OK, today I'm going to do something that I've done only in my review for Joker. I'm going to spoil the plot! But for opposite reasons! With Joker, I had to spoil part of the plot to comment on the mesmerizing facets embedded in the most precious jewel ever crafted within the DC cinematographic universe. In the review for Jurassic World - Dominion I'm going to spoil the plot because... Wait a minute... What plot? Does this movie even has a plot??? Sorry, my bad! There is nothing to spoil. The whole film is just a long sequence of random action scenes taking place in different parts of the world. Not even of the world. It's just Nevada, Northern Italy, and my beloved Malta, the only reason I went to watch this crap. After all, they shot right in front of my house! Oh yes! I even went to visit the set, where I'm proud to say I left a smelly present, as a tribute.
You know what had happened the night before? I went for dinner with my friends to a place in Valletta (yeah, right where the dinosaurs black market is) to try the new entry in their menu: pasta with fresh salmon and caviar, cooked in coconut oil! It tasted great, but coconut oil is always so heavy, and I'm afraid the salmon was not so fresh... Food intoxication! How did I wake up the next morning? Shit! I think I even had some hallucinations. I couldn't even stand up properly without vertigos. I didn't know what to do, so I tried to take a walk outside just to grab some fresh air. Breathing oxygen could help my brain clear from the toxins. Where could I walk? To the Jurassic set! Let's see what the guys are shooting today. There were no particular barriers, just some tapes to keep people at distance from the action area. However, the view was unimpeded, so it was possible to see everything and have a vague idea of what the scene could be about. This was great, but it turned out to be also embarrassing for me. I could see them, but they could see me too! Out of the blue, the food intoxication struck my intestines like an iron punch. Instant diarrhea! I was forced to unload on the spot! The rest is history... I'm sure the crew saw me, but they pretended I was just a dino called by nature... The set was nice though. Much simpler than you can expect.
Kudos to my friend Silva for this unforgettable picture!
No, there was no airplane. Kayla Watts' Star Wars like plane is all CGI. Probably the only good CGI in the entire film. The CGI for dinos is so bad that they look like made with stop motion! I'm not kidding!
I must be satisfied at least with seeing that Malta hosts the best scenes. They are very enjoyable action sequences through the narrow streets of Valletta. Genius the idea of setting the dinos black market in the underground of the capital. Indeed, Valletta hosts a complex of tunnels and big chambers that were once water wells and that for years hosted real black markets, where to trade drugs, prostitutes, and sadly, even dog fights. Now dogs are replaced with Allosaurus, which brought on screen one of my wildest dreams: seeing those annoying, reckless, and lawless e-scooters being eaten in one bite! OH YEAH! Definitely the best moment in the entire movie! Those 3 seconds are worth the ticket alone! In the end, I must say this movie has something good, something artistic, I'd even dare to say. The main villain actually closes a circle, if you can call Tim Cook aka Dodgson a villain. Dodgson is the very first bad guy to appear in the franchise, when he smuggles that special foam spray to Nerdy, so that he can get in possession of the precious dino-embryos stored in Jurassic Park. In order to insert a reference worth of the best Tarantino (sarcasm here), Colin Trevorrow writes for Dodgson the same fate that doomed his old buddy Nerdy... So poetic... And the same foam can is there too! Oh, such perfection! Other than that, Dodgson is not even a proper villain. He's just a clumsy modern CEO who doesn't even know what he's doing. He just walks around the laboratories eating peanuts (even in high security labs that should not be contaminated with anything!). What's Dodgson role? Nobody has a clue. His partner Cole neither, but he's more than happy to help Dr Grant and Dr Sattler with destroying Biosyn's business. Wow! So realistic and credible!
The truth is that human villains in Jurassic Park movies don't work. They work very well in the Crichton's books. There, John Hammond was a real, ruthless, and greedy businessman, not the kind-hearted grandpa we see on screen, and Dodgson was a real son of a bitch, always ready to mess up in the middle of the action on Isla Sorna. On screen, the only villain that works is the most ferocious dinosaur. Rexy, the velociraptors, even Spino, and partially Indominus Rex made great villains. In Dominion there would be the Giganotosaurus, but this new entry doesn't eat anyone, not even in the final attack when you think at least one of the old guard (maybe Malcom) has to end in a dino's mouth. Nope. Throughout the whole movie you feel like there's never anything at stake. No one risks anything, there's no plot twist, no traitor, and in the end, for the first time ever in the franchise, no main character is eaten! Where's the fun?
The poor Giganotosaurus (the biggest carnivore in Earth's history) is the first "villain" to close the game with 0 human meals (he just eats a deer) and has even to be humiliated by being killed at the claws of the other two apex predators, just to give the audience one final dino-fight. When the other two heavyweights (Rexy and Mr-Turkey-Krueger) kill Giganoto (in just 1 minute) you wonder why... Just because Rexy must always win? Jurassic World - Dominion lacks of any structure, any memorable character, any compelling story. It's a pity because the locust could make a great screenplay bringing up a very serious issue few talk about. Africa is currently facing locust invasions of biblical proportions and this is one of the several factors contributing to the current food shortage experienced world-wide. If only Michael Crichton was still alive, I'm sure he would take out a hell of a story, and if Steven Spielberg was still directing the franchise, he would visualize this story in the most spectacular way. Unfortunately, Crichton is dead, Emily Carmichael doesn't know what she's writing about and Colin Trevorrow confirms to be a horrible director. Thanks for the dino crap you gave us all of these years! I hope you had a great stay in Malta. What's my rate? I think 4/10 is already a generous rate. Just because I can't give less to my beloved dinosaurs...
I close this review with greetings from the set, where you can see a husky-raptor searching for her next victim... :D
https://youtube.com/shorts/a-wpBUZcufs
My very last hours in Malta... Miss this cutie so badly!