Jurassic World Dominion

 


Messing around with the natural order of things causes, uh… chaos… again in the first sequel in a long time to bring back Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil to join Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt—uniting the first films and the more modern ones. The move from Dinosaurs as an attraction to Dinosaurs as a fact of everyone’s life is not—let’s be clear—the same as a global pandemic caused by poor food hygiene standards at a meat market in China. And a plague of locusts isn’t just the stuff of Biblical epics. Somehow between two ideas the film-makers have come up with an enhanced riff on the notion that if you mess around with nature it will come back and bite you. But if you’re in charge of a big biotech company you probably think you’ll get through it but you will end up in deep spit.


The evil business continues from the previous film. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) is the white-haired BioSyn CEO who says how great his company is for people, but there’s a scandal of course and Dr Ellie Sattler (Dern) is investigating the collapse of agriculture which will cause a worldwide famine. She finds her old colleague Alan Grant (Neill) on a dig and they set off to try and uncover what’s going on. Meanwhile Owen Grady (Pratt) and Claire Dearing (the excellent Bryce Dallas Howard) are living more or less in hiding with Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) who, remember, is a genetically created woman—the work of the original Jurassic Park supremo. BioSyn have got Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) in to provide the veneer of integrity, and if that is what it takes to get Jeff Goldblum back in a JP movie then so be it.


Again, this is a story about how we relate to animals as a human civilisation: obviously if there really could be dinosaurs living among us there would be those who say that they didn’t ask to be brought back, and are entitled to be treated with respect. This is not new: Chris Pratt’s character always was a dinosaur ‘whisperer’ of sorts—who has named his Velociraptors—and Maisie has learned to work with them, The two groups of characters are not together for the start of the movie and the events that get them together take a bit of time, some of that time spent with some chaotic chase action which is a bit relentless and distracts from the character moments which are where the film is at its best, So it is a tad unnecessary but does include a a one-shot homage to a classic movie scene which is wonderful if you like that sort of thing.


Many of the same things that happened in the first movie are riffed on here. There’s a command complex which has to be brought back on line as dinosaurs attack so that everyone can escape. Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) is on hand as the pilot for all situations, and she’s a fun addition. And there’s an abandoned mine where other characters escape from place when it all starts to get nasty. So it has that adventure move/computer game feel.


The delight of the film is Sam Neil and Laura Dern. Dern is especially lovely; Sam Neil’s character seems little changed. Jeff Goldblum is wonderful and he could just be himself in any film of this sort and it’d make it more of a fun experience. Maybe this movie isn’t as groundbreaking as its predecessors but a lot of palaeontologists are happy with the dinosaurs and apart from being a bit too long it’s plenty of fun.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Much Ado About Nothing, Theatre Royal Drury Lane. 1/3/2025

Image
Shakespeare’s most popular comedy is the perfect romantic comedy: it’s got the two lovers who can’t function together because they’re both in love; and it’s got the ridiculous pairing between Hero and Count Claudio, and the drama when Hero is accused of secretly “speaking” to another man on the eve of her wedding. It’s a lot of fun and the tragedy of Hero’s false allegation can be seen as what pulls Beatrice and Benedick together. Directors of the play have to come up with joyful conceits to make everything work. And the very stylish young Jamie Lloyd has decided that a 90s club musical is the way to go. As usual the stage is completely bare and there’s confetti and pulsing lights to go with the classic tracks—which are neatly placed between scenes for all of the first half. Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell are both fantastic in a performance which uses all the Shakespearean wit plus nods to the pair’s Marvel roles and Hiddleston’s reputation is being very popular with the ladies. The...
Read more

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of The Worlds

Image
No-one would have believed, back in the early 80s when I first heard the album, that I’d be sat forty or more years later watching the hugely popular Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of The Worlds : the album is a classic piece of 1970s ensemble musical performers plus the gravitas of Richard Burton’s unmistakable voice. That the album is a classic meant little to me back then: that its running time was a bit more than you could fit on a 90 minute cassette was the big problem. So you listened on vinyl or you missed the rather important end… They’ve re-worked the piece, with some inserted commentary from HG Welles at the beginning of the 20th Century, then after the two world wars. It’s part of the show’s message about the arrogance of post-Victorian Empire being brought low by an overwhelmingly violent takeover from the alien red planet. We know that it’s not red weed that gives that world its colour, but almost everything else about the message of this piece rings very differently ...
Read more

Starlight Express

Image
  In the 80s Starlight Express was the brash follow-up to Cats —the show that seemed unlikely to succeed but became a phenomenon with an eventual 25 years run. Starlight is about trains as characters: the engines who compete in a race—the stuff of a boy’s dream—with locomotives attached. Each character has their own personality, and there’s trash-talk and rap as well as a sweet love story and the mystical notion underpinning growing self-belief. This new production in Wembley is the third version in the UK: The Apollo Victoria theatre was the home to the groundbreaking premiere, but it was also leg-breaking and the production was scaled down in the early 90s, with some new songs. And amazingly it ran to 2004. Now, with the Wembley production there are more new songs and some gender-changes. Poppa is Momma, Greaseball and the gang are ladies, and there’s a Nitrogen powered locomotive. Most importantly the auditorium has been built around the production, so it’s no longer crammed int...
Read more