I watched Jurassic World Dominion today , and seriously, to be honest, I don't even know why I have not sat down to fully watch this movie before now, like, I have caught many clips here and there over the years, but now actually watching it properly from start to finish? First time, and I genuinely regret waiting this long to do so.
So here, the story kicks off with Owen and Claire living quietly off the grid in a remote cabin in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, secretly raising a teenage girl named Maisie Lockwood, who turns out to be a human clone tied to some deeply sensitive genetic history, because of what she represents, they are hiding her from the world, keeping her far away from anyone who might want to exploit her DNA for their own profit, but living that isolated life clearly isn't easy for a teenager at all, and Maisie starts getting restless, frustrated with never being allowed to just exist like a normal kid.
Meanwhile, in the woods near their cabin, Blue, the velociraptor Owen personally trained, shows up one day with a hatchling of her own, born asexually, which is already wild science on its own , Maisie names the baby raptor Beta, and the two bond almost instantly, but because Maisie cannot sit still with all that isolation anymore, she sneaks off from the cabin, and that's exactly the opening a group of mercenaries needed, working for a shady bio tech company called Biosyn, led by CEO Lewis Dodgson, poachers track her down and kidnap her, snatching Beta right along with her, not out of sentiment, but because both of them are seen as valuable genetic assets worth exploiting.
Once Owen and Claire realize their daughter and Beta are gone, the entire rescue mission kicks into gear, and honestly, this becomes the real engine of the movie, their search leads them to Malta, into this underground dinosaur black market where creatures are trafficked and sold like commodities, that whole section plays out almost like a spy thriller, tense chases through crowded streets, danger everywhere, made even messier once predator dinosaurs get loose in the middle of it all, Owen eventually then confronts the lead poacher directly, and in this oddly poetic twist, the same guy causing all this trouble ends up getting cornered and killed by the very creatures he was trying to profit off of, but not before revealing where Maisie and Beta were actually taken.
While all that rescue drama is happening, there is a whole separate crisis unfolding back home, giant genetically modified locusts wiping out crops across America, and Ellie Sattler starts suspecting Biosyn is behind it too, that is what eventually pulls Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm into the same orbit as Owen and Claire, everybody's separate investigations slowly converging on one corrupt company.
What I loved is that the movie doesn't just rely on dinosaur chases for two hours, even though there's plenty of that and it's thrilling every time, there is real weight underneath it all, genetic engineering, corporate greed, the consequences of messing with nature without understanding what you are unleashing, and watching two generations of characters, old and new, finally share the screen properly felt like such a full circle moment, even coming into it a bit late myself.
And by the time everything builds toward its climax, you can feel the weight of an entire era of storytelling trying to close itself out right, honoring where it all started while still pushing somewhere new, ambitious, definitely juggling a lot, but for someone watching it fully for the first time, it delivered exactly the chaos I was hoping for.
Rating: 85/100
