Film Review - Jurassic World: Dominion (12A)

 Jurassic World? Not a fan. (Dr Ian Malcolm)

He said it, not me! Let me make this clear - while no JP sequel film has come within an argentinosaurus' length (longest ever dinosaur - google it) of the glorious original, there's never been one I disliked. Until now. True, Jurassic Park III fizzled into meh, and Jurassic World was fundamentally a bigger budget why-bother retread of Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic, but they still carried some proper entertainment value. Despite its many detractors I even enjoyed 2018's Fallen Kingdom - click on the link to see how much! Then along lumbered Jurassic Park: Dominion, a movie so tedious that it calls into doubt the wisdom of having revisited the franchise at all. How bad is it? Think of that enormous hill of fly-infested dinosaur dung in Jurassic Park, double it in size, and we've got ourselves a metaphor.

Too harsh, maybe, but we're still in 'two hours plus of my life that I'll never get back' territory. So, what makes this a test case in how (and possibly why) not to do a sequel? Let's start with the story... 

Fallen Kingdom ended with the intriguing prospect of dinosaurs having escaped into the world to wreak the kind of havoc about which Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm character had always warned. And then... it's all kind of normalised. By the start of Dominion, so a news montage informs us, dino activity is out there and already absorbed by society. So instead, the plot becomes one of black marketeers kidnapping raptor babies and cloned adopted children, and trans-global pursuit, and nefarious goings-on at dubious scientific research institutes. So while there are lots of dinosaurs around snapping at our leads, they're kind of sidelined plotwise in their own movie. Rather than roaming free - because that would, when you really think about it, be a tricky story to tell in any focused way - they end up rampaging around a human-built facility just like in Jurassic Park. It's a wee bit like there was no overall game-plan for the trilogy, and everyone was kind of winging it along with the pterodactyls, reliant on a locked-in fanbase. (Call it Star Wars Sequels Syndrome.)

All of this could have been salvaged with other merits, of which there are precious few. Three films into this franchise renewal and it hasn't made me care about the characters an iota. Sure, Chris Pratt is charismatic, but charisma dies in a vacuum, and here he's left gasping, his Owen Grady having been given nothing beyond a now stale raptor-wrangling schtick. Yet he gets off lightly compared to Bryce Dallas Howard's corporate-suit-turned-dinosaur-rights-activist Claire Dearing, whose behaviour in Dominion is every bit as daft as her three-movie character arc. What's the dumbest option in this scenario? Okay, let's go for THAT one. Then the story brings in the Jurassic Park old-guard. It's momentarily nice to see Laura Dern and Sam Neill reprise their roles, but so much more painful to realise how the screenplay is giving them bugger all to work with. The only person who squeezes any entertainment value from their role is Jeff Goldblum, because - well - his charisma has its own life-support, apparently. Much like life, JG will always find a way.

And what of the actual dinosaur action? Doesn't it carry the day? Two things here... Firstly, considering how wowed we all were by walking, stampeding, snacking brachiosauruses and T-rexes in 1993, it's surprising they don't seem to look much more convincing in 2022, thereby recapturing some of the original wonder. And secondly, it turns out that once dinosaurs trying to eat humans has lost its novelty, you need a thing called character development to provide dramatic tension. That and a bit of patience in the build-up. Dominion doesn't even have the latter, fudging the kinds of suspense sequence that Spielberg took in his stride, and that J. A. Bayona likewise managed to inject into Fallen Kingdom. Result - the music by always-impressive Michael Giacchino sounds like it's scoring a whole other film, i.e. an exciting one. Oh, and the action sequences look sloppy and unconvincing too. At its best this movie is a half-hearted Jurassic Park tribute act. 

Let's be fair - I watched this film off the back of Top Gun: Maverick, the ultimate nostalgia-flick-done-right and a tour de force of practical filmmaking, so anything less than totally immersive was going to be a comedown. And in the first full summer of theatrical releases since Covid shut down the world's cinemas I'm not going to begrudge any movie decent box office returns. (At time of writing Dominion has racked up $650 million globally and continues to climb, which while not the brontosaurus-sized profits of the other franchise entries, is still good news for your local multiplex and mine.) But considering how 2022 has proved that retreads of existing properties - Top Gun, The Batman - can still be fresh and innovative, it's just ironic that of them all, Jurassic World: Dominion feels most like a dinosaur. 

I didn't need it to be great. I just wanted it to be better.

Gut Reaction: Unmoved. Bored. Hoping that the franchise is now extinct.

Memorable Moment: The trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder was fun...

Ed's Verdict: 3/10. It takes one unwieldy, charmless rehash to make you love a cherished original just a little bit less, but that's what Dominion did for me. I take back the 'too harsh'. This really is - to quote Goldblum from Jurassic Park - 'one big pile of shit'.

Film Review - Top Gun: Maverick (12A)

 It's not the plane. It's the pilot.

Top Gun (1986) is just one of those films, right? If you saw it back then, it reminds you of a bygone era and a whole other time in your life. Or maybe you were introduced to it twenty years on by a parent who's a fan, and the two of you bonded over roaring jets and romance. Even if like me you saw it once on release and never since, you remember Maverick and Goose and Iceman, and Kenny Loggins' venture to the Danger Zone, and Berlin taking your breath away... along with 'you can be my wingman' and 'take me to bed or lose me forever' and 'the need for speed'. But the sad truth is this: when you watch it again today, the film playing out on the screen simply isn't as good as the one in your head. It's a series of iconic moments, for sure, many well directed by the late Tony Scott, but they punctuate a ropey screenplay the deficiencies of which are smothered by Harold Faltermeyer's incessant score. Sorry - but a perfect film it was not.

Here's the good news...

Top Gun: Maverick is as good as the Top Gun you remember, and way better than the one you actually saw. 

Fans have waited thirty-six years, two of them due entirely to Covid, for this sequel, but uncannily, neither Tom Cruise nor Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell seem to have aged half that much. 'Mav' has matured for sure over the intervening decades, but he's progressed here no further than a Captain's rank due to that signature streak of rebellion. Ironically, it's his refusal to be boxed in by conventional thinking that gets him called back into the Top Gun program. His job is to train the most able strike pilots in the US Navy for an 'other level' mission - the kind from which there's no chance of returning without 'other level' flying. That already demanding task is complicated by the presence on the squad of a pilot who makes him confront the most painful memory of his past. (Yes, you know the one I'm talking about.)

The success of Top Gun: Maverick (and five days into its cinema run it's already a certified smash) is due to its ticking of the two boxes necessary: (1) provide nostalgia, (2) be more than halfway good. The nostalgia is there in abundance, at the movie is very good indeed. Director Joseph Kosinski, Cruise and team have pulled off the demanding trick of embedding what worked in the original in a better, more satisfying framework. So you get all that reminds you of '86, be it rock-and-roll piano classics, ripped torsos, or ill-advised helmet-free motorbike riding while wearing Aviator sunglasses. You get attractive, charismatic people falling in love to a San Diego sunset (it's Jennifer Connelly this time, not Kelly McGillis - seems Charlie and Maverick were just a summer fling after all, which is sad). You even get the ambient magic-hour skies of Scott's cinematography; the film's opening shots may have you wondering if it's a visually upgraded version of its predecessor. Yes - you get all of that, but significantly more.

There are two main ways in which Maverick betters classic Top Gun. The first is its storytelling. The screenplay this time has a honed and streamlined three-act structure with nothing tagged on or glossed over. Once we're reacquainted with our main hero, the new hotshots are introduced, sufficiently sketched, and set into sky-high motion. Both mission objectives and character dynamics are established with ease, while the connections with the past are woven in neatly, adding poignancy and fun while never overwhelming the new stuff. Stakes are high for these pilots - more so than last time - and we're not allowed to forget that for a second. As for the story's emotional content, it's got more depth than you'd reasonably expect, along with tear-brushing moments that are properly earned. The Connelly character has links to the Maverick of 1986, helping flesh him out, while the relationship between Mav and Miles Teller's 'Rooster' provides the film a strong dramatic core - one that will resonate particularly with long-time fans.

The film's second and huge advantage is one for which the first cannot be blamed - advances in technology that make the flight sequences fully astonishing. Everything going on in the air has been shot in the air - within the cockpit and without. Forget greenscreen, you feel these characters' responses to the G-force, along with their sweat and panic and exhilaration. If you seat yourself in an IMAX theatre to watch it (and I strongly suggest you do), you'll feel as well hear the engines running through you, with cinematography that's never less than awe-inspiring. It's all visually coherent as well; whatever speeds these pilots achieve, however much is going on, you're never in doubt as to whose plane is doing what, and precisely why. (That's due to sharp screen-writing in the exposition scenes, it should be noted, as well as head-spinning  camerawork.) And you're never once in doubt regarding the consequences if the pilots stuff it up, due to that Mission: Impossible in-production solidity that Cruise helped bring to the project. For anyone who's reached CGI saturation point, here's a perfect summer movie antidote. 

Ultimately this is a film that combines the old with the new to great effect, something exemplified most perfectly, perhaps, in how composer Hans Zimmer blends the best elements of Faltermeyer's original score with his stirring but more sparingly used new one. You'll feel the warm glow of familiarity while experiencing something vital and new. That's true of the entire film, including its willingness to sprinkle 1980s cheese onto its crucial character moments. It's appropriate - Top Gun's charms were always cheesy. But to make something both knowingly old-school and ground-breakingly fresh, that takes some doing. Top Gun: Maverick pulls it off with the roaring success of an F-35 fighter jet. Set your course for the danger zone now. This aerial highway won't disappoint.

Gut Reaction: Enthralled, and I clung to stuff a lot. And there was me, not even considering myself a fan!

Memorable Moment: Ice melts your heart.

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. This score might even rise on a subsequent viewing. As popcorn movies go, this is unsurpassed by anything we've seen in years. If Spider-Man: No Way Home had the 18-35 crowd returning to cinemas post-pandemic, this is bringing back their older relatives. And the reward for young and old is a cinematic treat.