Jurassic World Dominion picks off four years after the destruction of Jurassic World — the new world order is yet to be understood, dinosaurs live in the wild amongst humans and other animals. Humankind is at a precarious junction: no one knows how to coexist with dinosaurs, especially the dangerous carnivorous ones. In the midst of this chaos is BioSyn, a biotech company that volunteers to take one for the team by funding, monitoring and relocating the dinosaurs to a safe newly created sanctuary in Italy. Our main guy, Owen (Chris Pratt), now lives the cowboy life with Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) who breaks into official facilities to free or treat protected dinosaurs. They act as (illegal) foster parents to Maisie Lockwood, the first human clone. The plot revolves around Maisie getting kidnapped by dinosaur poachers who hand her over to BioSyn in order to claim the bounty on her. A couple of fight scenes and meetings with supporting characters from previous movies later, they arrive at the new Dinosaur sanctuary and the BioSyn facility. The story kicks off from here and what ensues is a lot of characters interacting with a lot of other characters, sometimes in the midst of chaos and sometimes so uninterestingly that you wish for chaos.
The movie marks the return of the big three from the Jurassic Park movies — Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). It was absolutely thrilling to see them reprise their roles as world-renowned scientists and to see their dynamics unfold once again: Alan still doesn't quite like Ian, Ian never misses a chance to hit on Ellie and Ellie can't help but be enamoured by Alan. Apart from seeing them in action after so long, the movie doesn't do justice to their characters. Alan and Ellie don't get much of a storyline and the only reason they also end up at BioSyn is because they need evidence of scientific malpractice against the company. Nothing really goes forward from there and they start looking a little out of place, as if they're in a gigantic dinosaur-themed escape room. Ian, still true to his nature, is a bigshot chaotician at BioSyn who helps Alan, Ellie and a captured Maisie, who stumbled upon them by mistake, escape.
Meanwhile, Claire and Owen reach BioSyn after surviving a plane crash, an underground dinosaur black market and multiple assassination attempts. Accompanying them is the badass pilot Kayla (DeWanda Wise) who feels guilty for assisting Maisie's kidnapping. The trio have too many encounters with dinosaurs — together and separately — and it ends up feeling like a weird animalistic version of WWE, with almost every protagonist having to fight off animals every few minutes. The action sequences are well-choreographed but start feeling repetitive. There isn't enough of Chris Pratt on-screen. Due to the many popular characters accommodated into the plot, we don't get to see him as much as in the previous movies. I never realised how important he was to the movies, his action sequences and witty one-liners in the previous movies were what made them engaging, and that's what Dominion lacks — it isn't engaging enough. It tries to humanise scientists working towards unethical goals, mentions how desperate the world situation is (with developed countries sharing the big evil corporation BioSyn's profits) and its opening montage also sheds light on how dinosaur-related human deaths are skyrocketing. However, the movie never tackles these questions and we as the audience don't know what changes after approximately twelve protagonists help bring down BioSyn. Sure, a man-made locust plague is brought to an end, but what of everything apart from that?
The movie has some redeeming qualities such as Claire getting a ton of well-directed action scenes, maybe even more than Owen, some memorable dialogue exchanges and some witty jokes. One scene, in particular, stands out when Owen reveals that he made a promise to Blue to get her baby dinosaur back to her. Ian asks him in sheer disbelief, "You made a promise to a dinosaur?" The movie does a good job of retaining the characters' charms, all of them are iconic in their own way and well-liked by the audience, which is probably the only reason that justifies Dominion's decidedly long running time.
After a point of time, there are too many important people on-screen. The climax revolves around the big three, Owen, Claire, Maisie, Ramsey (a BioSyn whistleblower) and Henry (the scientist who has consistently screwed up every single time and is the reason the world is how it is) trying to get to a plane while avoiding a giant dinosaur fight. Marvel has set such a high standard for fan-favourite characters interacting on-screen for the first time with the Avengers franchise, that the interaction between the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World characters came across as calculatedly average. The jokes aren't as funny as they should be, the action scenes not as enthralling and the wins not as satisfying. As a devoted fan of the franchise, I am relieved that this was the last movie. From Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park in 1993 to this has been quite a journey. Jurassic World Dominion is far from the goodbye we deserved, but since it's the one we get, we can only be grateful for a great cast, an average script and a plot that gets overwhelmed by itself.