Jurassic Finale

Jurassic World Dominion

Director: Colin Trevorrow 

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Isabella Sermon, BD Wong, Campbell Scott

Released: June 10, 2022

Disclaimer: I apologize if I've misspelled any dinosaur names in this review; why do they have to have the most difficult, hard to spell names? 

This  movie has a feeling of finality to it, but I have a feeling that this won't be the last Jurassic Park/World movie we'll see. 

Boy, there are sure a lot of characters in this movie. There's characters from the first two Jurassic World movies, characters from the original Jurassic Park, new characters that make their debut in this movie, and I'm not even counting the dinosaurs! And pretty much nobody dies except for the bad guys. It's almost like the dinosaurs know who not to attack and eat. 

This movie has its fun moments and cool new dinosaurs, but overall, it just felt a little disappointing. I think nothing will ever capture the magic that was the original 1993 Jurassic Park, but I will admit to having fun watching Jurassic World, too. Dominion takes place in real time, four years after the events of Fallen Kingdom, which I barely remembered anything that happened. Luckily I could read my review of it to refresh my memory. 

Basically, after the events of that movie, all the dinosaurs are pretty much roaming the Earth freely, living among all of us. Never have I been so glad that this movie is fiction! We get a fictional news show that starts the movie by telling the audience, "To combat the growing threat of illegal poachers, the U.S. Congress awarded sole collection rights to the global giant Biosyn Genetics." This will be our evil cooperation and the CEO is our "bad guy". The CEO just so happens to be Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), the character that was in the first movie. Honestly, I never would have even realized that if it wasn't pointed out to me on a couple movie review podcasts I listened to. He says they are dedicated to the idea that "dinosaurs can teach us more about ourselves" and hopes to study the dinosaurs' "ancient immune systems for unique pharmaceutical properties." He has created a sanctuary for the dinosaurs in the Dolomite Mountains, located in northeast Italy. The decision to put the dinosaurs in this location is baffling. Wouldn't it make more sense to put them on an island? Who's to say they're not just going to cross over into Switzerland or Austria or other European countries? Hell, I'm surprised a pterodactyl didn't fly all the way to Paris and knock over the Eiffel Tower with its massive wing span. Why not just relocate the five million people that reside in New Zealand to Australia (or wherever they want to go) and put the dinosaurs there? No chance of dinosaurs relocating to neighboring countries (well, the flying ones might be able to...). 

Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) are still a couple, living together in a shack in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains where they are the "parents" of Maisie (Isabella Sermon), the clone girl from the previous movie. I put parents in quotes cuz I'm quite sure they never legally adopted her. She's been living with them for the past four years and they're protecting her because they know there are bad people out there looking for her. This poor girl; having to go from that mansion to this little shack. I bet her room in the mansion was twice as big as the shack she's living in now! No wonder she's so resentful towards them. They have a very strict rule about her not crossing the bridge, but of course she does. 

Blue, the not-quite-domesitcated velociraptor has a baby. (And yes, it is actually quite cute seeing the two of them frolicking in the mountain wood together. We see Blue teaching her offspring how to hunt and you think Baby Blue is going to pounce on a rabbit, but then a wolf hunts down the rabbit and then Baby Blue ambushes the wolf, which is much bigger than her, mind you). I was super confused because Blue and Baby Blue (Maisie names the baby "Beta", but Baby Blue is so much better, plus it makes me think of Breaking Bad, heh) are literally living in Owen's back/front yard and he, Claire, and Maisie seemed to have no idea that she was even there. 

It's Maisie who comes across the baby raptor first when she's outside, eating a piece of toast. She holds out the piece of toast, thinking this meat-eating animal wants some carbs and the little raptor snatches it out of her hands. I was seriously worried Maisie was going to lose a hand there. Then Mama Blue shows up, and boy, she's not happy. Luckily Owen shows up (he always seems to show up at the right time; I'm guessing he was viewing this through the windows of his cabin) and puts his hand up to Blue and that seems to be some universal sign to dinosaurs so they don't eat you. Oh, if only Gennaro, Muldoon, Arnold, and Nedry had known about that in Jurassic Park! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know - Owen trained Blue and is able to "control" her, but he will do this same tactic with two other (much larger) carnivores he comes across and while they don't run off like Blue and her baby do, they do pause so he's able to escape before they have him as an afternoon snack. Owen tells Maisie to go inside because he wants to go searching for Blue's nest. I know he's the Raptor Whisperer, but is that really a good idea? 

Minions working for the movie's bad guy have tracked down Maisie and they kidnap both her and Baby Blue. Owen and Claire are able to get intel that they're being taken to Malta, and we'll come back to them later.

Meanwhile, in West Texas, a huge swarm of ginormous locusts (seriously, they're the size of my cat ::::shudder:::) take out a huge field. One is captured under a bucket and everybody's favorite paleobotonist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) is there to inspect it. She brings the caged locust to Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and I thought this was the first time we see them in a scene together since Jurassic Park, but they actually had a scene together in JP3. Now, I remember them both being in that movie, but I forgot they actually have a scene together. Also, I had thought both The Lost World and JP3 was erased from the Jurassic World storyline, but this storyline has me rethinking that. I'm not sure if I read somewhere that the second and third JP movies were erased from the canon or I just made that up myself. But here, in this movie, Ellie tells Alan she got divorced and mentions her kids are now in college. Of course, it's in JP3 where we find out she got married and had two kids. I kinda forgot that her and Dr. Grant were romantically involved in the first movie; they acted more like colleagues than a couple. 

Ellie tells him swarms of the locusts are "decimating crops" and they "started as a few hundred, but could be millions by the end of the summer." Um, from I saw on screen, it looks like they're already in the millions! At the rate the locusts are going, there will be no grain to feed chickens or cattle and "the entire food chain would collapse." None of the crops they're eating are Biosyn seed and Ellie is not shocked that they would "want to control the world's food supply." She wants to go to their facility and get DNA from one of their locust and needs Alan to come with her as a witness. She tells him she got an invite from their "in-house philosopher", Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and he told Ellie there are things there she'd want to see. 

Okay, now back to Owen and Claire. Maisie and Baby Blue have been kidnapped and Blue, who was knocked down an incline, is snarling at Owen who stands her down and tells her they're going to get her baby back, like the dinosaur can understand English. She snaps at him a few more times, then turns and runs back in the woods. 

Like I mentioned, Owen and Claire get intel from the dude who was in Fallen Kingdom that there's going to be a "cash for cargo" exchange in Malta the next day. Apparently there's a black market for dinosaurs in this tiny island country. Who knew. They have people who were recruited by the CIA after the park closed down and Barry (who was in Jurassic World) will be able to help them. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well enough, but honestly, it doesn't really matter. The scene in Malta is just a fun thrill ride, but doesn't really add anything to the plot, besides the fact they find out they're taking Maisie to the Biosyn lab near the Dolomites in Italy. Also, I'm guessing they chose this particular location to house the dinosaurs because they got filming rights in Malta and that was too cool of a place to pass up to film (and it IS cool), so they just made Italy as the permanent home for the dinosaurs. Still think New Zealand would have made much more sense! 

A cargo pilot, Kayla, who is paid to transport dinosaurs to Biosyn, sees Maisie who is transported over to some evil, sophisticated  European woman named Santos. Kayla just so happens to be in the bathroom of some seedy underground lair where dino fights and illegal sales of dinos occur as the same time as Claire who shows her a picture of Maisie and asks if she's seen her. Kayla just replies she can't get involved and walks away. 

Santos finds out that Maisie's "parents" are in town, so she unleashes these atrociraptors (pretty much the same thing as a velociraptor) who are trained to kill people when they see a laser point at them. Um, do raptors really need to be told who to kill? Owen and Claire are separately being chased by these raptors and this is when Owen finds himself between these two big dinosaurs (they were bigger than a raptor, but smaller than a T-rex) and is able to hold his hands up long enough to give them pause, so he can keep running without getting eaten. The fact that both Claire are Owen are outrunning these super fast dinosaurs is a bit absurd. But soon, Owen gets on a motorbike and Claire, after jumping out a window, lands in a truck that just so happens to be driven by Kayla, so she drives Claire to her cargo plane to take her to Biosyn (Claire found out that's where Maisie is being taken). 

Kayla is about to start the plane, but here comes Owen, on his motorbike, being chased by a raptor. He manages to steer into the back of the plane, with the raptor right on his tail. The bike slides back, knocking the raptor into the water below them. Claire manages to hang onto a strap and grabs Owen before he can also slide down to the open door.  

They are not given clearance to land because the bad guys know Maisie's "parents" are on board. Their ADS (aerial deterrent system) is shut off. Otherwise, when it's turned on, it keeps the airborne life away. Which is a good thing considering there are some giant-ass prehistoric birds flying around like the quetzalocatus. (I swear, where do they come up with these names? Why not just call it what it is - big ass flying dinosaur bird.) It's the same length as the plane which we see as it soars over them, then uses it beak to scrape the top of the plane and smash the front window and take out a couple engines. I did laugh when Kayla tells them what it is and adds, "Late Cretaceous, should have stayed there." 

Kayla only has one ejection seat and it's the one Claire is sitting in, seated behind the pilot's seat. (You would think the pilot seat would have the capacity to be ejected....duh.) Claire is given instructions by Owen to eject and to use the lever if the parachute doesn't come out automatically. He thinks Claire will have the best chance to find Maisie. Claire ejects her seat and a parachute comes out, but is immediately attacked by all the pterodactyls, so she pulls the lever for the extra parachute and lands in a tree. Owen and Kayla crash into a frozen lake. Gee, I wondered if they survived? Well, come back later and find out, but let's see what Alan and Ellie are up to. 

They're on a plane flying to the Biosyn lab with Ramsay Cole who is head of communications. We get some exposition as he tells them that Biosyn bought this land in the '90s for the amber deposits (we all know amber is important to the Jurassic storyline!) and have managed to turn it into a "safe haven for about twenty displaced species". They have the first generation dinos from Isla Sorna, but also have most of the ones from Isla Nublar. He also mentions it took them three years to capture the T-rex. Their laboratory is built completely underfund and if they need to herd the dinosaurs to a specific location, they can send "electric signals" with neuro-implants to their brains. Alan and Ellie think this is cruel, that it sounds like they are shocking them. Ramsay asks them, "Do you know how much voltage was in the electric fences at Jurassic Park?" and Grant looks at him like, Duh, yes, of course I do. Nice little callback to the original movie there (and we'll get a few more of those instances). 

I think this is the first movie since the original where we see Grant, Saddler, and Malcolm all together. While Alan and Ellie are ordering coffee, Ian takes Ellie aside and whispers to her that locusts are part of a project called Hexapod Allies and that she is correct about their intent. He tells her where they keep the giant bugs downstairs and hands her an electronic bracelet that will get them through the secured doors. 

Ramsay asks Alan and Ellie if they would like to tour the facilities by themselves, which seems odd that they would just let the two of them wander off on their own, but it will make sense a little later. He tells them he'll meet them at a certain location in 30 minutes and makes a big show of telling them which elevators NOT to use and if they do, where it will lead them. Why not just say, "Don't use those elevators, they go to a restricted area?" But again, we'll learn later why he's telling them all this. Oh, alright, I might as well just tell you now: Ramsay is on their side and wants them to steal the DNA of the locust so he's pretty much letting them do it and how to do it, but at this point Ellie and Alan (or the audience) don't know this yet. 

So while they're sneaking into the locust area, we see Maisie and a caged Baby Blue are in a room with Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). Henry tells her they needed Baby Blue to help them study her. I was so confused how Blue had a baby, but Henry explains it by saying when they created her, they gave her monitor lizard DNA and they can produce without a mate. Blue and Baby Blue are genetically identical, which is what they have in common with Maisie and Charlotte. If you remember, Charlotte was the daughter of Charles Lockwood, the guy who was Hammond's partner....they're pretty much characters they retconned into this franchise. Maisie is the clone of Charlotte, who died 13 years ago. They mention she had a genetic disease, which I assumed was why she died, but reading over my Fallen Kingdom review, I mentioned she died in a car crash. Oh, hell, I don't know. 

Maisie (and the audience) are given a bombshell when she (and we) learn that it was not her grandfather who created her, but rather Charlotte herself. In a video Maisie watches from 2007, she sees that Charlotte is pregnant with her. Okay, it seems very narcissitic to have a baby who is an exact replica of yourself (not to mention, super boring and very weird...who wants a carbon copy of themselves?) But Charlotte is touted as some super intelligent scientist who's the first person to ever do this (well, duh) and people act like she's the most brilliant being to walk this earth. I swear they said she died of the genetic disease she had, which is why she changed every cell in Maisie's body so she wouldn't have it. (God, that must have been a bitch to change every single cell in a human body!) 

Henry tells Maisie that he wants to study her and Baby Blue's DNA; that he could "fix a terrible mistake he's made" (meaning the locust). While Henry is chatting with Dodgson (who is not happy that Henry was showing Maisie videos of Charlotte), Maisie gets up and lets Baby Blue out of her cage. How was she able to do that? Because Henry just left his security bracelet lying on a table in plain sight. Great job, Henry. Unless he did that on purpose because he wanted her to release the baby dino! Dodgson sees them escaping and sounds the alarm. This causes the locusts to go crazy and fly all over the place just as Ellie has extracted the DNA. She and Alan are trying to get out, but their security bracelet has fallen. Maisie has sauntered over to the area where they're in and hears them screaming. They manage to get out and Maisie sees them and knows who they are and that they can be trusted because they do not work for Biosyn. While they're all trying to escape, Ramsay finds them. Remember, I already told you that he's on their side and wanted them to get the DNA sample. He's the one who told Ian about Hexagon Allies. He also tells them something we already know: that Biosyn's responsible for the locust epidemic. I thought for sure he was lying and was only trying to pretend he was on their side and we were going to find out he was with Dodgson all along, but nope, he's actually a good guy and does help them along the way. That's why I already told you he was on their side earlier. He tells them to get on a pod that will take them straight to an airfield where there will be a plane ready to fly. 

Okay, let's get back to our other characters and see what's going on with them. Are they all still alive? Of course they are! For now...(no, just kidding...they'll remain alive through the entire movie. None of our heroes will die in this movie). 

Claire is still strapped in her airplane chair, dangling in a high tree. A big-ass dinosaurs that looks like a bird  is right next to her. I had to look this up and it's a Therizinosaurus. It has these long talons and appear to be blind. Even though it's a herbivore (what? with those sharp talons?), even the herbivore dinosaurs are dangerous in this movie, so when Claire removes her seatbelt and falls to the ground, she crawls to the water and stays underwater for as long as she can so I guess the dino can't smell her? But if it's a herbivore, why would it want to eat her? I guess it would still want to kill her if it felt threatened in its territory. When she was underwater, I was hoping there weren't any other dinos or crocs living in that swamp! When she emerges from the water, she goes to a spot where she can see the smoke from the crashed plane. She doesn't know it yet, but Owen and Kayla have (somehow) survived. They hop out of a panel that's on top of the plane and start their trek across the frozen pond, being careful as the ice isn't exactly solid. They do start to run when they see some "weird chicken feather thing" (heh, that's what I wrote in my notes) coming after them. This is a pyroraptor. I know there's scientific proof that dinosaurs had feathers, but it just makes them look so silly! Why couldn't they have just explained they left the feather DNA out of the dinosaurs. So this guy comes after them and it jumps into the water, gliding under the ice and pops up in front of them where the ice has cracked. This is when Owen and Kayla start running. I'm super impressed she can run in her wedge boots on ice. Though I guess when a scary feathered dinosaur is chasing you... Owen falls into the water and the pyroraptor dives after him and this is a super fast swimming dinosaur, but yet Kayla manages to pull Owen out of the water in time. They are still laying on the ice when the dino pops out and he still can't get one of them when the humans are just laying there, vulnerable on the ice. Owen and Kayla get up on a bridge/platform and run towards a pulley/elevator system that they just manage to close as the pyroraptor is just about to get them. This is a clear call back to the first movie when Lex is in the kitchen cabinet and pulls the door shut on the veliceoprator. (And re-reading my Fallen Kingdom, Maisie gets away from the Indoraptor in a similar situation). 

In the elevator, Kayla mentions she has the tracker so they can find Claire and asks Owen, "You really love her, huh?" to which Owen replies, "Yeah." It gave me a chuckle when Kayla replies with, "I get it. I like redheads, too." This reminded me of when I first saw the previews for Jurassic World and just assumed the redhead was Jessica Chastain, not Bryce Dallas Howard. 

As they are in the forest (which looks more like a jungle), looking for the chair (do they really think Claire would still be in it?), we meet another new dinosaur. After they hide from a T-rex who comes across a dead deer, another big dino comes along. Owen thinks it's an Allosaurus, but Kayla tells him it's a Giganotasaurus, which, according to her, is the "largest known terrestrial carnivore." Thank God I'm not a paleontologist cuz I don't know how I would remember all these ridiculous names! (I also suspect I wouldn't enjoy the Jurassic movies if I were one!)

It seems like with each Jurassic movie, they need to have a dinosaur that's bigger and badder than the T-rex, who was pretty prominent in the first two movies, but then after that, it sort of fades into the background. We had the Spinosaurus in JP3, then the manmade Indominus Rex and Indoraptor in the first two Jurassic World movies, and now the Giganotasaurus, which, I have to say, doesn't really make that much of an impact in the movie, which is a bit disappointing. It doesn't even kill anyone, good or bad. The T-Rex and Giga fight, for like, ten seconds, before the T-Rex goes away. One of the humans comments, "You put two apex predators in one valley, pretty soon there's only gonna be one." Foreshadowing, perhaps? Yes, yes it is.  

When Dodgson discovers that Grant and Saddler have take the locust DNA, he stops the pod and they find themselves in the middle of the old amber mines where they discover that many medium size carnivores called Dimetrodons reside. They run to an exit, but it's caged off and they need a passcode to get out. At this point, Malcolm is there, on the other side of the cage and doesn't seem to be fazed or worried. You see, Ramsay had shown Malcolm (who was fired by Dodgson who suspected him of letting his friends steal locust DNA..not exactly sure what his "job" there was) how to get the cave to where his friends are. You would think Ramsay would know about the passcode and perhaps have told Malcolm what the code is, but no, he did not. WTF? So why is Malcolm so calm while cracking jokes and randomly putting in any four digit code? (He tries Miles Davis's birthday). I have no idea. I guess he knows he's in a movie where none of the good guys will die. He doesn't know the code and there's only so much time that his two friends and a fourteen-year-old girl can hold off the hungry prehistoric carnivores. Luckily, Ramsay is seeing this on the video screen and he is able to access the code from where he is so he types the right one in just as Malcolm types in a random one and Malcolm thinks he got it which is kinda funny. 

Now we've met a bunch of new dinosaurs that we haven't seen before, but now it's time to get reacquainted with an old friend. This is a dinosaur that we haven't seen (correct me if I'm wrong here) since the first movie. In my notes, I called it the "Newman dinosaur" because I couldn't remember its real name. This is the dinosaur that kills Newman (Nedry, if you never watched Seinfeld), you know the one that has the neck frill and shoots poison at him. It's called a dilophosorous (apparently its real-life counterpart did not have a neck frill, nor shoot poison) and while a hologram of one is seen in Jurassic World, I'm pretty sure we haven't seen one since the very first movie. Claire comes upon about three of them in a separate facility that's built in the trees and you need to take an elevator to get to. While she is waiting for the elevator, she hears a rustle and soon about three dilophosourouses (I know I totally butchered that spelling!) are surrounding her. One even comes inches from her face and shows its frill. She's literally seconds from having poison spat on her, but out of nowhere, we see a hand grab it around its neck and its Owen, come to the rescue, saving someone from being attacked by a dinosaur for the second time in the film. Kayla tasers it and it and its friends whimper away.   

Maisie and the adults are driving in a Jeep when they see that all the locust have escaped the facility and they have been lit on fire. They realize that Dodgson is burning the evidence. Yeah, he's not doing a very good job, because those massive things don't appear to disintegrate; they just fall to the ground with a thud. The locust starts falling on the Jeep, making them tumble down the hill and, of course, they land right in front of Owen, Claire, and Kayla, so Maisie is reunited with her "parents." But uh-oh, here comes the Giga. We do get a funny moment where both Grant and Owen say, "Don't move." (I thought that was only for the T-rex and I thought that theory got debunked!) Of course, they do move and they start climbing a ladder to the facility up high. There's a steel scaffold between the ladder and as Maisie is climbing the ladder, the Giga puts his jaws right over that scaffolding so she's literally between his jaws. She freezes at first, but Kayla, who is already at the top, encourages her that she can do it and while the Giga rips away the scaffolding, Maisie scurries up the rest of the way. 

So now everyone -except Malcolm- is in the treetop facility, but the Giga its still trying to get to them. I mean, he is tall enough to see them! So in a callback to the first movie, Malcolm uses a stick and one of the fiery (dead) locust as a torch to distract the dino. He throws the torch into the Giga's mouth, and after he's shot with a tranquilizer and tasered in the eye by the people in the treetop, he goes away. 

At this point, the alarms have been sounded and all the dinosaurs are en route to the emergency containment because they have been "signaled" to go there. 

Kayla tells the others there's a helicopter on the main complex. All they need to do is turn the ADS back and and they can fly home. They just need to go to the control room on the third floor, which they do, and Claire recognizes the system as the same one they used at the theme park. 

 

We get a small scene of Malcolm asking Owen about training raptors and he seems pretty skeptical about it, much like everybody else, I'm sure. 

As if we didn't already have enough characters with Owen, Claire, Grant, Ellie, Malcolm, Maisie, and Kayla, here comes Ramsay (and in a few more minutes, Henry will join them) who hears Claire say that she's getting something called "Error 99" and he tells her that means there's not enough power and they need to shut down the primary system, which Claire and Ellie go to do. While they're doing that, Kayla goes to get the helicopter and Maisie tells Owen she knows where Baby Blue is so they and Grant go get her. I'm not exactly sure how Maisie knew where Baby Blue was since the little dinosaur could be anywhere, but they find her and Owen shoots her with a tranq, then straps her to his back so it looks like he's wearing a dinosaur backpack. Before this all happens, the original JP characters (rightfully) are skeptical about this and Owen tells then he made a promise he would bring her home and Ian says the exact thing the audience is thinking, "You made a promise to a dinosaur?" I guess even the script knows this is ridiculous. 

In a predictable play, Dodgson is on a pod, getting ready to escape, when it stops after Claire and Ellie have turned off he power and he gets attacked and killed by a pack of dilophosorouses. 

All our heroes are about ready to get on the chopper ("Get on the chopper!"), but here comes Henry. Seriously, there are way too many characters in this movie! Grant sees him and says, "I remember you" and at first, I'm like, How does he remember this man he met once (I believe they only have one scene together) nearly thirty years ago? But then, the more I thought about it, it does make sense that Grant would remember details about that day. You don't forget a day like that! Henry tells them he can fix the "ecological disaster" he caused and if he can understand how Charlotte rewrote Maisie's DNA, he can spread change from one locust to the entire swarm before it's too late. Maisie agrees to this because it's what Charlotte would have wanted. And that's exactly what happens. 

But first, we need to have one last dino fight between the Giga and the T-Rex! We do get an amusing one-second moment where the T-Rex is clomping along and stops in front of a large circular window so we're getting the Jurassic Park logo for a couple of seconds. The dinos start fighting and it looks like the Giga has gotten the T-Rex as she is knocked down. Kayla shoots the flare to distract the Giga away, but it causes the attention of the Therizinosaurous (or, as I wrote, the "weird chicken dino"). Surprise! The T-rex isn't really dead (we know this because we get a close up of her dilated eye, another callback to the first movie) and she gets up, attacking the Giga and pushes it right into the sharp talons of the ugly chicken dino. 

When they get safely back, Alan and Ellie kiss and now they are officially together. They've been trying to make them a thing for the entire movie, but honestly, I don't really care. Like I said, I totally forget they were even a couple in the first movie. 

We find out that Wu has fixed the locust problem and that Biosyn Valley has been "designated a global sanctuary" where the dinosaurs will "live safe from outside world." I hope they have border patrol! 

We do get a cute moment when Owen lets Baby Blue out of her cage and moments later, Blue comes running up and they go scurrying off together, then Blue comes back and give a slight nod to Owen, as though she's thanking him for bringing back her baby and for keeping his promise. It's so ridiculous that it makes me laugh and cry at the same time, just like that scene in The Goonies when Chunk tells Sloth he's going to live with him now.  

While this movie had its fun and exciting moments, I was mostly disappointed with this final (for now)
movie in the Jurassic franchise. There are dinosaurs out in the world living with the rest of the world and while we get a very small portion of that, it's mostly about...locust? What the huh? And it seemed very convenient only bad guys were killed by the dinosaurs. I don't know what the total death count is, but it seems very small. 

My Pet Raptor

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Director: J.A. Bayonne
Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard Howard, James Cromwell, Rafe Spall, Toby Jones, BD Wong, Jeff Goldblum

Spoilers ahoy!

I know the new Jurassic World movies get a lot of flack, but I still enjoy them. I think they are much better than Jurassic Park's two awful sequels, but that isn't a very high bar to cross! Look, there are a lot of stupid things in this movie that don't make any sense at all, but we'll cover all of those. As you may remember, in the previous Jurassic World, which only took place three years prior, many people were killed after everything went to hell at the dino theme park. The park is gone, but the dinosaurs still roam the island where there's a volcano that's expected to erupt "at any moment." Hang on one second. Nobody checked with a geologist first to see if opening this park (that was only open three years before the volcano would erupt!) on this island would be a good idea? (Obviously, it was NOT a good idea with or without a volcano!) So even if dinosaurs hadn't gotten loose and killed a bunch of visitors, both people and animals would have died in the inevitable volcano eruption. That's really reassuring.

There's a global debate over what should be done about the dinosaurs. Do they deserve the same recognition as other endangered species? Should they be protected from the volcano or left to die on the island, as Ian Malcom (in a cameo reprised by Jeff Goldblum) suggests because they should have never been cloned in the first place. Of course Ian Malcolm is going to be against the rights of the dinosaurs. He's had two harrowing experiences with them. (Though I don't believe that The Lost World or JPIII are canon in this rebooted Jurassic universe, but correct me if I'm wrong).

Our two heroes from the previous movie, Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) go to the island to help an operation get the dinosaurs safely off of it. I understand why Owen is there because he has a relationship with Blue, one of the raptor he raised and trained in the previous movie. By the way, while I remember one raptor (there were four total) being killed in that movie, I don't remember two more also being killed, but apparently Blue is the only living raptor left. (Hmmm, I went back and read my review for that movie and I do mention only one raptor remains alive). It's a good thing Blue was the one who lived because she seems to have the best relationship with Owen. We see training videos of Owen working with the raptors when they were babies and Blue is the only one to show any sign of empathy. When Owen sees what would happen if he was vulnerable the other raptors try to attack him, but Blue tries to comfort him. And, yes, it is very cute. It doesn't make much sense for Claire to go, but ironically she is the one who has to persuade Owen to help her rescue the animals, namely Blue. When did Claire become such a bleeding heart for these animals? She never seemed to care much about them in the first movie; she only cared about the profit they brought in. But in this movie she is all about their rights and saving them. I will say she does seem more soft-hearted towards the herbivores, though!

Hey, that staff looks familiar!

She is recruited by Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), who is - get this - the partner of John Hammond. Uh...why were we never told this in Jurassic Park? Because they just made him up for this movie, that's why! He and his assistant, Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) have a plan to move as many species as they can to another island. However, while Lockwood's intentions are pure, Eli's are not and right when we met him I knew he was going to be a bad guy. In fact, a lot of the predictions I made about this movie came true, that's how transparent it was. He wants Claire and Owen to help him because Owen is the only one who can get Blue. Eli has plans to create a new dinosaur using Blue's DNA and the DNA from the Indominus Rex, which, you may remember, was the genetically created dinosaur from Jurassic World who was the one who started all the havoc and was eventually done in by the T-rex. The movie starts with two guys locating and collecting the remains of the I-Rex underwater. They and the little bubble contraption they're in are swallowed whole by the mosasaur, the huge aquatic dinosaur that makes a great white look like a guppy. When one of the men is trying to communicate with them, telling them he is going to shut the underwater gate, he (obviously) gets no reply. This guy has to be the stupidest person in this movie (although he has some contenders!) because when the other men on the truck are waving and screaming at him, he shouts, "What is going on? I can't hear you!" Uh...what do you THINK is going on? Let's see, you're on an abandoned island where dinosaurs are roaming freely and people are frantically shouting at you and telling you to get on the truck. Seriously, you would have to be a moron to not understand that there is probably a big dinosaur with big teeth somewhere in the area, and sure enough, the T-rex is right behind him. The other men make it to a helicopter and are able to fly away and they send down a rope to the man who manages to climb on it, just barely missing the chomping jaws of the T-rex. As they were flying over the water, I knew right away that the mosasaur was going to jump up and grab him, but I also thought he was also going to take the helicopter down with him, but it manages to fly away. I did re-watch the trailer and that scene is in it, so maybe subconsciously I must have remembered that, but I honestly didn't know it was in the trailer. There is another scene from the trailer that I remember vividly and I'll talk about that when I get there.

What is it with the new Jurassic movies creating new species of dinosaurs? Are the dinosaurs that actually

roamed the earth not scary enough? Do we need something more ferocious than the T-rex? It used to be that the velociraptor used to be the true villains of these movies, at least the first movie. I remember them in TLW, but don't think they were as prevalent and I'm sure they're in the third movie, but I don't remember anything about that movie (which is probably for the best!) But in these new movies, they have decided to make raptors friendly and cuddly pets. Okay, maybe not quite, but they have strangely become dinosaurs we're rooting for. They're still dangerous, but if you're Chris Pratt or a friend of Chris Pratt's, then they will not try to kill you. I guess this is why we need new dinosaurs to be the Big Bad.

This new dinosaur is to be called the Indoraptor and Mills has plans to create it to be trained and used as a weapon for military combat. This was brought up in Jurassic World by that movie's bad guy played by Vincent D'Onofrio and I was thinking to myself, Wait, where is he? before I realized, that duh, he was the bad guy in that movie, so of course he had a vicious death! Let it be known that if you are a bad guy in the Jurassic movies, you will get a horrible, gruesome death, although still not as  horrible and gruesome as the woman who worked for Claire and watched her nephews when they came to visit the park.

A paleo-vet working on her very first patient

Claire and Owen join a team led by a man named Wheatley (Ted Levine). He is a terrible character, pulling the teeth out of sedated dinosaurs to make a necklace and just treating the animals inhumanly all around, so you know he's going to get a horrible death. (Spoiler alert: he does!) There are two new characters who are brought in to help Claire and Owen. They are really there to serve a purpose: when the movie needs them, they show up, when they aren't needed they conveniently find a way to get a rid of them (and no, I don't mean they get eaten by dinosaurs...since they are on the good guy's team, they don't die). They are tech nerd Franklin (Justice Smith) who is there to help them with anything computer related and Zia (Daniella Pineda) is a paleo-veterinarian  who has never seen a dinosaur in her life...huh? She is there to help Blue who gets shot by one of the men who is there to aid in the capture the animal.

The volcano erupts and our heroes manage to make it on a boat that has secured many, but not all of the dinosaurs. (I actually have no idea how many dinosaurs were on the boat and how many were left on the island to perish). There is a really sad scene of a brachiosaurus bellowing and crying as she is being swallowed up by smoke and fire. Wasn't that how Little Foot's mother died in The Land Before Time?  If a baby brachiosaurus had come up to her, I surely would have lost it! (Although, technically, Little Foot and his mother were apatosauruses, which are (I think?) the same thing as a brontosaurus? IDK. It's a good thing I'm not a paleontologist! We do see a mother and baby triceratops which share a very tender Dumbo-esque moment which is very cute.

The boat is sailing back to the California coast where Lockwood's massive mansion is located. This house makes the house in Home Alone look like a shack. It's a residence, museum, and laboratory all combined in one huge building. There's also an underground system of cages where they keep the dinosaurs in. They have come to the building to be auctioned off.

A man named Eversol (Toby Jones) is heading the auction and he has brought a bunch of his wealthy clients from all over the world to the mansion to bid on the dinos. What exactly do they plan to do with these dinosaurs? We do hear that one man wants to buy a baby triceratops for his kid. (And major points to that kid if he names his new pet Cera). What happens when that baby grows up? I suppose a lot of these people are going to exploit these animals and have people pay to see them. We know the theme park in Jurassic World was open for ten years, but I always imagined that not even one percent of the world's population ever got to see it because the tickets had to be astronomical, not to mention the flight to Costa Rica. So there's probably a huge mass of people who have never even seen a dinosaur (like the veterinarian who has specialized in dinosaurs!) I do wonder about the one man who wanted to buy TWO carnivores. There's something shady with him. Also, how do these people plan to take their new pets home? How does the man from Indonesia plan to take his ankylosaurus home? (The one he got for a great deal for only ten million dollars. Seriously, does that seem pretty cheap to you for paying for a dinosaur? I know the ankylosaurus might not be as well known as the T-rex or a stegosaurus, but it was still an extinct creature brought back to life! Even the 21 million that was paid for another dinosaur (was it the allosaurus?) still seems quite low.) I would love to know who would have bidded on the T-rex and what they planned to do with that monstrosity. However, before we get a chance for her to be put up on the bidding block, all hell breaks loose.

As a "special treat", they bring in a prototype of the Indoraptor to show prospective buyers. It is not for sale as it still needs to be tweaked by the geneticist, Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong). The Indoraptor looks similar to a raptor, but is bigger, as we will later see the two fighting each other. It is supposed to follow human command, which I find laughable because this thing does not look like it's very obedient! All the dinosaurs are brought out in cages and this one is snarling and snapping at the bars. Eversol demonstrates the effects of the new species by pointing a laser at some poor guy sitting in the front row (and he looks a little nervous!) The dinosaur locks on to him and when a trigger sound goes off, that is his signal to attack. I really thought he was somehow going to get out and kill the guy (not to mention everyone else in the vicinity), but that doesn't happen...yet. He does try his darnedest to get out! Even though this is only a prototype and not ready to be put on the market ( I don't think it will ever be ready!), it goes to an Eastern European guy for almost $30 million. I want to know what this guy plans to do with that creature!

This is around the time Owen makes a distraction by unleashing a

stygimoloch, a human-sized dinosaur that starts butting into people. Everyone runs out and the Indoraptor is left alone in its cage where Wheatley sees it and decides to sedate it and get one of its teeth for his necklace. In one of the stupidest scenes in the movie, as Wheatley is attempting to pull one of the teeth, we see the dinosaur open its eye, then close it again and almost smile in a cartoony way. It literally made me groan out loud. Why do we need that scene? Of course we know the dinosaur is still awake and is pretending to be out. Of course we know that this character, who has already been established to be a villain is going to get a horrible and gruesome death at the hands (or should I say teeth, haha) of this evil and terrible creature. We don't need the cute hints that this Big Bad is about to strike. It's so dumb. Well, of course Wheatley realizes the dinosaur is not out and gets his arm bitten off before being killed. The Indoraptor gets out of his cage where he kills and attacks Eversol in an elevator. There were about four other people in there as well and I assume they probably got it as well. I feel bad for them because they really didn't do anything wrong...

So now we have this creature (said to be the scariest in the Jurassic franchise...don't they say that with every new creature they create?) loose in the mansion. The only bad guy still alive is Eli and he has smothered Lockwood with a pillow. As with every movie that preceded this one, a child comes into play. This time, it's a young girl named Maisy who is the granddaughter to Lockwood. She spends most of the movie whispering, "Grandpa, Grandpa!" We assume she's the daughter of Lockwood's daughter who was killed in a car accident. But then we soon learn that she is not his granddaughter, but rather a CLONE of his daughter and Hammond cut his ties with him because he thought what he did was "unholy". Yeah, cloning humans...probably not a good idea. I mean, look how it worked out for Michael Keaton in Multiplicity.

Claire and Owen join up with the girl and they all get chased by the Indoraptor around the mansion. Supposedly this thing has a keen sense of smell, but somehow can’t sniff its prey out when they’re all literally right below its nose. I know she’s just a scared little kid, but Maisy does something really stupid that puts her as another contender for the stupidest person in the movie (though, she is a clone, so at least she has that excuse!): she runs away from Claire and Owen (who has a gun) and hides under the covers in her bed. Like that’s really going to help you. Also, her room is easily three times the size of my apartment. The shot of the claws reaching towards her in the bed is the one I remember from the trailer and I remember thinking, How is she going to get out of this one? I knew she was going to be okay because while the kids in Jurassic movies come very close to their demises, they never get killed off. At the very last second, Owen comes in with his gun and shoots the Indoraptor, but it doesn’t seem to affect it and when he runs out of bullets and is about to be cornered, who should come in and save him? Blue, his trusty pet velociraptor. I saw this coming a mile away. The two dinosaurs fight and the Indoraptor ends up falling into a glass ceiling and impaling itself on the horns of a triceratops model. 

Meanwhile, the other animals are dying from a poisonous gas that has been let lose and Claire wants to free them, but doesn't  know if she should, but Maisy steps in since they’re clones like her and they also are alive. Mmm, I don’t know if that was such a good idea, but I did feel bad for the dinos, so I may have done the same thing. We see them all running out of the building and of course Eli gets his comeuppance when he gets eaten by the T-rex. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the T-rex eat anyone: I don’t think she had any human snacks in Jurassic World. It looks like the next movie is going to be about all these dinosaurs running amok on the West Coast and I’m sure plenty havoc is to be had. It also looks like the T-rex made her way to a zoo because she is shown roaring at a lion who roars back at her. Please…that lion would be shaking in its fur! 

Throughout the film I noticed some callbacks to the first movie. When they return to the island and are looking at the brachiosaurus in awe (the first dinosaur that dinosaur vet Zia has ever seen) is very similar to when Alan and Ellie see the brachiosaurus (in fact, it might even be the same one). The scene where they’re running away from the erupting volcanos and all the other dinosaurs join them reminds me of the scene where Grant, Lex, and Tim are running away from the flock of Gallimimus. The scene in this movie is a little more alarming because not only are they trying to not get struck by hot spewing lava rocks, but every type of dinosaurs is running in their direction: not just ostrich-sized ones. It’s really a wonder nobody got trampled on. And the scene that gave m a real flashback to Jurassic Park was when Maisy, who is running away from the Indoraptor, gets into a dumbweighter and is desperately trying to shut the door and manages to pull it down a second before it reaches her. This obviously reminds me of the scene from the original movie when Lex gets into a pantry with the same kind of door and wants the raptor to come to her to get it away form Tim, but she can’t shut the door and it ends up attacking her reflection. 

I did learn some new things from this movie: I learned about dinosaurs I’ve never heard of before like the aforementioned ankylosaurus, and stygimoloch, the baryonyx, and the carnotaurus.

A 'Help'ing Hand

The Help
Director: Tate Taylor
Cast: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek
Released: August 10, 2011
Viewed in theaters: August 17, 2011

The Help is the name of the latest movie I saw in the theater starring Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer as Abilene and Minnie, two black maids working for white families in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. It's also the name of the novel by Katherine Stockett which it's adapted from. It's also the name of the book within the novel and the movie which aspiring writer Skeeter (Emma Stone) writes anonymously with the help of Abilene, Minnie, and other maids about what it's really like for these maids to work for white families.

Abilene works for Skeeter's friend, Elizabeth Leefolt. She cooks, cleans, and is basically the mother for the Leefolt's two year old daughter. Minnie used to work for the uppity Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her senile mother (Sissy Spacek), but was fired and now works for Celia Foote who lives way out of town and is shunned by Hilly and the rest of her friends because Celia married the man Hilly had deep feelings for. Skeeter gets a job writing a column for her town's newspaper where she has to answer questions about cleaning. She asks Abilene to help her with the articles until Skeeter decides she wants to write something of importance and after Hilly makes a big fuss about building separate bathrooms for the help, Skeeter sees her friend's true colors start to show and gets the idea for her book. At first Abilene is hesitant because if either of them get caught, it would be very serious, but decides it's important to get her story out there and agrees as long as Skeeter is very careful about the whole thing and doesn't use her real name. Minnie shares her stories too, but Skeeter is told that her book can only be published if she gets a dozen more maids to tell their stories. After the murder of Medgar Evers, more maids volunteer to speak to Skeeter about their experience as a maid.

The movie does a pretty good job of following the book, but there are some things that are left out. If you haven't read the book, the following might be slight spoilers:

The relationship between Minnie and Celia has been edited quite heavily in the film. While they do have THAT scene between them (if you've read the book, you know which one I'm talking about), it builds up in the book and you find out why Cecelia has been hiding in the bathroom and never leaves the house. In the movie, it's the first time Cecelia was crying in the bathroom and Minnie barges in on her. They also sort of skimmed over Cecelia being worried that her husband was going to find out about Minnie. She kept her a secret from him in the movie too, but didn't seem concerned if he found out about her.

They keep the relationship between Skeeter and Stuart, but it's very downplayed in the movie where he's a jerk to her, then apologizes and they date, then he breaks up with her when she tells him about the book she wrote. This is also the arc of their relationship in the book, but of course there are more scenes between them making their relationship more developed.

Skeeter's mother (Allison Janney) has cancer but while you learn of it the same time as Skeeter in the book, she already has it when we first meet her in the film.

See the movie, but also make sure you read the book. And have tissues handy for both!