Jurassic World 3: Dominion (2022)
Movie Review
“A M.F.S.M. crapterpiece.”
Reviewed by Dr. DJ Hadoken 7 the Fake Paleontologist
I’ve finally gotten around to writing the master’s thesis that I mentioned in my “Let’s talk Spinosaurus” post. I was supposed to write this long before earning my degree as a fake paleontologist and sharing with the world my findings related to fossilized Spinosaurus jokes.
But the demand for Spinosaurus jokes was just too great. The academic officials understood that it was imperative that I publish the newly discovered Spinosaurus jokes as fast as humanly possible. So the academic officials awarded me a master’s degree and then upgraded it to a doctoral degree, with an I.O.U. stipulation that I would provide a master’s thesis at a later date.
So I was ready to write a mostly negative master’s thesis of this movie, but after watching the extended edition, my opinion about it improved. Still negative, but not mostly negative.
What movie am I talking about? I’m talking about “Jurassic World Dominion” a.k.a. “Chris Pratt and the Dinosaurs Part 3”.
Upfront, I want to get one topic out of the way, because it’s not related to what I will talk about in the actual master’s thesis of the movie. It’s about the Mandela Effect. If you’re not interested in that, then just skip this part and go to the actual master’s thesis, further below.
I watched this movie twice, the regular version and the extended edition. The second time, as I watched the extended edition, there were two scenes that I noticed that were not as I remembered them the first time I watched the movie (about a year or so earlier). In the moment, I thought maybe that they had been changed for the extended edition. But after searching online, it seems that they were always that way, even in the regular version.
I want to say “spoiler alert”, but there aren’t technically spoilers here. Because what I remember didn’t actually happen “in this reality”.
The first scene that I remember differently, is the one with Maisie Lockwood (played by Isabella Sermon), the workers, and the Apatosauri. In “my reality” there was no snow in that scene, and by extension, most of the scenes at the beginning involving the cabin in the woods and the nearby town.
In “this reality”, the scene feels strange because the second Apatosaurus is shown covered in snow as it emerges from behind the pile of logs. In “my reality”, I remember the Apatosaurus just emerging from behind the logs where it had been resting and wondering how it could have been by those logs so long without any of the workers noticing it. Now in “this reality”, since it’s covered in snow, maybe it would have been harder for the workers to notice it there, but it seems like the Apatosaurus would have been too cold and uncomfortable to rest behind the logs long enough to be covered by snow in the first place.
The second scene that I remember differently, is the very last scene with Soyona Santos (played by Dichen Lachman). In “my reality”, she was shot and killed by Barry Sembène (played by Omar Sy) when he notices that she was targeting Owen Grady (played by Chris Pratt) with the laser. I remember feeling disappointed when that happened because she turned out to be a pointless character, despite how much they had built her up by that point. And I also remember thinking that her demise had been overkill for being such a minor character. First Claire Dearing (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) beats her up and zaps her with the dino-prod. And then she is shot dead by Barry Sembène.
Come to think of it, I also remember Claire Dearing delivering a much more savage beatdown to Soyona Santos. And I remember wondering how Claire Dearing became so good at hand-to-hand combat. But in “this reality” Claire Dearing doesn’t beat her up so badly and Soyona Santos doesn’t get shot by Barry Sembène or die in the last scene that she appears. And now in “this reality” that last scene is strange because now Barry Sembène appears to be inept because he either doesn’t notice or allows Soyona Santos to get away with targeting Owen Grady with the laser.
And in “my reality” I remember noticing a plot hole in the movie later on when the Biosyn agent mentions that Soyona Santos informed them that Ellie Sattler (played by Laura Dern) and Alan Grant (played by Sam Neill) were on board the plane heading towards the Biosyn Sanctuary. I remember wondering how Soyona Santos could have done that, considering she had been killed by Barry Sembène.
I’ll admit that this may be a case of mistaken memory (since I only watched the movie twice, about one year apart) and not a Mandela Effect, but those two scenes, in particular, stood out to me. Not only do I remember them a certain way, I remember the thoughts I associated with those two scenes the first time I watched the movie. So I thought it would be worth mentioning here.
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This is a M.F.S.M. movie, which is a genre I’ve made up to help me process the irritating experiences of modern-day entertainment. M.F.S.M. stands for “Made For Social Media”. If an otherwise “inferior” movie or some other “inferior” product is M.F.S.M., just watching it or consuming the product alone is not enough to “truly enjoy” it. The consumer has to be attuned to what’s going on across social media regarding that movie or the product in order to “get the full experience”.
So when judged as a traditional movie, “Jurassic World Dominion” a.k.a. “Chris Pratt and the Dinosaurs Part 3”, is mostly “inferior” when compared to other “good” traditional movies. Instead of delivering an entertaining experience, it leaves the audience feeling mostly disappointed and dissatisfied. However, the extended edition fixes some of the problems, so it’s not the the worse movie out there, and definitely not a “bad” movie. Unfortunately, the extended edition doesn’t fix a critical problem that is persistent across the three “Jurassic World” movies, which is that Chris Pratt appears to be more important than the dinosaurs (and all the other actors for that matter, including the ones from the original trilogy).
Now, when judged as a movie in the M.F.S.M. genre, I dare say that “Jurassic World Dominion” a.k.a. “Chris Pratt and the Dinosaurs Part 3” is a crapterpiece and maybe one of the best M.F.S.M. movies ever released. I don’t know if it was intentional, but the people behind the production and promotion of this movie demonstrated an almost savant-level attention to detail; weaving in countless subtleties that could potentially trigger people to react or “engage” on social media.
I think it would take longer to describe the complex methodology utilized in the movie and related marketing behind these subtleties than it took to produce the actual movie. So, because it’s such a M.F.S.M. crapterpiece, I don’t have enough time to cover everything I’ve observed. But I will touch upon a few points in this master’s thesis.
The movie posters are full of reaction-triggering subtle issues. For the cover image of this post, I decided to spare you from the one with the actors gathered together on it. Actually, I was about to pick that one, but then realized I was being influenced by that M.F.S.M. aspect of the movie and decided to go with the one most reminiscent of the original “Jurassic Park” trilogy.
But even on the poster that I chose, there is the phrase, “The Epic Conclusion of the Jurassic Era” on it, which could be interpreted from many different perspectives. It’s the last in the trilogy. It’s an epic disaster. It’s so epic that it’s the end of the franchise. It’s so M.F.S.M. that it’s epic. It’s such an epic conclusion that they are working on a sequel. Etc, etc, etc.
The lack of punctuation in the title is awkward. It has no colon where it should be. According to IMDB, the original title was “Jurassic World: Dominion”. At some point, somebody decided to intentionally remove the colon. So is this movie about the domination of a Jurassic-era world? Are “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” and “Jurassic World Dominion” movies from two different franchises? In the future, can we expect to see a sequel titled something like “Jurassic World Dominion 2: Revenge”?
By the way, I’ve done everyone a favor in this master’s thesis by titling it, “Jurassic World 3: Dominion” to make it as easy as possible for people to know which specific movie I’m talking about here.
The regular version of the movie, from the very beginning, also has subtle issues. Why don’t the continents on the planet in the Universal logo combine to form a T-Rex symbol, like they did in the prologue? Where is the drive-in movie scene from the prologue? What’s with the terrible CGI quality in the newscast during the opening sequence of the movie, especially the part that shows Pachycephalosaurus (the one with the boney dome on its head) by a train?
That’s just within the first 10 minutes. There are many more subtle issues throughout the rest of the movie. There’s so many that it feels intentional, hence M.F.S.M. “Why this? Why not that? That’s wrong. I can’t believe it,” constantly running through the viewer’s mind as they watch the movie; itching to react on social media.
It’s only been about 4 years since the events of the previous movie, so how could the dinosaurs have spread, multiplied, and grown up so quickly in such a short time span? Where is Maisie Lockwood’s nanny, Iris Carroll (played by Geraldine Chaplin in the previous movie)? The kidnapper Carolyn O’Hara (played by Glynis Davies) looks like Iris Carroll. Owen Grady uses a seemingly magic hand gesture to control dinosaurs. The velociraptor Blue is unnecessarily human-like. The CEO of Biosyn, Dr. Lewis Dodgson (played by Campbell Scott), looks like Tim Cook. The ridiculous-looking feathered chickanosauri (all of them). Etc, etc, etc.
The extended edition proves that they had a decent movie on the table before release. But for some reason, they decided to badly chop it up for the regular version. That “some reason” being that it’s a M.F.S.M. movie. It came out in 2022, a time when most people were being forced to stay indoors. So it’s like they did everything they could to take advantage of that and keep people focused on this movie as much as possible on social media, during their time at home. They would ultimately release the “problem-fixing extended edition” as a final cash grab, accurately predicting that people would pay again and react mostly positively towards the extended edition.
In this master’s thesis, although I’ve praised the movie by referring to it as a M.F.S.M. crapterpiece, there is one thing that it’s utterly lacking: Spinosaurus jokes. There is not a single Spinosaurus joke in the regular version or in the extended edition. Unfortunately, the lack of Spinosaurus jokes suggests that even after six movies, the creators still don’t understand their audience. Even if they couldn’t fit a Spinosaurus into the movie, they could have at least included a Spinosaurus joke or two in there. But they didn’t. Why not?
Here is a joke I recently discovered, on a Spinosaurus fossil, that may be a clue to the answer.
Q. If
a Spinosaurus joke
was included in Jurassic World Dominion, what would it be?
A. So funny that the creators would forget to include it in both cuts of the
movie.
Hopefully, the next movie won’t turn out to be such a M.F.S.M. crapterpiece. Since it seems like Chris Pratt won’t be in it anymore, maybe there is some hope. But the title “Jurassic World Rebirth” is missing a colon (just like “Jurassic World Dominion”), which leads me to suspect that it will be M.F.S.M. and we will likely have to wait (and pay again) for the extended edition (if there ever is one) to have a coherent and less-triggering movie-watching experience.
The question now is, will there be Spinosaurus jokes?
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