like Blue, she was able to have a child by herself, which makes Maisie feel even more of a kinship with Beta. She also learns that Wu has his own plans for the both of them, but decides to let Beta loose and escapes herself. On the way, she runs into Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler, and they take her with them as they leave with the locust sample they took from the lab. While riding a hyperloop on the way to a nearby airfield, there's a nice moment between Ellie and Maisie where Ellie tells her that she was friends with Charlotte. She not only tells her that she was brilliant and kind, but that she had Maisie because she desperately wanted a child, rather than just as part of an experiment. This does wonders for Maisie's unsure mindset, and once she's reunited with Claire and Owen, she now accepts them as her parents. She also helps Owen recapture Beta, using both his hand signal and the command, "Eyes on me!", in the process. The movie ends with the three of them living together as a family, just as Blue and Beta do in the nearby woods.

Going back to the revelation about Maisie's true origin, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it's nice knowing that she was created neither as an experiment nor out of an old man's grief, but rather because Charlotte Lockwood wanted to have a child. What's more, you learn that Charlotte altered Maisie's DNA to keep her from inheriting a genetic disorder that ultimately killed Charlotte, and Ellie assures Maisie that her mother truly loved her. You also get to see Charlotte herself in the v-logs (Isabella Sermon

also plays Charlotte when she was younger, while Elva Trill plays her as an adult), as she was part of the InGen team who lived and worked on Isla Sorna, before the hurricane destroyed the facility. As you can see from the footage, she loved dinosaurs, which explains Maisie's own love for them, and became a brilliant scientist all her own when she grew up. There's a moment where you see Charlotte when she was pregnant with Maisie, as she says, "A butterfly flew into my office this morning. They say tiny things have huge impacts, and I agree wholeheartedly,"

showing the kind of introspective and intelligent person she was. You also see her absolutely doting on Maisie when she was a baby. And the movie uses the v-logs to nicely close things out during the ending montage, with Charlotte summing it all up. 

However, where the mixed part comes is that I don't like how some of this retcons what was established in the last movie, namely that Maisie's creation is what led to the falling out between Sir Benjamin and John Hammond. Dr. Wu tells Maisie, "Your grandfather didn't want anyone to know the truth. He was protecting her and you," but I don't get why he would tell Hammond a lie that destroyed their friendship, with Hammond feeling what "Lockwood" had done was immoral. You could argue that Hammond did 

know the truth and still thought it was immoral, but I think he might've been more understanding towards Charlotte's plight. And even then, Ellie clearly knew the truth, so either way, Lockwood's gambit didn't pay off. Looking back on Fallen Kingdom with this knowledge, it also hurts the weight of Lockwood's grief over his daughter being so great that he was willing to do anything to get her back. It doesn't completely negate the drama behind his hiding his photo album from Maisie, his ongoing grief over 

Charlotte, his closeness to Maisie, or Iris saying that she raised both Charlotte and Maisie, but it doesn't hit as hard now, either. And finally, while it fixes one continuity problem from the previous movie, it creates another. I didn't realize this until after I published my Fallen Kingdom review, but when I thought about it, it hit me that they were talking about Hammond and Lockwood's falling out as if it happened before the events of the first movie... which would mean that Maisie should've been in her mid-20's, at least, in the last movie. Here, they make 

it clear that Charlotte didn't become pregnant with her until mid-2000's, but Ellie says that she first met Charlotte after Hammond's death, which seems to have happened not long after we last saw him in The Lost World, where he was clearly in poor health. There's even some official supplementary material that confirms as much, so the writers royally screwed up. (Don't you miss when this franchise's timeline was so easy to keep track of?) 

While Justice Smith and Daniella Pineda return to their respective of roles of Franklin Webb and Zia Rodriguez at the beginning, they both disappear pretty early on. After having continued helping Claire in her crusade against illegal dinosaur breeding for a while since the last movie, they both call it quits when she takes the baby Nasutoceratops from the Saw Ridge Cattle Company facility in Nevada, leading to a chase where they're shot at and go through a field of Triceratops and Sinoceratops that destroy the other 

other vehicles. They're both still up for what Claire is trying to do, but they've decided her methods aren't the way to go anymore. Franklin, in particular, says he's got a job offer where he can, "Effectively change things." He also asks Claire if she's doing what she does, "Because they need us, or are you savin' them to absolve yourself?", a question she doesn't care for. Following that opening scene, Franklin appears once more after Maisie is abducted. Now working for the CIA's Dangerous Species Division, he's not thrilled when he gets a call from Claire and Owen, especially given Claire's "activities." He does talk to them, identifying Rainn Delacourt as the man behind the abduction, and then tells them that they have an insider within his organization, as well as of an exchange in Malta that they're going to bust. He implores them not to get involved, but knowing that they will anyway, he just asks that they be careful. After that, he's not seen again. Like Franklin, Zia was originally meant to briefly reappear after the opening, in a scene at the U.S. Wildlife Relocation Facility in Pennsylvania. But because of COVID quarantine restrictions, they had to come up with a completely different character: Shira (Varada Sethu), who speaks with Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler before they fly out to the Biosyn sanctuary. Given that Ellie comes upon a Nasutoceratops baby there, and Shira says, "We rescued these guys from an illegal breeding farm in Nevada a few weeks ago," it's obvious this was meant to be Zia. Shira says they learned about the facility from an "anonymous tip," which could've originally been a cover for Zia's past occupation. (The pandemic also prevented Jack Johnson from returning as Lowery, which was the plan after he missed out on Fallen Kingdom.)

Fortunately, the pandemic didn't stop Omar Sy from returning as Barry, Owen's raptor training partner. Now working for French Intelligence, he's stationed in Malta, helping the CIA take down the black market operation that Rainn Delacourt is involved in, when Owen and Claire arrive. He's very happy to see them, and when Claire says she thought he would've chosen a more quiet post-Jurassic World job, he says, "I tried. My cousin and I opened a cafe. I lasted three weeks. The way the world is headed, it's hard to look away." He allows them to listen in on the operation, but asks them not to make contact. Of course, that doesn't last long, as the bust goes bad, and one of the operation's higher-ups, Soyona Santos, unleashes some deadly Atrociraptors. While most of his team gets slaughtered, Barry is able to take cover, but gets trapped there until Owen helps him. They also use their old raptor training techniques to trick one of the Atrociraptors back into his cage, although Owen elects Barry to be the bait and dive-roll out of the way at the last minute. Barry says he's not good at dive-rolling but, with Owen's help, he manages to pull it off rather flawlessly. While Owen goes to meet up with Claire to head to Biosyn, Barry remains behind to arrest Santos. Unbeknownst to him, she sends two of the Atrociraptors after Owen, leading to a big chase scene.

Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) is one of those types of characters whose arc you can figure out the minute you see her. A freelance cargo pilot who brings Beta to Malta, she's very obviously portrayed an aloof person who seems to only care about herself and getting paid, but has a heart of gold that's going to come into play. Sure enough, after she delivers Beta and gets her money, she sees Maisie being forced to walk from another plane to a waiting car, which Soyona Santos is standing next to, and knows that something isn't right. But when she's told it's none of her concern, she goes about her business. She runs into Claire at the black market, and Claire, upon learning she's American, immediately seeks her help. Kayla, thinking she's just some tourist who's in over her head, isn't having it, and tells her this isn't the kind of place she wants to be. And though Claire shows her a picture of Maisie, saying she's her daughter, Kayla says she can't get involved. But when Claire is later being chased by one of the Atrociraptors, Kayla opts to help her escape, as well as take her to Biosyn, with no charge. As expected, she proves to be both an excellent driver and pilot, and I won't lie, she is kind of cool and charismatic. When Owen meets up with them on the cargo plane and Kayla tells him that she's taking them to Biosyn, despite the danger, he asks, "You're willing to risk your life for people you've never met?" She looks at him and asks, "You want to ask questions or you want a ride?" When they're approaching Biosyn and Kayla contacts the control tower, she talks with a woman named Denise, who doesn't authorize her to land. She then fakes having communication problems, and when that doesn't work, says, "You do not want me to start spillin' secrets, Denise. You remember Dubrovnik." On the way, they get attacked by a Quetzalcoatlus, with Kayla commenting, "Late Cretaceous. Should've stayed there," and when Kayla says she has no parachutes, only an ejector seat, she comments, "I wasn't expecting guests!" After her plane, which she calls her baby, is downed, it's now personal for her, but she also admits that she feels guilty for not doing anything to help Maisie when she had the chance. And when Owen is concerned for Claire after they've been separated, Kayla comments, "I get it. I like redheads too."

Among the legacy characters, the first one you meet is Laura Dern as Ellie Sattler, when she arrives at a farm in West Texas that's been decimated by the locusts. In the years since we last saw her in Jurassic Park III, Ellie has gone back to her job of paleo-botany, as she doesn't have as many personal responsibilities as she once did. Namely, both of her kids are now grown and off to college, and she and her husband are divorced. She's also now teaching, as she brings a pair of students with her to the farm. She's been keeping an eye on the locusts and the damage they've been causing, and is concerned about the environmental collapse it could lead to. After gathering a live specimen at the farm, she takes it to Alan Grant's dig in Utah, but when she first arrives, the two of them spend some time catching up. As a fan, it really is great to see them together again, and Ellie seems to be really happy to be in Grant's presence. But, when she talks about how "free" she feels now that she's able to do her work again, there is that sense that she's not quite as happy as she claims to be, given how she says she's finally "alone" for her work. Moreover, when she says she's living "the Alan Grant life," he comments, "Can be lonely." And while she did, ostensibly, come to him because she wanted him to see the locust and help her prove that it's Biosyn's doing, it's also likely that she wants to rekindle her relationship with him. Speaking of which, she does show him the locust, as well as tell him of her suspicions as to why it's Biosyn, and her plan to go to their sanctuary in the Dolomites and get a corresponding DNA sample. She asks him to come with her, saying that, as a witness, people would listen to him. As she already has an invite from Ian Malcolm, she gets Grant to accompany her and there, after they meet up with Malcolm, he points them in the right direction. Throughout the ensuing adventure, they not only become close again but also meet Maisie, who joins them in their escape. Like I said earlier, one of the best scenes is when Ellie very compassionately tells Maisie about Charlotte: "A few years after Hammond died, she came to my university to lecture, and... we became good friends." She goes on to describe her as, "Brilliant. Light-years ahead of everybody else. And she had a conscience. While they were out building theme parks, well, she was determined to prove that genetic power could save lives." And she tells her, "She wanted a child more than anything. But she wanted you to have what she couldn't: a full life. I didn't know her long, but I know she loved you very much."

As great as it was to see Ellie, I cannot tell you how much I smiled in the theater when Sam Neill first came onscreen as Dr. Alan Grant. Like in Jurassic Park III, he's continued with paleontology, despite dinosaurs now being a part of the world at large. He still obviously sees what he does as the way to learn about the real thing, as when you first see him, he's telling his students, "Why do we dig? Because paleontology is science, and science is about the truth. And there is truth in these rocks." Unfortunately, there's a pair of teenage girls there who are more interested in their smartphones than listening to him, and when he first speaks with Ellie, you learn that, like before, he isn't having much luck with funding. Because of that, he's had to turn to tourism to keep the money flowing. He gets quite a shock when he comes back to his work tent to find her waiting for him, but is obviously very happy to see her again after such a long time, and subtly lets on that he's missed her. Also, when she tells him that she and Mark have divorced, while he does seem sincere when he tells her that he's sorry (remember, from what little we saw of Mark in Jurassic Park III, he did come off as a good guy), you know that also piqued his interest. But Grant is smart enough to know that she didn't come by just to catch up with him, which is when she shows him the locust. As horrified as he is to contemplate that Biosyn may be trying to control the world's food supply, and isn't that shocked at the idea of it, either, he's initially reluctant to accompany her to the sanctuary, saying he's enjoying the quiet life he now has. But when she presses, he does go. However, when they get to Biosyn, while it is cool to see Grant, Ellie, and Ian Malcolm together again, Grant is the one who feels like he has the least purpose for being there. He's really just along for the ride, and is made into a bit of a figure of fun, as he's often confused by Malcolm's philosophizing and the others' occasional use of terminology regarding technology, which as we know, he's not good with. There's one moment where Ellie talks with Malcolm in private and Grant is left to deal with this guy making a cappuccino, who yammers on and gets on his nerves. And when they find the lab with the locusts, Grant is the one tasked with holding the ugly, writhing thing while Ellie takes the sample. He does have some better moments when they meet up with Owen and Claire, and it's obvious at the end that he and Ellie are getting back together (they kiss for the first time ever), but for the most part, he's underutilized.

Fittingly, when we first see Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, he's giving a lecture at the Biosyn sanctuary about the dangers of genetic power being misused. He's also wearing the same all black outfit he did in the first movie, including the black leather-jacket, so it's like he hasn't missed a beat. When Grant and Ellie enter the room where he's talking, Malcolm's attention is immediately drawn to them. And when he meets up with them, they exchange pleasantries, with Malcolm saying he now has five kids instead of the three he once had (whether the two others were with Sarah Harding or two more ex-Mrs. Malcolms is never made clear), but he also seems to have become more cynical and has given up on trying to help mankind. When Ellie mentions the locusts, as well as the catastrophic effects they could have if they're not stopped, he acts completely disinterested. Naturally, they call him on it, and he says, "I gave my opinion robustly for years. As expected, the sum of our human endeavors has led to our annihilation and the only play now is to take the time we have left and, uh, you know, just like we always do, squander it." To that, Ellie responds, "Honestly, Ian, that's bullshit!", and he then takes her aside and privately tells her that she's right about Biosyn and their intentions, as well as where the locusts are housed, and gives her a key-card to access the lab. Unfortunately, while Grant and Ellie do manage to get a sample from the locusts, and try to escape with it and Maisie, Lewis Dodgson learns of this, as well as Malcolm's part in it. He promptly fires Malcolm, and also lets him know that the hyperloop that Grant, Ellie, and Maisie were using "malfunctioned"; now, they're stuck in the amber mines, which may or may not have dinosaurs (they do). Before he goes, though, Malcolm decides to brutally stick it to Dodgson in his own way, saying, in the middle of the control room, "I owe all these folks an apology. I think that by lending my cachet to this joint, I might have made it seem as if Biosyn wasn't rotten to the core... See, here's how they get ya. They give you so many promotions in a short period of time that it bludgeons your capacity for creative thinking. So then, there are doors that you don't open, things that you ignore. But mainly, he's exploiting your enchantment with these" He picks up a dinosaur toy from someone's workstation to emphasize that last point, then goes on to tell Dodgson, "You're racing towards the extinction of our species, and you don't care. You know exactly what you're doin', but you won't stop. You can't." Dodgson then asks if he sees him as, "An evil, unbound Prometheus," and Malcolm retorts, "Prometheus got gored. So will you, you rapacious rat bastard."

What I like about Malcolm's portrayal here is how it's kind of a combination of the quirkiness and sense of humor he had in the original Jurassic Park, and the cynicism and world-weariness of The Lost World. And while he is cool during the first two acts, it's really fun when he gets caught up in the action during the third. He has to help Grant, Ellie, and Maisie escape the amber mines, which are filled with very ferocious Dimetrodons, but the only way out is through an access gate opened by a code. Arriving at 

the gate, Grant asks if he knows the code and Malcolm can only say, "I didn't know there was gonna be a code." As the others are defending themselves from the dinosaurs, Malcolm tries to figure out the code, noting, "There are 10,000 possibilities." His first guesses are "1984" and Miles Davis' birthday, neither of which work, and when Ellie says they're not going to make it, he says, "Let's... let's all try to stay positive." Fortunately, his partner, Ramsay Cole, punches in the code from the control room, and after 

they've gotten out, Malcolm, who also punched in a code, says, "What do you know? It actually worked." Shortly afterward, when they try to escape, only for their vehicle to end up in a position where they're about to go crashing down a hill and into a ravine, Malcolm says, "I-I know this may seem... precarious, but... No, we're... we're teetering." Maisie suggests they shift their weight over to one side and to that, he says, "That's very constructive. Thank you, Maisie." After the two groups come together following that, Malcolm has a really cool moment where, when 

everyone else is trapped by the Gigantosaurus, he creates a makeshift torch, gets the dinosaur's attention, and quietly says, "Ah, yeah. C'mere." He then throws the torch into his mouth when he gets close enough, and goes to rejoin the others, only to slip on a ladder and nearly fall; fortunately, Grant grabs his hand and pulls him up. And, in a sequence where Claire and Ellie are shutting down a primary system, with Malcolm and Ramsay watching a security monitor, and Malcolm using a walkie-talkie to tell them which button to push, his instructions 

prove to be more complicated than they should: "There's a green button. Do you see a green button? It's not that green button. It's four...  Four from the bottom. Above the..." This only confuses them, and he responds, "Third one down or fourth one up. Same thing." Ellie tells him to be more specific and, following a cutaway to another scene, it cuts back to Malcolm, who says, "I don't know how I can possibly be more specific, other than to say that the one you want is marked with E-1." Naturally, they wonder why he didn't just say that to begin with.

Before we go on, I want to take this opportunity to say how both awesome it is to see our main characters from the past two movies and our three leads from the original trilogy onscreen together, and how frustrating it is that they don't come together until there's only like forty or so minutes left (and in the longest Jurassic Park movie, no less). Not only is it just cool to see Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm facing off with dinosaurs along with Owen, Claire, and Maisie, but I love the way they play off each 

other. When the Gigantosaurus shows up after they've come together, Grant and Owen both immediately say, "Don't move." And later, after they've escaped him, Grant is fascinated to meet Owen, given how Velociraptors were his specialty and he's talking to someone who managed to "train" them. When Grant says as much, Owen laughs and comments, "Well, I tried." And when Ellie realizes where she knows Owen, saying he was at Jurassic World, Malcolm snarks, "Jurassic World? Not a fan." Speaking of 

which, there's a moment where Owen sees Malcolm brandishing a big tranquilizer rifle like he's an action hero and he says, "Alright. Easy, Rambo." And while they're making their way through a tunnel, Malcolm asks Owen about what it was like working with the raptors. He says, "It's a human/animal bond based on mutual respect," and Malcolm retorts, "Mm-hmm. I had a dog once. Humped my leg so much, I... I got a callous on my shinbone. That's a true story." When they're later talking about going to find Beta, as Owen says he promised Blue they would bring her home, 

Malcolm comments, "You made a promise... to a dinosaur." I also really like Claire and Ellie's scenes together, especially when they go to shut down the primary system. In addition to their having a heart-to-heart along the way, and both of them getting frustrated with Malcolm's instructions, they have an awesome moment where they axe and zap a bunch of those locusts, then hack into the power supply with the axe. After they're done, Ellie exclaims, "Damn, that felt good!", while Claire is just out of breath. And finally, it's so nice seeing Grant working with Owen and Maisie to catch Beta, with Grant doing that hand gesture.

Colin Trevorrow said that the most difficult part of writing the movie was finding a balance between the old and new characters' respective screentime, and that the part where they come together was rewritten several times. I think he and Emily Carmichael should've gone for another rewrite, or a completely different story altogether, because it's one of the major reasons why Dominion is a movie I find entertaining but also very frustrating. Their scenes and interactions are so great that it makes me wish

we'd gotten a whole movie of them working together, possibly helping others deal with the issue of dinosaurs now being loose in the world. It was an opportunity that will probably never happen again, as I don't really see Sam Neill, Laura Dern, or Jeff Goldblum returning to this franchise, especially given their respective ages, and they kind of blew it.

It took almost thirty years but, finally, Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) is the villain in a Jurassic Park movie, and his company, Biosyn, is mentioned for the first time ever. As per usual with characters like him in these movies, Dodgson preaches one thing but practices something else entirely. While he's established a dinosaur sanctuary in order to supposedly study their immune systems for pharmaceutical properties, he's also engineered the giant locusts who are wiping out farms in the Midwest in a bid to try to control the world's food supply. Despite Dr. Wu's objections about this plan's repercussions, Dodgson is unconcerned, saying, "Hey, we can't anticipate everything." He's also not having it when Wu says they need to destroy the locusts they let loose, telling him, "When we're afraid, what do we do? What have we done before? We follow through. That's what we do. Right?" And he lets him know that, if the locusts are traced back to Biosyn, everything Wu has worked for will be undone. Dodgson also has both Maisie and Beta captured and brought to the facility for Wu, unaware that he has motives that go against his own. Hiring poachers and smugglers for a dinosaur black market ring to do so, he orders them to kill Owen and Claire when they interfere, and when Kayla Watts is flying them to the sanctuary, he orders the aerial deterrent system that keeps the Pterosaurs from attacking aircraft switched off. Once things start going downhill for him, Dodgson destroys the files pertaining to his plan for the locusts, and also has the locusts themselves burned alive. This causes a chain reaction when they fly out of the facility and end up setting the sanctuary's forests on fire, endangering the dinosaurs. Dodgson becomes extremely frustrated at this, as well as the need to call an evacuation, and the outburst he has shocks even his closest subordinates.

That leads me into what I don't like about Dodgson: his overall portrayal. In his one scene in the original Jurassic Park, he did come off as insecure and self-important, but here, he's either overly awkward or just a spoiled little twerp. When he first meets Grant and Ellie at the sanctuary, he, like Eli Mills in the last movie, comes off as over-accommodating, as well as boasting about all the good they're doing while insisting it's not about money. He also just has to have his picture taken 

with them and then, when he hands them over to his delegate, Ramsay Cole, to show them around, the interaction he has with Ramsay is very cringy. He says, "He's basically a young me, only smarter and, uh... taller," then asks Ramsay, "Do you have food? Like, one of my bars?... No, never mind. I'll, uh... I'll find something." He turns back to Grant and Ellie, saying, "So, uh, I want to do more of this, um, later on, if we, um... Oh, we booked you a private pod, for the trip out, so... It's beautiful, you'll love it. Through 

the caverns and everything. Uh, you better hurry. Malcolm's on. He's a bit of a contrarian but, I like him. He keeps us on our toes. Anyway... thank you for being here. It's..." Then finally, he walks away. Later, when things start going wrong for him, he acts like a child who's annoyed when his subordinates try to tell him something or is just exasperated that things aren't going his way. When Malcolm tells him off after he fires him, Dodgson all but rolls his eyes at what he's saying, then says, "You know, I thought you might be different, but you're just like everyone else. 

You see what you want to see. You imagine unchecked avarice, so that's what you find." That's when Malcolm tells him that he's going to get his in the end. And when the sanctuary is on fire during the third act and they have to evacuate and bring the dinosaurs in, Dodgson basically throws a tantrum, wringing his hands in the air and smacking the crap out of a seat. He later learns that Ramsay was working with Malcolm to bring him down, and patronizingly tells him, "I gave you every opportunity I did not have. I... we have an understanding, 

Ramsay, and you do not break that. I would not break this." Ramsay simply tells him that he's not like him and walks out of the room. In the end, Dodgson tries to escape with some dinosaur embryos using the hyperloop. But when the heroes manage to cut the primary system, he gets stuck in the tunnel, and while trying to make his way out, he, fittingly, is attacked by a pack of Dilophosaurs.

One character arc that I don't buy at all is Dr. Henry Wu's. After two movies where he's basically been portrayed as a mad scientist who doesn't care about the deadly repercussions of what he's doing (remember, back in Jurassic World, when Masrani told him that the Indominous Rex had killed people, he simply said it was unfortunate), and has bounced from one employer to another to continue his work, he now suddenly gives a crap about the worldwide ecological disaster that will come about from the locusts he helped Dodgson create. Maybe the idea of a global famine was what it took for him to realize that what they're doing is wrong and that he's not in control, as he himself admits, but it's such an about-face from the guy who was adamantly arguing with Eli Mills about the Indoraptor, bossing Franklin around, and threatened Zia if she didn't help get a blood sample from Blue. Now, B.D. Wong portrays Wu as remorseful, soft-spoken, and gentle, particularly in his big scene with Maisie, where he tells her about her mother, the truth about her creation, and shows her the v-logs. He also shows genuine affection and admiration for Charlotte, saying she was smarter than he would ever be. It turns out that, unbeknownst to Dodgson, he wants to learn how Charlotte altered Maisie's DNA so he can do the same to the locusts, having them spread a pathogen among them that would kill them off. During the climax, when everyone is trying to escape the facility, Wu appears and asks to join up with the heroes, insisting that he can fix what he's done. Though they're reluctant to bring him along, with Malcolm, in particular, saying, "No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. Him? Not him. Not him. It's always him," Maisie convinces them that it's okay. After they've all escaped, she works with him to create the pathogen and he manages to destroy the locusts, crediting the discovery to Charlotte. And the whole time, I'm wondering how he's not in prison for his part in everything that's happened over these three movies, especially since the locusts were his creation.

There's not much to say about Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), Biosyn's head of communications and Dodgson's delegate, whom he thinks he's grooming to take over the company. In reality, Ramsay is not only helping to take Dodgson down but is the one who informed Malcolm of what's going on, which led him to contact Ellie Sattler. Like other twists in this trilogy, the revelation that he's actually a good guy is so poorly hidden. As he's giving Grant and Ellie the tour of the facility he, at one point, glances up at a security camera and suddenly asks them if they'd like to tour the place by themselves. And in case that didn't tip you off, he tells them that he'll meet them at the hyperloop station in thirty minutes, points them to the elevators leading down there, then points to some behind where they're standing and says, "Not-not those. Those lead you down to the sub-levels. You need special clearance to get down there." Somehow, that doesn't tip Grant and Ellie off, as when they make it to the hyperloop with the locust DNA sample and Maisie, and Ramsay shows up, they try to play it off like they got lost. He then tells them the truth and sends them on their way. By the third act, when the facility is being evacuated due to the fire, Ramsay lets Dodgson know that he's been against him the whole time, telling him, "I'm not you." He then spends the rest of the movie helping the others escape.

Not only is Dominion another visually exquisite entry in the franchise, but it feels much more in line with the look of Jurassic World. That's not only due to Colin Trevorrow returning as director but also because he brought back cinematographer John Schwartzman, and they both decided to shoot on film again (although some night scenes involving dinosaurs were shot digitally to make the visual effects artists' job easier). In keeping with the tone, the film is much brighter and more colorful than Fallen Kingdom, with the sequence in Malta and

the scene at Alan Grant's dig in Utah having a nice, golden-yellow aesthetic to them, and the nighttime exteriors during the third act are given an orange glow from the spreading forest fire. The sequence where Grant, Ellie, and Maisie are navigating the amber mines has a nice mixture of blue and orange due to the latter two's flashlights, as well as some shafts of light coming through cracks in the ceiling, and the torch that Grant carries. The later scenes where Owen, Maisie, and Grant go to catch Beta, while Claire and Ellie go to shut down the primary system,

each have their own respective, rich color palettes: blue and red. Even the sequences that take place in the cold and snow, which there are a handful of, come off as more beautiful than miserable-looking, while the interiors of the Biosyn facility have the cold, clinical look and feel you'd expect from them. Also, while he's not as adept at it is as J.A. Bayona was, Trevorrow does use darkness effectively, like when the Dimetrodons attack the group in the amber mines, and the Dilophosaurs stalk Dodgson in the 

malfunctioning hyperloop tunnel, with the light going on and off. And like J.J. Abrams, he gets in his fair share of lens flares. Speaking of which, while he may not have gotten to direct Star Wars, you can tell that Trevorrow learned a lot about shooting and directing big movies from his first Jurassic adventure, as the action sequences and big spectacle scenes look even better than they did there, with plenty more big, sweeping shots of the landscapes. Of course, the skill

with which the action scenes are shot could also be because he had Dan Bradley, who worked on the Bourne movies, behind the second unit (that was especially important when they resumed shooting in the midst of the pandemic, which we'll get to).

While his camerawork and direction in Jurassic World weren't too showy, for the most part, Trevorrow seems to have been inspired with some of the work Bayona did on Fallen Kingdom when making this one. There are a good handful of instances of sustained shots, such as a series of them when Owen and Kayla use the plane's ejector seat to launch Claire to safety when they're going down. It first stays on a close-up of her face for about thirteen seconds, as she's flung around in midair before her seat's chute deploys, then there are a couple of 

sustained shots from either side of her as she's dogged by Pterosaurs, which tear into her chute, and a final one looking down at her feet as she plummets through the trees. Some more substantial instances of sustained shots come after Claire has detached from her ejector seat and crawls along the forest floor, when she's stalked by the very creepy Therizinosaurus. The first one starts on her as she crawls towards the camera, then pans up at the Therizinosaurus as he, having heard her, looks around, and goes back to her as she continues 

crawling, with it all lasting just over twenty seconds. Immediately after that is another one that lasts over thirty seconds and stays on her face as she crawls towards the camera, then into a small pond, and ducks down beneath the surface, as he slowly follows after her. It pans up slightly to the Therizinosaurus as he bends down towards the water, and cuts to a side angle of his beak and snout hovering above the water's surface, which is seemingly up sloshing against the edge of the camera, and is rippling, as well 

as reflecting him (it's a pretty trippy visual when you look at it up close). He then roars at the water, and the camera lowers to reveal a shot of Claire right beneath both the surface and the Therizinosaurus' beak. It stays like that for a few seconds, before he turns and moves off. It's not a completely successful shot, as you can make out the compositing work that was done there, which is a bit awkward, but I have to give it credit for its ambition. Like he did during the

climactic battle in Jurassic World, Trevorrow makes use of long shots moving through the action during the one here, as the humans try to avoid getting crushed. And during a part of the sequence in Malta, likely because of Bradley's involvement, it's sometimes edited like a Bourne movie, with quick cuts and even a sudden zoom-in, as Owen, Claire, Barry, and his men move in for the bust. The action's editing, like in the actual chase, is also rather kinetic, and, like the Bourne movies, sometimes makes it hard to follow what's happening, but I can deal with it better here than other movies.

Ironically, even though this is the Jurassic Park movie with the widest scope, with scenes set on multiple continents, Dominion was actually shot in only three countries: British Columbia, England, and Malta. It also seems like this is the first entry where there were no scenes shot in Hawaii (Oahu is listed as a filming location on its IMDB page, but I can't figure out exactly what was shot there). The movie's true beginning is set in Nevada during the winter, as we're introduced to where Owen, Claire, and Maisie now live and work in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Not 

only do we get a snowy environment for the first time ever in this franchise, but we also see dinosaurs in it, like in the scene where Owen and some DFW agents try to round up a herd of Parasaurolophus on horseback (which was done at Ashcroft in British Columbia), and when Maisie rides into the town near the cabin and helps some worked in a lumberyard lead away a pair of Apatosaurs that had wandered into it (Merritt, British Columbia). Speaking of the cabin (which was actually shot at Winterfold Forest in 

Surrey, England), it's a very cozy, picturesque setting out in the snow-covered forest, and the inside doesn't have much but you can tell the three of them have enough to live comfortably. And once again, you have the unusual sight of some dinosaurs, specifically Blue and Beta, living in the snowy woods nearby, having made an old, abandoned school bus into their nest. The first actual scene, where Claire, Zia, and Franklin break into the illegal breeding facility, was also shot over in the UK, at a former Royal Air Force base 

near Pinewood. We see enough of this building to tell it's a pretty miserable place for the dinosaurs to be kept, as the main facility is housed within a chain-link fence with barbwire running along its top, and its interiors come off as cold and prison-like, with the dinosaurs kept in cages and small pens that, as Zia says, look downright medieval. And there's also that large breeding ground nearby that's filled with various Ceratopsian dinosaurs, followed by a scene between Claire, Zia, and Franklin in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but shrub-land as far as the eye can see.

Not only does a big sequence near the end of the first act take place in Malta, but it was actually shot there... partially. Because of COVID restrictions, none of the actors were able to actually travel to Malta; instead, they shot all of their scenes at Pinewood Studios, and were either placed into actual footage of the city via blue screen (which they got plenty of), had their footage intermixed with shots of stunt doubles filmed at the actual location by Dan Bradley and his crew, or had their faces digitally placed onto the stunt doubles. It's executed and cut together so 

well that you would never know that shooting this section was so tricky. In any case, the most memorable setting in the Malta section is the dinosaur black market: a seedy underground chamber filled with dinosaurs in either cages, sitting next to those who've bought them, in pits where they're forced to take part in cockfights, or even being served up as exotic food! Claire and Kayla also first meet in the place's not too sanitary-looking restroom. Not only is there action in this setting, but there's also a sequence 

where Claire is chased by an Atrociraptor through a Maltese apartment, down stairways, and across some rooftops, and a vehicle/dinosaur chase through the streets of Valletta and into the city's outskirts, where Owen meets up with Claire and Kayla on the latter's plane at an airfield.

Though we first meet both Ellie and Grant back in the United States, both of their introductory scenes were also shot in England. The West Texas farm that we see get decimated by the locusts was created in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, with production designer Kevin Jenkins and his team having to build a red barn and a windmill in order to make it look more American, whereas Grant's first scene, at his dig in Utah, was mostly done on a set at Pinewood (though, the exterior shots of the setting were done at the village of Mellieha in Malta). The setting where

you first see Grant, at the bottom of this gorge that serves as the dig site, with people around him digging up dinosaur bones, is exactly where you expect to see him. Meanwhile, his work tent shows that he's still pretty much the same guy he always was: one who's practically married to his profession. It's rather cluttered and filled with all sorts of equipment, as well as dinosaur bones, and other objects, like a lantern and tea kettle, hanging from its ceiling. As Ellie herself says, it's just him all the way. And, as expected, the interiors of Kayla's beloved cargo plane were a set as well.

Biosyn Valley was also quite a task for the production to create but the end results are truly breathtaking. The wide shots of the valley itself, with the mountains surrounding it, were a combination of digital scans of Vancouver Island and the Valais Mountains in Switzerland, as well as the actual Dolomite Mountains in Italy. Also, Switzerland's Grand Dixence Dam was placed in the environment, and you first see it when Grant and Ellie fly into the valley with Ramsay Cole; it's also where Owen and Kayla crash, and then have to deal with a Pyroraptor on the

frozen lake behind it. The scenes set within the valley's forested interior, like when Claire encounters the Therizinosaurus and when Owen and Kayla witness a skirmish between the T-Rex and the Gigantosaurus, were done at good old Black Park, used in many a Hammer film (as well as numerous other movies), and on one of Pinewood's backlots. Research outposts, dot the valley and are connected to each other and the main building by the underground hyperloop system. Naturally, that system is there so

people can venture from one outpost to the other without worrying about being eaten, and the group uses the tunnels during the third act to make it back to the main building and enter its control room (that tactic, however, doesn't help Dodgson when he tries to abandon one pod and walk down the tunnel). During Grant and Ellie's trip into the valley, Ramsay tells them that Biosyn initially bought it for the amber deposits beneath it (big guess as to why they were interested in that), and those mines do play a part in

the story, as Grant, Ellie, and Maisie have to make their way through them after Dodgson stops their hyperloop. Dark and dank, with an underground lake, they're also filled with Dimetrodons that chase after them and trap them at the access gate. Also according to Ramsay, the valley is now home to about twenty different species of dinosaurs. He adds that the first ones came from Isla Sorna, and that a number of the Nublar dinosaurs were also brought there after they escaped from the Lockwood Estate (including the

T-Rex, which Ramsay says is a recent addition). To keep things from going haywire, they use an "Aerial Deterrent System" to keep the Pterosaurus from attacking any aircraft, and they also use neural implants within the dinosaurs to herd them if the need arises (which it does when the valley catches on fire).

The actual Biosyn building was, according to Kevin Jenkins, inspired by the sets that Ken Adam did for many of the early James Bond movies, and it does have the feel of a Bond villain's lair. There's a noticeable curved, circular motif to it, with the place looking round when you see it from above when Grant and Ellie arrive with Ramsay, and the courtyard is dotted with zigzagging paths and odd-looking pieces of sculpture, chief among them being a metal circle that has water flowing through it, which the T-Rex's head is framed behind in one shot during the 

climax. The first interior we see here is a lecture hall, where Malcolm is introduced, but once we get inside the actual building, that circular motif continues with the look of the stairways around the cafeteria, and down into Sublevel-6, which houses both Dr. Wu's laboratory and the genetically-engineered locusts. This level is, as you expect, shiny, reflective, and clean, but the room where the locusts are kept proves to be really unnerving, as it's something of a greenhouse, full of virtual shelves with grain and

wheat, which the creatures lurk in. Late in the movie, when Dodgson knows he's in danger of being exposed, he attempts to destroy the locusts using a flame system installed in there, but the locusts escape through the glass ceiling and out into the valley, starting the forest fire. Where the place feels the most like a Bond villain's lair is in the control room, which looks out over the valley, and also acts as an air traffic tower for the cargo planes that frequently come in. There's also Dodgson's office, which has, among 

other things,that special Barbasol can he gave Dennis Nedry to use to steal the dinosaur embryos. (How or when he managed to not only find that thing on Isla Nublar, but recover it before the island was destroyed, is anyone's guess.) Finally, there's the large, red-lit room housing the primary system, where Claire and Ellie go in order to shut it down, and the place's water treatment center, where Owen, Maisie, and Grant find and capture Beta.

That Barbasol can is one of another series of references to past films in the franchise which, I'll be honest, are starting to get tiresome by this point. I don't mind it when the movie first begins, as it doesn't feel like they're going overboard with the references. Initially, the only nod to any of the previous movies is how the location captions' font is identical to the original movie, and I also didn't mind how, when we first meet Ellie, she removes her sunglasses to look at the fields destroyed by the locusts in a manner similar to when she saw the Brachiosaurus (as you can see, 

her outfit there is virtually identical to her original one), or that we first meet Grant at a paleontology dig out in the desert (in his tent, there's a picture of him and Ellie from the time of the original's events). Since it's part of an action sequence that I really enjoy, I can deal with Owen being chased by the Atrociraptors while he's on a motorcycle seeming like a flip on him riding with them through the jungle in Jurassic World. And while you could say that Dodgson meeting his end by the Dilophosaurs is uninspired and lazy, I do like the poetic justice that he's killed by the 

same type of dinosaur that killed Nedry. Where I start to roll my eyes is when we see the Barbasol can (which Dodgson feels the need to take with him while he's escaping), and after the groups come together, we get callbacks in rapid succession, like Malcolm distracting the Gigantosaurus with a torch like he did with the flare and the T-Rex (it does still make him come off as cool, though), and Claire and Ellie trying to shut down the primary system, which feels a lot like when the latter had to turn the park's system 

back on in the breaker room, right down to their needing instructions from someone on a walkie-talkie. And finally, the climactic confrontation and dinosaur battle is a lot like the one with the Indominous Rex, as it's the Gigantosaurus initially just battling the T-Rex, and then being taken down by her and another dinosaur, in this case, the Therizinosaurus, that enters the fight. The difference is that this fight is a major letdown compared to the last two climactic battles we've had.

Like Fallen Kingdom, Dominion's pacing isn't as great as some of the previous movies. Here, the problem is that, because we've got two different story-lines going at the same time, for much of the movie, we're often going back and forth between thrilling action sequences and slower-paced scenes of characters talking or being brought up to speed on things (it serves as an example of why the original, similarly-structured, story for Jurassic Park III wasn't a great idea). Specifically, during the first act, we go from Owen and Claire doing their part to help the 

dinosaurs, and then rushing to save Maisie after she's abducted, to the situation with the locusts in the Midwest, Ellie bringing Grant in on it, and the two of them traveling to Biosyn Valley. At the 45-minute mark, following their arrival there and meeting both Dodgson and Malcolm, we cut to the section in Malta, which goes on for about 20 minutes in and of itself. But once the chase at the end of that very fast-paced sequence is finished, we slow back down, as we cut 

back to Grant and Ellie doing what they have to do at Biosyn, as well as Maisie learning the truth about her creation there. The movie continues at this rather choppy pace for the duration, even after the two groups finally come together, and by the time you're well into the third act, you'll likely start to feel the long runtime.

However, there are two major reasons in particular why, despite its being another box-officer juggernaut, Dominion was seen as a disappointment by both fans and critics. As I've already discussed, one is how they don't bring together the main casts of the original and new trilogies until very late in. The other, which is likely more disappointing for many, is the approach the film takes in telling its story. After Fallen Kingdom destroyed Isla Nublar, brought the dinosaurs to the mainland, and ended with their being unleashed upon both the United States and the

world at large, everyone was ready to finally see what always seemed like the foregone culmination of the Jurassic Park franchise: humans and dinosaurs having to co-exist. And Dominion does open up with that idea, with the very first scene being the Mosasaurus attacking a fishing trawler in the Bering Sea, followed by a news report on the effects of the dinosaurs' presence over the past four years. You see footage of various encounters involving everyday people, statistics on variables such as the annual 

amount of human deaths caused by the dinosaurs, a report on the emergence of the black market based around them, the establishment of Biosyn Valley and the transportation of as many dinosaurs there as possible, and even a chart showing public opinion about what should be done with them, before ending on the question of what's going to happen to the world. It's all great stuff, and the first scenes of the first act, showing Claire and Owen doing helping the dinosaurs, as well as the revelation that Blue now has a child and is trying to teach her how to survive, makes you confident that the movie is firmly on the right track. 

I've heard some complaints that, because of the four-year time jump, we're now at a point where, while they're still a problem, the dinosaurs come off as more of a nuisance than an actual threat to mankind and the worldwide ecosystem. In other words, I think people were expecting to see a movie with more action sequences akin to the San Diego rampage at the end of The Lost World. But Colin Trevorrow said in a 2018 interview that he didn't want to have dinosaurs stomping around cities, eating people left and right, saying that was, "A different kind of film," than what 

Michael Crichton would've done or wanted. Rather, he said he wanted this to be the kind of world where, "A dinosaur might run out in front of your car on a foggy backroad, or invade your campground looking for food. A world where dinosaur interaction is unlikely but possible, the same way we watch out for bears or sharks. We hunt animals, we traffic them, we herd them, we breed them, we invade their territory and pay the price, but we don't go to war with them." Furthermore, he said he didn't want them to be, "Everywhere all the time," adding, "Even now when

you think of animals, when was the last time you saw a tiger walking down the street? We know there are tigers. We know they're out there. But to me, it's very important that we keep this grounded in the context of our relationship with wild animals today." That may not have been what most were expecting but, thinking about it, I'm fine with this approach. The opening does give you an idea of what he's talking about, as you see footage of a little girl getting chased around a barnyard by some Compies, dashcam footage of a car

coming across a Stegosaurus crossing the road, some Ankylosaurs loitering around Big Rock National Park (one of a couple nods to that short film), another car coming upon a herd of Gallimimus on a foggy night, and so on. I do also like the exploration of their impact on the world, particularly the black market, which makes for a great scene in and of itself, and how weaponized dinosaurs are now a real-world reality, with the Atrociraptors possibly being just one example. And I like how the movie ends with a

montage showing that co-existence has become possible and is more or less peaceful, with Biosyn Valley declared an international dinosaur sanctuary, and shots of dinosaurs mingling with other animals across the world. Had the actual story been more successful, I would've said this would've been the perfect series conclusion.

But then, there's the problem: the actual story. Not only would you hope that Owen, Claire, and Maisie would've met up with Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm much, much earlier than they do, but that the story would be them working together to solve the issue of human/dinosaur co-existence, with some crisis, man-made or otherwise, bringing it all to a head. Instead, we have Owen and Claire racing across the globe to save Maisie after she's abducted and taken to Biosyn Valley, while at the same time, Ellie investigates these large locusts that have suddenly appeared and are 

wreaking havoc on farms in the Midwest, suspects that Biosyn may have created them, and enlists Grant to help her infiltrate their facility in the Dolomites and order to expose what they're doing. Like I said, big chunks of the movie feel like an espionage thriller in the vein of James Bond, Mission: Impossible, or the Bourne series, except that it happens to take place in a world where dinosaurs are commonplace. You have scenes like Owen and Claire joining Barry and his French Intelligence team in an infiltration of the

Malta dinosaur black market and busting the transaction between Rainn Delacourt and Soyona Santos; Grant and Ellie snooping around the Biosyn building, disguised as scientist in clean suits, and then trying to escape with their locust DNA sample; and not only does Dodgson's facility and plan feel like what you would expect from a Bond villain, but Delacourt and Santos feel like characters you would expect to see in such movies (Soyona, especially, is like the type of femme fatale that James Bond would go up against). 

And then, you have the dinosaurs themselves being reduced to either spectators or obstacles in the characters' way, while the focus is on the locusts and Maisie's genetics. Trevorrow defended this approach, saying this series has really always been about science and the repercussions of its misuse, and wrote on his Twitter page in August of 2022, "I wanted to make a film about genetic power and its consequences... For those who feel Cretaceous-era insects don't belong in the franchise, there's nothing I can do. We all take our swings." Fair enough, but,

Colin, you already had the consequences of genetic power with the dinosaurs. You didn't need to come up with something else that would embody it; just focus on how it's led to these creatures that have been gone for millions of years being back with us, that there's no going back now, and we have to learn to deal with it. Like Halloween Ends the same year, which focused more on the effect and influence of Michael Myers rather than Michael himself, I can respect a filmmaker who decides to do something different in a franchise

entry than what one would expect, but I don't think it's the best idea to go that route in what's supposed to be the concluding chapter of a storyline, especially one like this, which was meant to close out nearly thirty years' worth of material.

Still, this film definitely has the largest amount of different species of dinosaurs in the series so far, with 35 in total. Like before, many of those we've seen before are onscreen very briefly. These include the Mosasaurus, who attacks the crab fishing boat in the Bering Sea at the very beginning and is seen swimming among some humpback whales during the ending montage; Compies, several of which are seen chasing a little girl around a barnyard in the opening montage, another being chased by a cheetah, and a small group being unleashed upon Owen during the

sequence at the black market; Stegosaurs, which cause that accident during the opening, and are also seen at the U.S. Wildlife Relocation Facility (one's actually getting his teeth brushed there); Ankylosaurs, seen at Big Rock National Park and at Biosyn Valley; Apatosaurs, two of whom appear in the lumberyard near Owen, Claire, and Maisie's cabin, and at the end, are seen eating the leaves from some redwood trees; Dimorphodons, which are seen at the black market; Gallimimus, which are seen during the opening montage and at the sanctuary; Pteranodons, one of 

which appears during the opening, when it crashes a wedding, and others at the sanctuary, as well as the end; Stygimolochs, one of which is seen next to a railroad during the opening, and are also at the black market and sanctuary; and various members of the Ceratopsian suborder, including Triceratops, Sinoceratops, and Nasutoceratops, which are seen at the illegal breeding facility that Claire, Zia, and Franklin break into, as well as the sanctuary. Brachiosaurs are another old favorite that are only 

ever seen at Biosyn Valley, along with some newcomers who make brief appearances, like another sauropod called Dreadnoughtus, and Iguanodon. Moros, a type of small, feathered theropod, is glimpsed by Grant and Ellie in the habitat development lab in the sanctuary's main building, and when they're in Washington D.C. at the end, they see a girl feeding one, along with some ducks. The black market scene also introduces some briefly-seen newcomers, such as the Microceratus, which is also 

the dinosaur Charlotte is looking at in the v-logs, and a Lystrosaurus, which sits in a cage next to Kayla. Owen comes face to face with this individual, named Leonard, during a fight with Rainn Delacourt. When Delacourt gets knocked to the ground, Leonard bites his left hand, while a young Carnotaurus gets his right.

Among those who have some major appearances, the first is that really cute baby Nasutoceratops whom Claire and company rescue from that facility, and whom Ellie later sees and plays with at the Wildlife Relocation Facility. This is promptly followed by the herd of Parasaurolophus whom Owen and some men from the Department of Fish and Wildlife round up. During the sequence in Malta, you see various theropods that get caught up in the action, like a juvenile Baryonyx, with a prosthetic left arm, facing off with a young Allosaurus, and full-grown one that 

delivers the killing blow to Delacourt, after the young Carnotaurus and Leonard have him virtually pinned down. An adult Carnotaurus, namely the one with the broken horn who fought with the T-Rex over eating Eli Mills at the end of Fallen Kingdom, is let loose in the place, as well as an adult Allosaurus with one eye. The two of them not only wreak havoc in the market but make their way out into a plaza, where they briefly get caught up in the motorcycle chase with Owen. Speaking of which, the standout dinosaurs in this section are the Atrociraptors, whom Soyona 

Santos intended to have Delacourt ship to Riyadh, but lets them loose after Barry and the French Intelligence agents corner them. Like Blue and her sisters in Jurassic World, these creatures do have individual names, which were actually established when they appeared in the Camp Cretaceous series, but I couldn't tell you which is which, as I haven't watched that show. They also do mostly look like Velociraptors, but with bulkier heads and snouts, and like the Indoraptor, they've not only been trained to 

kill but conditioned to hunt down specific individuals with laser targeting. They prove to be both deadly and positively relentless, as they nearly kill Barry, one chases Claire across rooftops and through buildings, then continues after her and Kayla in a truck, and two chase Owen through the city and all the way to the airfield, where he meets up with Claire and Kayla on her cargo plane. When they enter Biosyn airspace and Dodgson has the ADS turned off, a large Quetzalcoatlus attacks the plane, sending it down to 

the ground and prompting Owen to have Claire eject out. After they crash, Owen and Kayla run into a feathered Pyroraptor on a frozen lake. I really like the look of this creature, with his red and gray coloring, and beak-like snout, and how he dives right through the ice and swims through the water beneath their feet. I really wish he was in more than just that one scene. Dimetrodons, who were part of the original toy-line, make their onscreen debut here, as they're

revealed to be inhabiting the amber mines. They ferociously chase Grant, Ellie, and Maisie through the tunnels, and come very close to getting them due to the gate they run into. And finally, the Dilophosaurs return for real, with a group of them stalking and threatening Claire outside of one of the research outposts, and kill Dodgson at the end. They not only use their venom against him, but we get to see its paralysis effect before they go in for the kill.

While she has more to do in the extended version, in the theatrical, Rexy the T-Rex's screentime amounts to even less than it did in Fallen Kingdom. We first see her at Biosyn Valley, where she's recently arrived, and it turns out that she has a rival in the form of the bigger Gigantosaurus. This guy is the closest the movie comes to an actual dinosaur antagonist, and while he's not a genetic hybrid, he does resemble the Indominous Rex, especially in the shape of his head, the spines that cover much of his body, and a bot of his coloration. Also, his bottom jaw tends to quiver 

and he emits sounds similar to the Indominous. When he first appears in the theatrical version, he challenges the T-Rex for a dead deer that she was eating and manages to send her in retreat. He later threatens the group after they come together, trying to eat them as they try to take cover in one of the research outposts, and shows up at the Biosyn building's courtyard during the climax, along with the T-Rex. There, the two of them ignore the humans and battle again, and the Gigantosaurus nearly kills the T-Rex. But then, she gets some unexpected help in the form of the

Therizinosaurus. Introduced when Claire awakens in her seat after landing in the forest, this thing is, hands down, the creepiest-looking creature I've ever seen in a Jurassic Park movie. Feathered on the back of his arms and body, with a long neck leading to a small head with a beak, and huge arms and hands, with long claws that would make Freddy Krueger envious, he comes off as even freakier by his being blind in one eye, and the squawking, warbling sounds he makes. Despite being herbivorous, he's so territorial that he

kills a deer in order to get at some berries, and stalks after Claire when he spots her. He shows up again during the battle between the T-Rex and the Gigantosaurus, and battles the latter when he tries to attack him. Though no match for him alone, both the T-Rex and the Therizinosaurus work together to defeat him, and even share a victorious roar afterward. The last time you see the T-Rex after that, she's mingling with two other Tyrannosaurs at the sanctuary, who are actually meant to be the mother and father Tyrannosaurs from The Lost World.

You'll notice that I haven't talked about Blue yet and that's because, while she is here again, she's completely side-lined after the first act. We see her early on, as she's living in the woods near our main trio's cabin, likely so she can be near Owen. She's made an old, abandoned school bus out in the woods her nest, and it also turns out that she now has a child, Beta, whom she was able to have asexually due to her genetics. In their first scene together, she teaches Beta how to hunt, going for a hare they come across in the snow... only for the hare to get snatched up by a wolf.

This makes Beta so mad that she actually charges at and attacks the wolf! Beta often proves to be both curious and tenacious, as she approaches Maisie when she's out by the cabin's fire pit, and eats a piece of toast that she offers her. However, Blue is a very protective mother, as she shows up and threatens both Maisie and Owen, before the latter gets her to run off. Right after that is when Beta is taken by the poachers, along with Maisie, and as Owen and Claire are heading out to go after them, a very angry Blue shows up at their cabin, seeming to think they had something to do with it. Again staving her off from attacking, Owen promises Blue that they'll get Beta back. Blue, on the other hand, is so worked up that she does something she's never done before: she slashes at Owen, scratching his hand, before storming off back into the woods. She's not seen again until they return with Beta at the end, and mother and daughter are reunited. While they're both held captive at the Biosyn facility, Maisie and Beta form something of a bond, with Maisie letting her out of Dr. Wu's lab when she herself makes a break for it. She later has to help Owen and Grant recapture her, and when they reunite her with Blue at the end, she's still protective of her child, but clearly grateful to the humans in her own way, especially Owen.

As much as I don't like how they supplant the dinosaurs as one of the movie's main focuses, I can't deny that the locusts are really unsettling. They come off as a genuine threat when you see them swarm at the farm near the beginning, not just to the crops but to some poor kids who get caught up in it and have to take cover in the barn. When you see one up close, it can give you the creeps if you have a fear of insects, as these things are hideous, with their brown coloring, the little barbs that cover much of their bodies, and the skin-crawling chittering noises they make. The

little swarms of them in the lab after Grant and Ellie take the DNA are also unnerving, and when Dodgson tries to burn them at the end, they become a threat to the entire valley when they escape as a large flying, burning mass and start a forest fire.

Over the course of the past three films, we've gone from having almost no animatronics in Jurassic World, to some in Fallen Kingdom, and to a lot here in Dominion. Specifically, there are eighteen animatronics and puppets in all, which is considerable for a big, effects-filled blockbuster made these days, and they were provided by John Nolan and his London-based studio (Neal Scanlon, who'd provided the animatronics for the previous movie, was on hiatus at the time). You have practical effects in all sizes, ranging from the baby Nasutoceratops, one

used for close-ups of Beta, various dinosaurs in the black market scene, and the locusts, to the Gigantosaurus, for which they built a full-size head and shoulders to use in scenes like when he attacks the cast during the third act. I can't tell you how much I loved learning that, as it hearkens back to Stan Winston's work with the T-Rex on the original trilogy. What's really cool is that, like in the original Jurassic Park, the Dilophosaurs are 100% practical (it wouldn't be until Jurassic World: Rebirth that you

would see a digital Dilophosaurus). So, I'm really glad this approach was taken, although, I have to admit, some of the puppets look a tad stiff and rubbery. Also, the digital dinosaurs still look great, although there are some shots, like when Blue is up against the snow in the daytime, where it comes off as a bit artificial-looking. But, as I've gone into earlier, the use of digital scanning and compositing to create the big, wide shots of Biosyn Valley, and to place the actors in places they couldn't actually travel to, are incredible. The digital locust swarms are also pretty cool-looking, especially when they're on fire.

The film begins with rather somber, uncertain music playing over the Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment logos (unlike the last two, Legendary Pictures wasn't involved), and then opens in the Bering Sea, as the Sada, a crab fishing boat, deploys its cage down to the bottom, and hauls it back up, filled with a large bounty of the crustaceans. But then, before they can get it back onboard, the Mosasaurus erupts from the water and grabs the cage in her mouth. Pulling back, she causes the boat to capsize, 

either drowning or killing all the men aboard herself. That leads into the montage from the news program, Now This, which not only details the ongoing impact the dinosaurs are having on the world at large (some of the footage shown depicts what happens in the short film, Battle at Big Rock), but also gives a history lesson, about the events of the original Jurassic Park, and how the last two movies have led to this reality. There's also footage of a raid on a London establishment illegally selling dinosaurs, with a small Dimorphodon being taken out in a 

birdcage, and some poachers standing by their pickup truck in the Sierra Nevada range, followed by a message from Lewis Dodgson and a look at his operation in the Dolomites. After mentioning the disappearance of Maisie Lockwood, the report ends by pondering what will happen next, with the last footage being a Pteranodon flying over a city and heading to a nest atop a skyscraper. And then, in a first for the franchise, there's no actual onscreen title; just an enormous Jurassic Park logo that the camera zooms in on (Jurassic World: Rebirth would open in a similar manner).

Afterward, it cuts to the exterior of the Saw Ridge Cattle Co. in Nevada, as two figures break in through the fence's gate and make their way towards the facility. Inside, the two of them are revealed to be Claire and Zia, documenting the place's interior, which is unclean and cruel in its setup, with baby Nasutoceratops kept in cages. They find one in a cage that's extremely ill, and Zia, after examining her, believes she's not going to make it. Claire decides to take matters into her own hands, fearing the baby 

will be dead by the time the Department of Fish and Wildlife get around to doing something. They push the cage out of the facility and across the main yard, when a van barrels backwards through the gate. The back opens up and it turns out to be Franklin, who is not happy to see what they're doing. Ignoring his protests, they lift the Nasutoceratops out of the cage and into the back, when they hear the facility's alarm. Seeing some men in vehicles coming at them, they climb in through their van's back dor and Claire takes 

the wheel. Zia and Franklin are just barely able to close the doors as she peels away, and they're chased through another gate. This leads into a big open field, and when the van's back doors come open again, Zia and Franklin see a man leaning out of the truck behind them, wielding a shotgun. Zia warns Claire of this, and she veers to the left, leading to the vehicle's right rear tire getting blasted. That's when they realize the field is full of Triceratops and Sinoceratops, which panic and stampede towards them. The one truck chasing them slams right into one dinosaur's 

enormous head and is totaled immediately, while the other pursuing vehicle is hit on the side by a Triceratops and is sent rolling across the ground. As they escape, Claire asks, "Everybody good?", and both Zia and Franklin let out an angry, "No!" Thus, it's not hard to understand why they quit in the very next scene.

After that, in the snowy tundra near the Sierra Nevada Mountains, Owen and some men from the DFW pursue a herd of Parasaurolophus on horseback. They manage to ride among the herd, and Owen then chases after one individual that separates from the others. He lassos the dinosaur's neck and goes to tie the rope around the front of his saddle, when the Parasaurolophus trips and falls down a steep hill. The rope comes loose and Owen instinctively grabs it, only to get yanked off the horse. He's dragged down 

the hill, but he then sees a large stump ahead and is able to get one end of the rope around it. This stops the Parasaurolophus, but he rears up on his hind legs and continues pulling against the rope. Owen then has to tie it more firmly, making it go taut. Once the dinosaur is secured, Owen approaches him, as he continues struggling in the noose, while also bellowing and huffing. Owen puts his hand out, as the Parasaurolophus begins to calm, and whispers to him, "We're gonna get you someplace safe." He manages 

to touch and rub his snout, as he calms completely and stops struggling. In the next scene, he's leading the Parasaurolophus on horseback, rejoining the two men from the DFW. On a nearby ridge, Rainn Delacourt and his men are watching them. Elsewhere, Maisie is chopping wood at the cabin, when she hears what sounds like a Velociraptor bark out in the woods. She then bikes into town, where she enters the lumberyard and sees that an Apatosaurus has wandered into it. She whispers something to one of the men there and then, another man gets on the back 

of a truck, holding a flare. Both it and the truck's horn get the Apatosaurus' attention and he follows it. He looks back behind him and bellows, which is when another one, likely his mate, emerges from a snowbank and joins him in following the truck and the flare.

After Maisie returns to the cabin, followed shortly afterward by Owen, we see that Blue is watching them from the nearby woods. She then turns and runs off, stopping at an old abandoned school bus. Entering it, and tapping her foot talon on its floor, she chitters and barks, walking towards a nest in the back. Little Beta appears up near the front and joins her mother in running through the snowy forest. She trips and tumbles through the snow at one point but, otherwise, keeps up with her. Blue stops and sniffs the

air, and then, the two of them spot and slowly move towards a snowshoe hare that's sitting nearby, its back to them. But before they can pounce, a wolf comes from the side and grabs the hare, much to Blue's outrage. Even more unexpectedly, Beta charges in and jumps at the wolf, with the two of them tumbling across the snow. Back at the cabin, both Owen and Claire hear the sounds of the raptors. And that night, after Owen and Claire's attempt to explain to Maisie why she shouldn't go into town doesn't pan out, it

it turns out that Delacourt is watching them from nearby again. He tells someone over a cellphone that not only does Blue have a child, but that he's found Maisie as well. The movie then cuts to a farm in West Texas, where two kids are doing their chores in the barnyard. The boy hears something and sees a large locust crawling across the top of a nearby fence. His sister hears it too, but right when she walks away from the chicken coop and looks, the locust flutters up into the air... joined by thousands of others that emerge from the field of wheat behind the fence.

They swarm and engulf the barnyard, chasing the terrified kids into the barn itself, where they close the door and pull the latch to. As the enormous insects bang against the outside, the kids move away from the door, with the girl grabbing a shovel for protection. One locust manages to smash its way through the wood and flops around on the floor, and the boy grabs a bucket and traps it. This is the specimen that Ellie Sattler later takes to Alan Grant, and after she convinces him to accompany her to Biosyn Valley, they depart through the Wildlife

Relocation Facility in Pennsylvania. Before they leave, they're shown around by Shira, and Ellie plays with the baby Nasutoceratops that came from the facility in Nevada. She scratches the little creature's muzzle and tells Grant, "Alan, you never get used to it."

Back at the cabin, Maisie walks out into the yard to make some toast with the fire-pit, when she gets a visitor in the form of Beta. She approaches the hatchling, noting how much she looks like Blue, and reaches out with the toast, which she quickly snatches up. But then, Blue emerges from the woods and goes into protective mother mode. Owen shows up and, telling Maisie not to move, uses his hand signal to keep Blue from attacking. After a standoff, Blue backs away, and runs back into the woods with Beta.

Owen goes to find their nest, and makes the mistake of telling Maisie to stay behind. That's when she decides to take her bike and ride off, ignoring Claire. However, she's again being watched by Delacourt, and he radios someone that it's time to grab her. At the same time, in the woods, Blue brings Beta a dead fox to eat, but when she drags it across the ground, she triggers a snare trap. Blue looks up, screeching at her child, when a pickup truck comes in and slams into her, sending her tumbling down into a ravine. 

Owen hears the commotion from nearby and runs to the spot, while Blue tries to climb back up the slope. Neither of them are able to stop the poachers, and when Owen shows up, Delacourt fires at him from inside the truck as they drive off with Beta. Following that, Maisie finds herself surrounded on the bridge leading into town. Owen arrives nearby in time to see her bike being tossed into the river below. Knowing he can't do anything at the moment, he rushes back to the cabin and tells Claire what's happened. He grabs a rifle and loads up, telling Claire to get their truck.

Walking outside, she's confronted by a furious Blue, and Owen quickly rushes out to diffuse the situation. He promises Blue that he'll get Beta back, and after Blue slashes his hand, she runs off, screeching. Claire says he knows who to call, and that happens to be Franklin, in his new job at the CIA's Dangerous Species Division. He tells them about Delacourt and the impending sting in Malta, as well as Barry's involvement in it.

As Ellie and Grant arrive at Biosyn Valley and are flown to the facility with Ramsay Cole, they see a Dreadnoughtus resting in a lake down below, and when they pass over a patch of forest, the Gigantosaurus is shown sleeping down there. After they arrive and meet both Dodgson and then Ian Malcolm, who surreptitiously gives Ellie a way to get down to the labs, Dodgson tells Dr. Wu that both Maisie and Beta are en route. He then calls Soyona Santos in Malta, who confirms that the exchange is

about to begin. At the airfield, Kayla Watts is introduced when she lands and delivers Beta, whom she transported there. Maisie arrives at the same time via another plane and is forced to walk over to where Santos is waiting by a car, which Kayla sees and gets an uncomfortable feeling about. Meanwhile, Owen and Claire arrive in Malta and meet up with Barry, who tells them what he knows about who hired Delacourt. He gives them a way to listen in on the surveillance of the exchange, and leads them to the 

underground market. After they walk through there, seeing the craziness going on, as well as the various types of dinosaurs, either for sell or having just been bought, Claire meets Kayla in the restroom. From a nearby rooftop outside, Owen and Claire spot Delacourt as he heads into the market, accompanied by a man who's actually an undercover agent. Claire spots them inside and keeps tabs on them, while Owen and Barry rush to the spot where Delacourt and the agent meet up with Santos. There, she tasks them with transporting some Atrociraptors, which are 

housed in some cages in the back of a truck behind her. As Claire watches the exchange from another vantage point, she knows that Maisie isn't there; sure enough, she's being driven through the city elsewhere. Delacourt receives his payment and the agents working with Barry move in, with the undercover one pulling a gun on Delacourt and Santos as well. A firefight breaks out and Delacourt, dropping the bag of money, runs for it, while the truck carrying the Atrociraptors drives off into the streets.

Delacourt runs back through the market, with Owen in hot pursuit. He jumps from the second level down to the market floor, as does Owen, and they both land clumsily, knocking stuff over. At the same time, when the truck reaches an underpass, the agents use a spike strip to destroy its tires, causing it to crash through the stone wall. The crash also dumps the cages housing the Atrociraptors into the middle of the large space on the other side. Back at the market, Delacourt, knowing he's being chased, puts various 

obstacles in Owen's way. He knocks over a crate of Compies that attack Owen but he easily manages to fight them off. Delacourt then shoots the chains holding some larger carnivores, but ends up releasing the Carnotaurus with the broken horn and the partially blind Allosaurus. Horrified, Delacourt backs away, attempting to shoot them, but falls over the railing behind him and lands in one of the fight pits below. While Owen finds himself caught between the two carnivores, Delacourt just barely manages to avoid 

becoming prey for a Baryonyx, which lunges at him, only for his chain to just keep him from reaching the poacher. Owen does a tumble away from the Allosaurus and slides under the railing. This move causes the Carnotaurus to accidentally bite the Allosaurus, leading to a fight between them. Owen chases after Delacourt and tackles him into another fight pit, this one housing Leonard the Lystrosaurus. The two of them fight as Leonard watches, and at one point, Owen dodges Delacourt's swinging a knife at him, only for a young, chained Carnotaurus to lunge 

at him. He faces off with Delacourt again, while up on the second level, mayhem breaks out. The adult Carnotaurus causes one man to fall backwards into a flaming grill, and he tumbles to the floor on fire. Another man tries to help him, only for the Allosaurus to chomp down on him. Owen continues avoiding Delacourt's punches and knife swings, and manages to send him to the floor, dropping his knife in the process. That's when the juvenile Carnotaurus bites down on his right hand, while Leonard bites his left. Standing over him with his knife, Owen demands

that Delacourt tell him where Maisie is, but all he knows is that she was handed over to Santos. The Baryonyx from before then breaks loose from his chains and goes in for the kill on Delacourt, chomping down on his head. Owen tells Claire to go find Santos.

Barry and his fellow French Intelligence agents move in on the crashed cargo truck, when Santos tells the driver to let the Atrociraptors loose. Reluctantly, he does so, and as the deadly theropods step out of their cages and stalk around the agents, Santos marks each of them with a laser pointer. Immediately, the Atrociraptors go on the attack, chasing the agents down when they run for it and tearing them to pieces. One agent manages to climb up a boat that's leaning up against the wall and escape out onto the street,

while Barry climbs into another small boat's cockpit, with one of the raptors right behind him. He uses some tanks of freezing cold gas to fend the raptor off and buy himself some time. At the same times, Claire tracks Santos down and pursues her, grabbing a raptor taser on the way. Barry tries to escape through the cockpit's sunroof but it won't budge, while Santos calls Dodgson and tells him what's going on. Dodgson gives her permission to kill Owen and Claire, even though she says it won't be for free. 

Claire follows Santos into another building, where she goes upstairs and walks into a small apartment that's occupied by a woman and her kids. When Claire gets up there, she tries to talk with Santos, but she's not in a talking mood, as she proves by throwing a potted plant at her. The two of them get into a vicious fight, with Claire trying to use the taser, only to get slammed into a window. Santos attacks her with a knife, but Claire manages to zap her with the taser, which has enough recoil to blow her against a small table. Claire then holds the taser at her and 

threatens to use it on her again if she doesn't tell her what happened to Maisie. She tells her that Maisie is being taken to Biosyn, and we then see her arriving at a hangar housing one of the company's jets. Santos proceeds to rub salt into the wound by adding, "You missed her. She's gone."

Just as Claire is processing this, one of the Atrociraptors, whom Santos signaled earlier, appears in the hallway outside and jumps at her. Claire manages to zap him with the taser, which flings him against the wall and hurts him enough to where he lets out injured squeals and yelps. Santos backs out of the apartment, but marks Claire with the laser before she goes. As the Atrociraptor targets her, she ducks into the next room, slams the door, and opens a closet, only to find the apartment's occupants inside. The

raptor tears his way through the door and Claire opens the window and tumbles out onto a rooftop below. The raptor chases her across it, and the two of them jump and run across various other rooftops. The raptor also continues pursuing Claire when she runs through a door and down a stairwell. Meanwhile, Barry is just about out of options to escape the raptor that has him trapped, but Owen shows up and manages to pull him up through the boat's sunroof in the nick of time. Claire runs down a corridor and

jumps from one balcony to another, but doesn't make it all the way and ends up hanging onto the railing. A section of it breaks right after the raptor leaps at her, and he crashes through the French window and into the apartment on the other side. Down in the street, Kayla sees Claire hanging and reluctantly decides to help her. She drops from the balcony before the raptor can get another fix on her, landing in the back of a covered truck. Kayla takes the wheel and drives off with Claire, only for the raptor, which made his way 

down through the building, to explode out of a door at the bottom and continue the chase. Elsewhere, Owen and Barry find themselves confronted by the one raptor. Seeing the cages behind them, Owen decides to use one of the methods they employed to get the Jurassic World Velociraptors into their truck. Despite Barry not being confident about his dive-rolling ability, they manage to pull it off. Santos then shows up and Barry quickly holds her at gunpoint. Back in the street, with the one raptor still chasing after Claire and Kayla, the latter says she's going to fly them out 

of there when they get to the airfield. Claire asks her to take her to Biosyn, then contacts Owen and tells him that's where Maisie has been taken. She tells him to head to the airfield, on the island's north side, and he heads out, while Barry keeps his gun trained on Santos. Owen takes a motorcycle he finds parked near the edge of a dock and drives out to the street. However, Santos takes the opportunity to sic two of the other Atrociraptors on him.

He realizes he's being chased when he drives out into the street, and the raptors running after and snapping at him from behind. He barely dodges an oncoming truck, as do the raptors. At the same time, the other raptor is still chasing Claire and Kayla. The latter sees him coming up fast in the rear-view mirror, and he almost gets into the back of the truck with Claire. She tells Kayla to swerve to the right, forcing the raptor to navigate around a bunch of junk stacked up along the sidewalk. They then go to the left, driving under a

section that's under construction, with scaffolding above them. Some pipes standing up in the back of the truck hit and knock loose pieces of the scaffolding, but the raptor manages to dodge them. Claire grabs a shovel in the back of the truck and tries to hit him with it when he gets close, but he dodges it, jumping outside the scaffolding. However, when they drive out from under the scaffolding themselves, Kayla swerves towards the raptor, knocking and bouncing him across the street. But even that doesn't 

deter him, as he gets back up and continues the chase. Another truck comes at them from around the corner and Kayla swerves to miss it, causing the truck to raise up on its left tires and clip the side of the left wall. Claire then sees Owen drive across a small bridge with the two other raptors chasing him. He drives down a very tight alleyway, with the raptors snapping at any passersby who get too close. They chase him through a connecting street and into another alleyway, when up ahead, he has to stop to avoid a car that rushes through an intersection. This 

almost allows one of the raptors to get him, and when they go through, one of them is knocked off his feet when a car hits him. He gets up and continues the chase, while the other raptor pursues Owen along some ledges to his right. He jumps down at him but tumbles into the street, and Owen heads down a flight of stairs to his right and then back onto the street, with the raptors still in pursuit. Meanwhile, Claire is using anything she can grab in the back of the truck to try to get rid of the one chasing her and Kayla. She does so nicely when she grabs a big section of pipe 

that she was using to jab at him, holds it lengthwise, and when they drive between two parked cars, the raptor ends up slamming by his neck right into the pipe and is flung around it in a circle. He crashes down on the street with a groan, finally out of action.

Owen is chased into a large plaza, which is already in chaos, as the Carnotaurus and Allosaurus from the black market have wandered into it. As he passes by, he sees the Carnotaurus go for a man on a segue, only for the Allosaurus to get him first. The raptors chase him into a spot where patio tables and chairs are set up, with one of them crashing into a set, but they both manage to keep after Owen. At the airfield, Claire and Kayla disembark from the truck and rush aboard Kayla's cargo plane. Kayla gets the engine started and

prepares to lift off, when Claire sees Owen coming in the distance. Even though he's driven outside the city limits, the Atrociraptors are still after him. Since Kayla can't exactly "pull over," as Claire suggests, she instead opens the plane's drop ramp. Claire walks into the back as it lowers, while outside, Owen pushes the motorcycle to its limit to reach the ramp, while the raptors continue chasing him. Kayla sees that she's quickly running out of runway up ahead and yells for Claire to hold on. She begins to lift the cargo plane up into the air, as the raptors flank him on either side.

The one of his left bites out at his front wheel, only to lose his footing and tumble out of the chase. Owen then manages to hop the motorcycle up onto the ramp and onboard the plane. He skids and it flies out from under him from the momentum, slamming lengthwise into the back of the pilot seats. The other raptor manages jump into the back of the plane, and Owen slides towards him, as the plane is still lifting off. Claire grabs him and pulls him up against the wall, while the motorcycle slides down and knocks the

raptor out of the back, sending him falling to his death in the sea below. Claire and Owen embrace, while Kayla brags, "Still got it," as she levels the plane off and they fly into the sunset.

As I said earlier, after that extended adrenaline rush, things slow down considerably. At the Biosyn facility, Ramsay leads Grant and Ellie into the habitat development lab, where they see some young Moros specimens in a miniature habitat, one of which snatches up a mouse. Ramsay then allows them to tour the place by themselves, and with that, they take the opportunity to head down to the sub-level laboratories. After Dr. Wu tells Maisie the truth about her creation and why both she and Beta are important,

Grant and Ellie, now dressed in hazmat suits, enter the sub-level and make their way down to lab L-4, where the locusts are kept. Ellie tells Grant to move slowly, saying the slightest movement could cause them to swarm, and they enter the greenhouse area where they're kept after going through a decontamination section. Finding a specimen that's labeled as "fully mature," Ellie has Grant reach in and grab it (which he, understandably, isn't crazy about doing, or thought he was even going to be required to 

do). When he removes it from the section of wheat it's in, she prepares to take the sample, though Grant becomes concerned when he realizes they're signalling to each other. At the same time, while Dodgson confronts Wu about showing Maisie the v-logs of Charlotte, Maisie decides to make her escape, and also lets Beta out of her own cage. Seeing this, Dodgson hits the alarm, which poses a big problem for Grant and Ellie, as it causes the locusts to swarm. Having acquired their sample, they run back through the room and the door that leads into the

decontamination chamber. A handful of the locusts manage to get in there with them, and amid the chaos, they drop the key that Malcolm slipped Ellie. In Wu's lab, he and Dodgson see Maisie climb out of there, when Beta jumps in and, after smashing a bunch of instruments, runs off, too. Maisie enters the sub-level, and hears Ellie screaming nearby, as she and Grant flail around in the decontamination room with the locusts. They finally manage to find the key on the floor, open the door, and tumble out. As the two of them lie on the floor, catching their breath, and have

something of an intimate moment, Maisie interrupts them. She recognizes both of them, and introduces herself as well. They then join up to escape, having to dodge Dodgson when he comes stomping down to the sub-level.

As Owen, Claire, and Kayla are en route to the facility, Dodgson, learning the first two are onboard the plane, orders the ADS turned off. In the cockpit, Kayla sees a warning that it's been deactivated and attempts to get out of the airspace, when they hear a loud screech above them. Seeing a big leathery wing outside, Kayla realizes they're being stalked by a Quetzalcoatlus. They sit in silence, waiting to see what it does, but after a few seconds, things get quiet again. Kayla thinks everything's fine, until the Quetzalcoatlus flies up behind them and past the

plane's tail. It smashes its large talons through the cockpit's window and then starts attacking the aircraft with its beak. It takes out the left rotor and then, as Kayla pulls back to head down, it rips its beak right through the top of the plane before flying off. Knowing that her plane is going to crash, Kayla tells them that Claire is sitting in the only ejector seat it has, and there are no parachutes. The plane rapidly loses altitude, and Owen tells Claire how to activate the chair's parachute if it doesn't deploy automatically.

He then tells her that she needs to get Maisie and reassures her that they'll see each other again, before kissing her and getting back into his seat. With that, Claire deploys the seat and is shot up out of the plane and into the air. She screams as she twists and turns in midair, but the chute does deploy by itself. Unfortunately, she's then dogged from both sides by Pteranodons, which rip through the chute with their beaks. She plummets towards the ground, but then

pulls the lever on her right, activating the emergency chute, and heads down through the trees. At the same time, Owen and Kayla plummet down towards the dam (Owen asks, "What's the plan?", and Kayla answers, "Whatever happens happens. That's the plan!"), with the plane's right wing tearing off before they hit the frozen lake behind it.

Grant, Ellie, and Maisie reach one of the hyperloop pods and are about to board, when Ramsay shows up. He reveals that he's on their side and tells them that the pod will take them to the airfield. They then board and ride through the tunnel. Elsewhere, Claire awakens in the forest and finds that she's still in the ejector seat, which is hanging from a tree branch. Seeing how high above the ground she is, Claire tries to unbuckle herself and find a way down, when she hears an unsettling sound behind her. She sits there, as the Therizinosaurus steps out from behind and

walks past her. Fortunately for her, she's on the side with his blind eye, and watches as he walks by, then viciously knocks away a deer that was grazing nearby so he can get to the berries it was eating. With his back to her, Claire manages to drop down into the foliage below, but he hears the sound she makes. As she crawls away, the Therizinosaurus scans the area, trying to find the source of the sound. She manages to avoid being detected once, but it doesn't take long for him to spot and follow her. That's when she crawls

into the water and he, after looking down at the surface and roaring right above her, turns and walks away. Once he's gone, Claire surfaces and swims to shore. Looking out at the horizon, she sees some smoke rising from where the plane went down. 

There, Owen and Kayla manage to escape the plane as it slowly starts to sink beneath the ice. The two of them carefully make their way across the frozen lake, with Kayla explaining that she used to work for the Air Force, and that she feels bad for not helping Maisie back in Malta. She steps through a weak patch of ice and her foot goes through, but Owen stops her from going in all the way. They then hear something and look across the ice to see the Pyroraptor emerge from the rocks. Kayla and Owen respectively take out a taser and a knife, as he approaches them, clearly

intending to attack. The plane shifts sending a massive crack through the ice that separates him from them... when he just dives right through the ice. Seeing him swimming directly below them, and the ice cracking around them, they both turn and run for the nearby outpost. They both leap, only for Owen to go through the ice and into the frigid water. Down there, the Pyroraptor spots him and swims right at him like a torpedo. Fortunately for him, Kayla reaches in and pulls him out. The two of them lay on the ice, with Owen commenting, "What an asshole,"

when the Pyroraptor erupts to the surface in front of them and lands just a few feet away. They immediately turn and run for the outpost, climbing up onto a walkway spanning across the lake. They run across it towards the main building, as the Pyroraptor snaps at them through the railing, before climbing up onto the walkway and chasing them on foot again. They run to an elevator at the end of the walkway and, once they're inside, bring the hatch down. He tries to get at them through the hatch's chain-link

pattern, but Kayla tasers him for good measure, before Owen throws the switch that activates the elevator. He keeps trying to get at them as it descends, but it's pointless. As they ride down, Kayla hands Owen a device that she says will allow them to track down the ejector seat.

Meanwhile, Dodgson learns about Grant and Ellie's breaking into the sub-level, as well as that Malcolm gave them the means to do so. He shuts down the hyperloop, forcing them to disembark. When they do, they find themselves down in the old amber mines. Maisie and Ellie grab some flashlighta, while Grant creates a torch, and the three of them begin navigating the tunnels; none of them see an ominous, fleshy sail emerge from the underground lake near the entrance. Following the scene where Malcolm and Dodgson

have their very tense final confrontation when the former is fired, Owen and Kayla come upon Claire's empty ejector seat, which is still hanging in the tree. They become worried when they see some blood sprinkled among the shrubbery on the ground, but then see it's from the deer that the Therizinosaurus killed earlier. They hear something and look to see the T-Rex emerge from the misty woods up ahead. Quickly taking cover by some fallen logs, they watch as she approaches, then sniffs and nudges the deer's 

carcass, before beginning to feed on it. Suddenly, they hear some loud stomps approaching, and watch as the T-Rex is confronted by the Gigantosaurus. They get into a brief scuffle, but the Gigantosaurus manages to drive her away and walks off with the deer carcass, eating it himself. While Grant, Ellie, and Maisie continue navigating the mines, Ramsay leads Malcolm down to a garage and shows him a map, pinpointing an access gate at the mine's northeast corner. Malcolm takes a jeep and drives out to help his friends escape the mine.

Speaking of which, they continue on through, when Grant finds a ladder leading up the side of a rock wall. He has Ellie take his torch, while he prepares to climb up. They hear some loud rustling in the cavern, which gives them pause, but when they don't hear it again, he makes the climb. Reaching the top of the ladder, which only goes up a few feet, he's unable to make out anything on the ledge up there due to the darkness. He has Ellie hand him the torch again, and when he takes it, it illuminates a Dimetrodon, which snarls and lunges at him. Grant falls back, tumbling

off the ladder and onto the ground, and Ellie and Maisie rush to his aid. More Dimetrodons appear in the cavern, and Ellie tries to fend off one on the ground with them with the torch, while Grant and Maisie use bones they find scattered about as weapons. Grant notes that he dropped his hat on the ground and, like Indiana Jones, is compelled to retrieve it, despite Ellie yelling at him to forget about it. He just picks it up when the Dimetrodon snaps at him, forcing him to drop it. Deciding it's not worth it, he follows Ellie and Maisie through the tunnel behind

them, with the Dimetrodon in pursuit. They come across another one, then find their way to the access gate, only to realize they can't open it from where they are. Malcolm shows up outside but, when faced with a keypad and not knowing what the code is, begins punching in random numbers. One of the Dimetrodons tries to crawl across a mine-cart to get at them, and they push back against the cart, causing the dinosaur to get caught between it and the side of the chamber's opening. They're just barely able to keep

him back, but the others close in as well, not even registering the rocks that are being thrown at them. Fortunately, from the control room, Ramsay sees on a security monitor what's going on and taps in the code. The gate opens, the trio run outside and join Malcolm, and push the gate closed before the Dimetrodons can follow them. They then pile into the jeep and prepare to leave the valley.

Claire reaches one of the research outposts in the valley and, finding the control panel, manages to switch the lights on and lower down the ladder leading up to the main platform. But she hears some rustling in the bushes behind her, followed by a certain, high-pitched hooting around her. Hiding up against the outpost's base, she waits for the agonizingly slow ladder to descend all the way. When it reaches the ground, she moves towards it, but then sees the silhouette of a Dilophosaurus watching her from the bushes in front of her. It snarls at her as she 

backs away, and she turns to see another one in the bushes across from her. She backs up against the outpost's base, turns back around, and sees that the one that was in front of her is gone. She hears rustling and crashing in the forest all around her, suggesting that there are quite a few of them. After scanning her surroundings, she turns back and finds herself face-to-face with one Dilophosaurus, which hisses at her as she slumps to the ground. It deploys its frill and snarls at her as she screams, when Owen comes in and grabs it by the neck. He causes it to choke on its own

venom, then Kayla tasers it in the back of the head. He drops it down and yells at it, sending it and the others running back into the woods. Claire is ecstatic to be reunited with Owen, having thought he and Kayla died when the plane went down. But when they hear a much bigger dinosaur roar in the distance, they decide they'd better take cover in the outpost. Back at the facility, Dodgson begins destroying all evidence tying his company to the locusts, and that includes the creatures themselves. He has them burned as they

continue swarming in their greenhouse, and takes the elevator back up to the main levels. After he does, the burning locusts burst up through the greenhouse's ceiling and make their way up and out of the building, flying above the valley. At the outpost, Kayla tells Owen and Claire that the structure's door is locked, when they see the flaming locusts flying above some nearby trees. To that, Kayla comments, "That... can't be right." 

The locusts' burning bodies begin dropping down to the valley as they die, starting patches of fire and panicking the dinosaurs caught up in it. Ellie, Malcolm, Grant, and Maisie see this as they're driving back, when one of the locusts lands on the vehicle's wire-mesh roof. It sends burning embers down into it, while more locusts literally drop dead around the vehicle as they continue on. Malcolm swerves to avoid them, when one lands right on the hood, causing him to skid and stop right on the edge of a drop down into a ravine. The four of them sit there, as

the vehicle begins teetering on the edge, and upon Maisie's suggestion, they shift their weight to the opposite side. This seems to work, but just as Malcolm declares that they're fine, the jeep tumbles over and they go rolling down into the ravine. They land upside down at the bottom, and as everybody hangs there, Maisie looks and sees three figures slowly walking towards them. When her blurred vision clears, she sees it's Owen, Claire, and Kayla. Excitedly exclaiming that it's her parents, she yells for them, which brings Owen and Claire running. They

reach the vehicle after she's climbed out of one of the shattered windows and the small family is reunited in the headlight beams. Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm disembark from the jeep as well, as Maisie explains that they helped her escape. Just as everybody is getting their bearings, and Kayla tells them that they're going to have to break a window to get into the outpost, everyone tenses up, realizing that something big is approaching. Sure enough, the Giganotosaurus emerges from the woods, snapping 

his jaws at the burning locusts drifting down around him, and manages to get one of them. Spotting the humans, he lets out a roar and they all duck behind the overturned jeep. They sneak around to the opposite side and look through the windows, getting a look at the Giganotosaurus' snarling jaws. They have to keep moving as he walks around the vehicle, when he comes around the corner, spots them, and snarls. While everyone else runs, Malcolm quickly crawls through one of the jeep's windows and takes cover inside it. The Giganotosaurus walks past the vehicle, turning it with the side of his huge feet, and stalks them over to the outpost.

Kayla climbs up the exterior ladder and to the platform, with Maisie right behind her. The Giganotosaurus comes rushing in and, just as she reaches a part of the ladder that has a protective cage around it, he clamps his jaws around her and bites into it. Hanging there, Maisie is too frightened to move, despite Kayla telling her to come on. But when the Gigantosaurus manages to rip the cage completely free from around her, that gets her to climb up there and join Kayla. The others quickly join them on the platform, but the Gigantosaurus, flinging away the

cage, stomps towards the outpost and corners them against the wall. He moves his enormous jaws towards them, as they brace for him to devour them, when down below, Malcolm impales a burning locust with a stick and swings the makeshift torch through the air. This gets the Gigantosaurus' attention and he approaches Malcolm, bending down towards him and threatening to gobble him up. He then tosses the torch like a javelin, sticking the burning part right in the dinosaur's mouth. He swings his head back and forth,

roaring in pain, and expelling flame and burning embers, as Malcolm runs for the ladder. Kayla, Claire, and Maisie attempt to pry open the door leading to the outpost's observation deck, while Malcolm loses his footing while climbing the ladder. Grant grabs his hand and pulls him up, as the girls pry the door open. Everyone rushes inside, when the Gigantosaurus comes in and grabs the walkway, ripping a section of it loose from the building. Owen and Ellie, who were straggling behind, fall onto the walkway and grab 

onto it, nearly tumbling down into the dinosaur's mouth. He wrenches it back and forth, trying to make them fall towards him, but at the last minute, they jump as he rips that section completely loose and land on the observation deck. Crouching in the doorway, Owen says, "See? Not so bad," when the Giganotosaurus smashes his head through the wall and window behind him, sending him tumbling forward. They rush to get out of his reach, when Claire's foot gets snagged in a cable he grabs in his 

mouth. He tries to pull her away, and Owen runs after her and manages to yank her away when the Giganotosaurus chomps at her, before trying to pull the cable off her foot. Kayla grabs a large rifle from a set of weapons on the wall and fires a dart, hitting the Giganotosaurus right in the snout. This makes him recoil long enough for Owen to cut the cable, and he tries to hold his big snout back, when Maisie passes Claire the taser. She grabs it, while Owen stabs the dinosaur all over his head. His skin proves to be too thick for it, but then, Claire tasers him right in the eye and this finally gets him to pull his head out and retreat, roaring in pain.

The valley is now up in flames, and at the facility, Dodgson reluctantly authorizes that they declare an evacuation, while the dinosaurs' neural implants are used to guide them to the facility for emergency containment. Back at the outpost, Kayla tells the others that there's a helicopter housed at the main complex and that they can escape, if they turn the ADS back on. Thus, they decide to use the hyperloop tunnels to make it back to the facility. Once they reach the now abandoned control room, they see that much of the valley is in flames. As they try to figure

out how to reactivate the ADS, Ramsay joins them and tells them that all of the available power has been seized by the primary system so it can keep running and they need to shut it off. Claire and Ellie head up to the next floor to do so, while Maisie is able to pinpoint where she escaped and thus, Owen figures that Beta may be down in the water treatment center. He and Maisie, along with Grant, head down there to find her, while Owen and Ellie each toss Malcolm and

Ramsay a walkie-talkie so they can keep in touch with both groups. Kayla, meanwhile, goes to get the chopper, and elsewhere, Dodgson boards the hyperloop, taking a case of dinosaur embryos with him.

Claire and Ellie head up to the next level, only to find that the corridor to the primary system's controls is filled with burnt, sizzling locusts lying on the floor; at the same time, Owen, Maisie, and Grant head down into the water treatment center. The women carefully make their way through the corridor, while over the walkie-talkie, Malcolm is wondering why they're taking so long to get to the controls. Once they get there, and deal with Malcolm's unhelpful directions, those down in the water treatment center find signs that Beta is there. They turn off their lights so as not

to spook her, while Claire and Ellie finally realize which button they need to push. This effectively shuts the entire system down, including the hyperloop, which leaves Dodgson sitting in the dark. The trio down in the water treatment center come across Beta, who moves so quickly that she manages to dodge a tranquilizer dart that Owen fires at her. When she comes back at them, Maisie jumps in, holding her hand out, and tells Beta, "Hey! Eyes on me!" Beta scuttles in place, as Owen instructs Maisie and Grant

to get her to where he can get a clear shot at her neck. The three of them put some space between each other, and Beta tries to keep her eyes trained on all of them, before charging. Owen fires the tranquilizer dart, downing Beta instantly. Elsewhere, just as Claire and Ellie high-five each other, the primary system reboots itself. Not only do the lights in the room come back on, but the sound of an alarm stirs up the locusts. They swarm the women, with Claire pulling out the taser and zapping them in midair. She hands the taser

to Ellie, then wades through the bugs and grabs a small axe from a box next to the door. She heads back down the corridor, swiping at the locusts in midair, then takes it to the system's power source. After she hits it three times and shorts it out, Ellie takes the axe and gives it one more for good measure. This compromises the primary system and the energy is sent back to the ADS. 

Dodgson abandons the hyperloop pod and makes his way down the dark tunnel, which continually expels gas in his face. As he grows more and more frustrated, the thick gas causes him to miss a certain dinosaur standing in front of him until he's almost on top of it. The Dilophosaurus opens its frill and snarls, sending him running back down the tunnel. A sudden blast in his face causes him to tumble, dropping the Barbasol can, which he had on his person. He quickly crawls back inside the hyperloop pod, where the emergency lights are flashing on and off, periodically

filling its interior with a deep blue light. He backs up against the pod's rear wall, when another Dilophosaurus smashes through the window there, scaring Dodgson. He then turns to see that two others are standing in front of him, and just as he asks, "What's your story?", one of them gets him in the face with its venom. All of them proceed to deploy their frills, hiss at him, and pelt him with their venom. He tries to make a run for it, but the venom's paralysis sets in and he collapses to the floor. The last thing he sees is one of the Dilophosaurs standing over him,

snarling. Meanwhile, Owen, who's carrying the unconscious Beta in his backpack, Maisie, and Grant reunite with the others in the control room, while Kayla finds the aircraft she was looking for in a hangar. Dr. Wu also joins them and Maisie convinces the others to let him come along. Kayla takes to the air, shining the aircraft's spotlight into the control room. She tells them to meet her at the center of the complex, but Ramsay warns her not to land there, as the dinosaurs aren't in the valley anymore. Sure

enough, the courtyard is filled with them, but she tells him that she doesn't have a choice. Everyone then runs outside and see this for themselves. After a Brachiosaurus moves out of the way, Kayla comes in for a landing in the courtyard's center. But just as they're about to run towards the chopper, they hear a familiar roar, and look to see the T-Rex approaching, walking around the water hoop to recreate the series' symbol, and then stomping towards them. When it seems as though she's going to attack, the 

Giganotosaurus appears behind the humans, heading towards her as well. As the two dinosaurs have a standoff, circling and roaring at each other, with the humans caught in the middle, Grant says, "This isn't about us." They promptly scatter when the two of them finally come to blows.

They take cover behind the various courtyard decorations, as it becomes clear that the T-Rex, despite all her shoving and snapping, is at a disadvantage. She manages to get some good licks in, biting the Giganotosaurus on the snout hard enough to make him yelp, but he lunges at her and bites her around the hip, before shoving her down. She gets back up and comes at him again, only to get slammed down through some concrete barriers that the humans running past, causing Wu to fall over himself. The rest of the group he was with get him up, and they 

run for the chopper and climb aboard. The others, namely Owen, Claire, Maisie, and Ramsay, however, are still caught up in the battle. With his jaws around the T-Rex's neck, the Giganotosaurus slams her into one of the courtyard's structures and she falls back with it, leaning it towards part of the wall encircling the area. The group get stuck there, as the Giganotosaurus puts his foot on the T-Rex and prepares to go in for the kill, while also threatening to crush the humans caught literally underfoot. Ellie runs to try to help but the Giganotosaurus turns and 

roars at her and the others, making the situation seem hopeless. That's when Kayla fires a flare out of the cockpit's right window, distracting the Giganotosaurus, and also drawing in the Therizinosaurus. The two of them promptly target each other, and when the Gigantosaurus heads towards his new opponent, the other group takes the chance to flee to the chopper. They all climb aboard and Kayla lifts the chopper up into the air, while the Giganotosaurus bites at his opponent, and the 

Therizinosaurus retaliates by slashing at his face. The Giganotosaurus manages to catch one of his hands in his mouth, tearing off one of the claws. As the chopper hovers away, its spotlight shines on the T-Rex's face, awakening her. She rises up behind the Giganotosaurus and roars at him. The dinosaur finds himself surrounded and doesn't know which opponent to go after. He swings his head back and forth, snapping at both of them, when the Therizinosaurus comes in and slashes his right side. He screams in 

pain and turns away from the T-Rex, who takes her chance. She charges, grabs his neck with her jaws, and shoves him forward, impaling him on the Therizinosaurus' massive claws. The Giganotosaurus collapses to the ground, as the Therizinosaurus removes his claws and the T-Rex nudges his head to make sure he's dead. As rain pours down around them, and lightning flashes in the background, the two of them both let out a victorious roar, while the humans fly off to safety.

The next morning, at the nearby airfield, everyone in the group board a plane and, once they get back to the United States, go their separate ways. Grant and Ellie head to Washington D.C. to attend a U.S. Senate meeting, along with Malcolm and Ramsay, about Biosyn's corruption. Before he and Ellie head in to give their testimony, Grant notices a young girl feeding a Moros by a pond behind them and says that he's never going to get used to seeing that in everyday life. Wu lets loose the genetically modified locusts in a wheat-field so they will kill off those that have been

decimating the crops. Biosyn Valley is declared a "global sanctuary," and that's when we see the T-Rex meet up with the two Tyrannosaurs from Isla Sorna. Kayla buys a new cargo plane. Owen, Claire, and Maisie return home with Beta, and they let her out of the back of their car near the woods where she and Blue were living. She walks around, barking for her mother but initially, she gets no response. She turns back to look at the humans in confusion, when she then hears another bark. Blue shows up, initially approaching them in a cautious, defensive posture,

but when she sees Beta and they're reunited, she becomes a loving mother and nuzzles her child. The two of them then run off into the wilderness, while the others head back to their car. Just as Owen is about to climb in, Blue comes back and they exchange glances one last time. Blue seems to silently thank Owen for bringing her child back, and after she runs off again, Owen drives off with his own family. On a v-log, Charlotte Lockwood, as a child, says, "Life on Earth has existed for hundreds of millions of

years... and dinosaurs were only a part of that. And we're an even smaller part of that. They really put us in perspective." It then transitions to a log of her as an adult, as she says, "The idea that life on Earth existed 65 million years ago... it's humbling. We act like we're alone here, but we're not. We're part of a fragile system made up of all living things. If we're going to survive, we'll have to trust each other, depend on each other, coexist." As she does, the movie ends with a montage of someone watching a herd of Ankylosaurs

in a field; Owen, Claire, and Maisie having fun around their fire-pit; a herd of Parasaurolophus running across a field with wild horses; Pterosaurs taking flight with a flock of birds; the Apatosaurs grazing on some redwood trees; the Mosasaurus peacefully swimming among some humpback whales; and, in Africa, some Sinoceratops walking with elephants.

For the third and, possibly, final time in this series, Michael Giacchino provided the score and, while his music for Dominion is, overall, probably the weakest in this trilogy, it's certainly not without its highlights. Again, he makes sparse use of both John Williams' original themes and his own themes he established back in Jurassic World, with the main one from the latter playing in a somber, quiet version when Maisie helps the workers at the lumberyard deal with the Apatosaurs, and at the end, when Owen and Blue see each other for what will probably be the last time. Speaking of Owen, you hear a bit of his heroic leitmotif when he's herding the Parasaurolophus in his first scene. As for the original Jurassic Park themes, you first hear a very sad version of the main one when Maisie is looking through her grandfather's photo album and sees pictures of her mother at the original park. But it really sounds grand and wonderful when Dr. Grant is introduced, and it just makes you smile, as it feels like you're now truly watching a Jurassic Park movie. This theme is used in some other poignant or significant moments, like when the groups of characters come together, when everyone has managed to leave Biosyn Valley, and at the very end of the credits, which I'll elaborate on shortly. You also hear the original adventure theme in the moment where they manage to drive off the Giganotosaurus, and everyone is huddled together. Some of Giacchino's own original work here comes in the quieter, most personal moments, such as when Maisie sees the v-logs of her mother, and in the scene between her and Ellie on the hyperloop. Both are scored subtly but beautifully. However, he doesn't skimp on the excitement, and one of my absolute favorite tracks, in both this movie and the entire series, is "Da Plane and Da Cycle," (Giacchino, for some reason, likes to give his individual tracks really silly titles), which is this adrenaline-filled, pulse-pounding piece that plays during the latter part of the sequence with the Atrociraptors chasing Owen on the motorcycle. It just builds and builds, like the sequence itself, and gets more and more intense as he rushes to get aboard Kayla's plane and evade the raptors. It's a big reason why that section is so awesome, and also why nothing else afterward was able to measure up to it, both in terms of action and thrilling music.

Finally, I really love the last three tracks. "All The Jurassic World's A Rage" is the track that closes out the movie itself, starting out as a poignant, violin version of the Jurassic World theme, then becomes more and more grand during the closing montage, before climaxing with a big, thunderous symphony, as you see dinosaurs and modern day animals living together. "Larry, Curly, and MOE" plays over the start of the credits, and sounds very wondrous and epic, evoking the past work of not only John Williams but also the late James Horner, and incorporates the Jurassic World theme into it in a very lovely manner. And finally, there's  "Suite, Suite Dino Revenge," a nine-minute piece which plays over the last part of the ending credits. It starts off kind of ominous and even Gothic, but as it goes on, it transitions into an adventurous, driving sort of middle section, and then goes into a very lovely, final bit of grandeur, before closing out on a gentle, emotional manner, played on both violin and piano. You hear the Jurassic World theme on violin, it reaches an emotional climax, and then, the very last thing you hear is the Jurassic Park theme played on a quiet guitar. I can still remember when I heard that in the theater and it brought a real feeling of finality to it, that this is the last time we would ever see these characters, as well as this world. And while I do still wish we'd gotten a movie that used the characters and the world more effectively, that last bit makes me fine with considering the notion that this is the end, despite the release of Jurassic World: Rebirth and whatever follows it.

In yet another franchise first, Dominion is the first Jurassic Park movie to have an alternate cut on home media. The "Extended Version," released on Blu-Ray and 4K, along with the theatrical, is about fourteen minutes longer, and both Colin Trevorrow and Bryce Dallas Howard consider it the true version. The most notable difference is the opening, which has an extended prologue that begins in the prehistoric past. It starts out quite peacefully and leisurely-paced, as we see various dinosaurs going about their day (the location here is the island of Socotra, off the coast of Yemen), including one that doesn't appear in the theatrical version: a feathered Oviraptor, which raids a nest inside a cave. A Moros is also seen picking at the open mouth of a sleeping Giganotosaurus, but then beats it when he wakes up. This leads into the prologue's centerpiece, where the Giganotosaurus faces off with a T-Rex (and a feathered one at that). However, like the T-Rex that took on the Spinosaurus, he doesn't last long and gets killed very easily. As soon as he's dead, a mosquito feeds on his blood, and the film then

cuts to a modern day shot, with a caption that reads, "65 MILLION YEARS LATER." We're now seeing a helicopter searching a forest with its spotlight, tracking the Jurassic Park T-Rex. She wanders into the parking lot of a drive-in movie, sending most of the people there into a panic, although some are too busy either snacking or making out to notice her. There are plenty of shots of her backlit by the projector, as well as one of her roaring in front of the screen as the film dissolves (this shot was used in the 

advertising, despite the scene being cut). The helicopter tracking her arrives and a sniper attempts to shoot her with a large tranquilizer dart, but misses. She escapes the parking lot and runs back into the wilderness, with the helicopter continuing the pursuit, which leads into that shot of the logo before the movie truly begins (the logo also appears on the globe for the Universal Picture icon at the very start of this version). After it was shown as an "extended preview" before IMAX screenings of F9, the ninth Fast and Furious movie, in 2021, they decided 

to cut the prologue from the theatrical version. It was instead shown online that November, meant to act like Battle at Big Rock and drum up anticipation for the movie, as it ended with the caption, "TO BE CONTINUED... IN THEATERS THIS SUMMER." According to Trevorrow, the purpose of the scene itself was to establish the ancient rivalry between the T-Rex and Giganotosaurus, suggesting that these were the ancestors of the modern day clones. And in the final battle, before the T-Rex gets back up, you see a flashback to the past, basically confirming that this is something of a rematch.

The rest of the opening plays out more or less the same, although the scene in the Bering Sea takes place after the news report and leads into the beginning of the true story. After that, the additional scenes are material that, for the most part, you can understand why they were removed, as they're quite superfluous. Following the roundup, there's a scene where Owen and the DFW agents come across Rainn Delacourt and his posse, who themselves came to be from the service. They try to take the Parasaurolophus

that they're leading, but when the men with Owen call their ruse, the poachers pull guns on them. Amid the tense standoff, Owen decides to avoid a firefight by letting them have the dinosaur, saying he has personal reasons for doing so, i.e. Claire and Maisie. When the latter goes into town afterward, you see that Blue is following and watching her from nearby, and you also see her go into a store, where she tells the nosy owner that she's "home-schooled." When Beta attacks the wolf in the snow, two hunters attempt to shoot her.

But not only do they miss, they also alert Blue to their presence and she comes charging at them. One of the hunters runs for it, while the other tries to shoot Blue, as she runs at him in slow-motion, but he misses each shot. She jumps right at him and it cuts to Owen and Claire at the cabin, as they hear the shots and Blue barking. In Ellie's introductory scene following the first time we see the locusts, we see the woman who owns the farm take her inside the house, where the captured locust is contained inside a cage. Ellie takes

a DNA sample and then says she has to take the locust itself with her, saying she needs a second opinion. In the next scene, Grant's introduction, there's something of a payoff to what you see in the theatrical version, which is the pair of bored-looking teenage girls fiddling on their smartphones. They laugh and one of them shows Grant a photo of the recently captured T-Rex on her phone, saying she doesn't understand the need for digging up bones when dinosaurs like the T-Rex have been around 

since the 90's. Grant, naturally, doesn't look too happy about this attitude. In his and Ellie's first scene together afterward, when he's talking about how he's been keeping up with her writing, he adds that he really liked an article she wrote about growing algae. This causes her to digress and talk about the benefits of it, and he admits that he likes listening to her talk.

Leonard the Lystrosaurus has a bit more of a presence in the extended version. Here, a man who offers Kayla some money for delivering some cargo instead offers to pay for Leonard, who's sitting next to her in a cage. We then see his plans for him, as he's placed in one of the fight pits and faces an Oviraptor. The latter acts all vicious and tough, while Leonard just sits there, coming off as completely innocuous... and then, when the Oviraptor charges at him, he grabs him

by the throat, pins him down, and easily bites his head off! The Oviraptor's headless body then bounces around and staggers away. Late in the movie, when Dodgson stops the hyperloop and Grant, Ellie, and Maisie have to navigate through the mines, Maisie has to be goaded out of the pod because she's afraid of the dark tunnels. Grant tells her that it's best to keep moving and that Ellie is a good person to have at your side in such a place, which is what convinces 

Maisie. And finally, when Dodgson is deleting the files concerning the locust experiment, he gets a message saying that, in order to do so, he must go to the main server. In a cut, he's in the server room, looking for the right hard-drive, when Ramsay shows up. He first asks Dodgson if he sent a rescue team after Grant and Ellie, but then sees what he's doing. Dodgson says he's trying to protect everything he's built and collected over the years, but Ramsay tries to make him understand the impact of what he's done 

with the locusts. Dodgson is more concerned with changing their DNA to solve the problem, and is utterly dismissive of what Ramsay says. Ramsay then asks him to take responsibility and share his research with the entire world. Dodgson coldly tells him, "You know, I was 28 once. I get it. You look around. You realize you're surrounded by injustice and cruelty and you wanna change it. Yep... And then, you grow up, somebody puts you in charge, and you see that there is no changing it. It's chomp or be chomped." Having

found the hard drive while he was talking, Ramsay asks him what he plans to do with it and Dodgson answers, "Oh. We don't apologize for our mistakes. We erase them." He leaves, and you see how utterly stunned Ramsay is by Dodgson's utter lack of conscience. Of all the additional scenes, this is one that I think could've been left in the theatrical version, as it adds a bit more meat to Ramsay's decision to betray his mentor, and it's also one of the few times where Dodgson comes off as a real villain rather than a spoiled, childish geek.

There are some other additions here and there, like an extra moment between Owen and Maisie around the fire pit, brief bits during the Malta sequence, and such, but those are the most significant extra scenes in the extended version. Overall, it's fine, I guess, and does tend to get better reviews than the theatrical one, but even the much touted prologue doesn't amount to much in the long run, except give a bit more context to the T-Rex and Giganotosaurus' rivalry, which was perfectly fine being two apex predators simply not liking each other. The scene with Owen and the poachers does add some context into how he says he's encountered Rainn Delacourt before, but it's also really not necessary. And since we're talking about a movie that was already longer than necessary now being extended to 161 minutes, I don't see much value in this cut unless you were a big fan of it in the theater... which many weren't.

So, yeah, I think it's safe to say that, as a "grand finale," Jurassic World: Dominion was not the movie people were hoping for. Like the previous movie, it has a good number of problems, such as a convoluted story two plot-lines that take forever to merge, some characters and arcs that don't work, writing that contradicts what's been established before, a very choppy pace, callbacks to previous movies that are starting to become tiresome, a final dinosaur battle that isn't that great, and a running time that's far too long. Its biggest failing, though, is that it doesn't satisfactorily deliver on its two main promises: the new characters joining forces with the legacy characters, and the story focusing on the state of the world now that it's overrun with dinosaurs. Unless you wanted an espionage thriller that's mainly focused around human cloning and the creation of giant locusts, and happens to be set in a world where dinosaurs are commonplace, chances are you're not going to like this. However, as disappointing and frustrating as Dominion can be, I do think it still has a lot going for it. It's very well-made, especially considering the challenges that the pandemic posed for it, and all the money is right up there on the screen; the protagonists, both the old and the news, are still well-acted and play off each other nicely when they finally do come together; it has more diverse locations than any of its predecessors; there are quite a few really good setpieces, especially in the Malta section; there are more dinosaurs here than in any previous movie, and there's a greater mix of CGI and practical effects than in the last two combined; and the music score manages to be thrilling, beautiful, and reflective. Yes, it could have, and should have, been so much more than what it is, and it's a shame that it was an opportunity we probably won't get again. But, like all of these movies, I can still find a lot to like about it, and if you give it another chance, you just might as well.