I mean, I went into the last (read 6th) Jurassic adjacent movie with very low expectations, and somehow, somehow they managed to limbo in under an already extremely low bar. What is this film even about? (SPOILERS!) Is Jurassic World Dominion a dinosaur film? A human cloning story, an immaculate conception story, a tech bro take down, a farm & ecology allegory, a corporate greed story, an action movie, a horror film? What the hell is this mess. My god. Who looked at this script and thought “yep – sounds legit. Green light!” What did that person do next? Smoke a bowl of crack and light a dump trucks worth of cash on fire? This film is a raggedy, shambling, collection of ‘what if‘ statements that sometimes features even more new dinosaurs. The premise was originally that they could create dinosaurs from the very rare blood samples pulled from bugs trapped in amber for 65 million years. Yet every single movie has an even longer roster of dinosaurs. And no mention of how such a thing was possible. Also, why is there a heist element to this movie? Nothing makes sense. It is rather terrible.
On the other hand Top Gun Maverick was really well done. It paid homage to the original, and it has a driving through line that pulls the story and characters along together. Stop and nod at some nostalgia, but introduce new elements that “belong”, and keep the movie moving. Yes, the guest pilot recruits are mostly two dimensional caricatures that are given a fifteen second intro, and that’s as deep as it goes. That could have been done better, but it didn’t hamper the film in any meaningful way. My 2 cents would be to limit the extraneous recruits, and spent just a few more moments fleshing them out. Or show us, don’t tell us, what it is that makes them all different and unique.
Now the interior cockpit shots of the movie are great, that was a selling point I’m sure, if you were lucky enough to see this movie in an AVX, or IMAX style theater. I envy you. Also the Ice Man call backs were touching, and meaningful. Top Gun, unlike Dominion didn’t throw a bunch of mismatched shit at the wall to see what might stick, and what might play with the crowd. Poorly done that Jurassic World Dominion.
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