David Sweeney

Jurassic Park is my favourite film of all time. Jurassic World was a near enough carbon copy; almost a reboot in all but name but really well done. Fallen Kingdom was really flawed but just about serviceable; Dominion on the other hand is just flat out bad. The opening 20-30 minutes ranging from Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) playing cowboys, coralling Dinos while a rival posse glared them down to a truly cringe-worthy moment where bewildered plant-workers don't know how to deal with a wandering dinosaur until a teenage girl turns up. The fundamental problem is that you cannot as a concept, sequel a park breakout. The original 3 touched on it with the Rex roaming San Diego, but that's doable in isolation. Theres restraint which makes the world believable. Jurassic Park was written and developed with a faux scientific element. "This is how we bring dinosaurs back to life" and the concept was executed perfectly. Any Hollywood sequel has the tendency to expand and grow exponentially. But looking back now, time has been kind to The Lost World. It grew the world but within a more controlled way that maintained plausability. Jurassic World was very clever in this aspect, being self aware of the first film, referencing it both within the film and to drive the narrative forward. In a similar vein to the Planet of The Apes series, as soon as you go from something new within our world, An ape in captivity becomes dangerously intelligent. Or in Jurassic Park/Worlds remit, bringing extinct animals to life in captivity, and then break that out into a global, world changing concept, you can go one of two ways. Maintain some plausability: have subtler references or nods in the film that suggest the wide ranging affect allowing more focus on narrative and character arc progression i.e. create subtext OR throw as much blasè on the nose action in, one after the other, giving minimal time for each character to shoe horn and rush story leading to poor dialogue and detracting, almost parodying cinema. Unfortunately Dominion falls into the latter