The end of a saga 65 million years in the making.

Jurassic World Dominion is the third installment in the Jurassic World trilogy and the sixth installment in the overall Jurassic Park franchise. Colin Trevorrow returns as director and writer along with Jurassic World/Jurassic Park alumini Christ Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, BD Wong, Isabella Sermon, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum.

Set four years after the events of Fallen Kingdom, humans are forced to share a world where dinosaurs roam once again. Owen Grady (reprised by Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (reprised by Bryce Dallas Howard) are now the adoptive parents of Maisie Lockwood (reprised by Isabella Sermon) and are trying their best to protect her from the world. Things change when they find that their old friend Blue the Velociraptor has an offspring of her own that is taken. Grady and Dearing do all they can to try and get the little dinosaur back.

Elsewhere, the survivors of the original Jurassic Park, paleontologist Doctor Alan Grant (reprised by Sam Neill); paleobotanist Doctor Ellie Sattler (reprised by Laura Dern); and mathematician Doctor Ian Malcolm (reprised by Jeff Goldblum); are brought to a facility owned by BioSyn, the rival company of Ingen. There they discover that they have been making new dinosaurs of their own such as the fierce Pyroraptor, the odd looking Therizinosaurus, and the extremely dangerous Giganotosaurus.

The Jurassic Park franchise has always been special to me. It's the whole reason I'm obsessed with dinosaurs. It's because of the first film it's why I wanted to be a paleontologist. And these Jurassic World movies have been a hit or miss with me. The first Jurassic World was a surprising fun thriller that took home over a billion dollars at the box office. And Fallen Kingdom was a piece of shit.

So the first positive I want to get out of the way is the cast. Having the original cast back is a sight to behold. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum were great. It was so fun seeing them together and interacting again. Plus, it was fun seeing the OG cast interact with the new cast. Everybody was great in this. Although if I had to pick which group is my favorite, I'm going with the OG group. Maybe that's a personal bias for the original film but, then again, why wouldn't I pick the original cast members, right?

And of course where would the franchise be without its groundbreaking effects. The special effects were top tier in this film. I haven't seen a splendid use of both visual and practical effects since the original film. Emphasis on the practical side. I feel that's something that the other two Jurassic World movies were missing out on.

As a dinosaur fanatic I did enjoy seeing the dinosaurs, especially the new ones. After six films we finally have feathered dinosaurs in a Jurassic movie. My favorites being the Pyroraptor and the Therizinosaurus. And let me just say that the Therizinosaurus is an absolute badass. While it only had a small amount of screen time and I'm in love with this dinosaur. I cannot wait to add it to my parks in Jurassic World Evolution 2.

But now is is the time to talk about all the bad. First up, the writing. This is the third film director Colin Trevorrow has also served as one of the lead writers for this new series of Jurassic Park movies. And this is also the third time he's proven that is not a good writer, and it shows with the main story. The main story is all over the place. First the got the stuff regarding Blue and Beta, the Velociraptors. Then there's Maisie, the human clone (and most unlikable character in the franchise). Then there's Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm fucking around at Biosyn. Then you got Dr. Henry Wu (reprised by B.D. Wong) and his conflicts with Biosyn CEO Lewis Dodgson (played by Campbell Scott). Yeah, that's right. Dodgson! Dodgson! We got Dodgson here! Eh, nobody cares.

Bottom line, the story is all over the place and it is such a mess to follow. Personally, I don't think Trevorrow understands balance, which might explain why the plot keeps jumping around. It's funny how people bitch about never getting a chance to see how his version of Star Wars Episode 9 would have turned out when they forget that he fucked up the Jurassic franchise with Fallen Kingdom.

More so, the other issue I have is when he tries to insert quirkiness into the story. That seems to be habit in each Jurassic World movie. Everyone has to make some sort of joke or somebody has to do something that seems out of the norm in an attempt to seem quirky. Trevorrow is trying to apply the same formula from Marvel into Jurassic Park, which is seriously unnecessary. I mean, it's fucking Jurassic Park. We want to see dinosaurs eat people for crying out loud not Owen Grady justify why he's carrying a baby Velociraptor on his back.

Overall, Jurassic World Dominion is a fine popcorn flick. I think this movie is better than Fallen Kingdom. It's certainly an improvement. However, it falls short from being good due to its poor writing. But I definitely had more fun watching this than Fallen Kingdom and I wouldn't mind seeing it again... when it hits Redbox.

There's been speculation that this will be the last Jurassic Park film in the franchise. It's certainly promoting itself as such. I don't believe that this is the last Jurassic Park movie, and honestly, I hope the franchise never ends. If the first Jurassic Park got me interested in dinosaurs and paleontology, then Jurassic World is probably doing that for this new generations of children. That's one of the spectacles of the franchise. If a kid somewhere wants to learn more about prehistoric life in the past and maybe make a career out of it that is awesome. So I say keep making movies. One day Universal Pictures might make their Fast & Furious/Jurassic Park crossover... in the next 65 million years or so.

Positives:

-The OG cast & New Gen cast

-Outstanding visuals & practical effects

-New (feathered) dinosaurs

-Fun action

Negatives:

-Attempt at quirkiness

-Colin Trevorrow's writing

-2 1/2 hours? Really?

Final Grade: C+

So those are my thoughts on Jurassic World Dominion. Have you seen it? What were your thoughts on it? What's your favorite moment from the Jurassic Park franchise? Please be kind, leave a like and comment, and check out more reviews here on Prose!

Best Quote:

Dr. Ian Malcolm: "Jurassic World? Not a fan."

#harrysituationreviews #film #opinion #dinosaurs #scifi #action #thriller #paleontology #JurassicJune

the Aloe plant had his own ideas how things should go down and he did not miss a chance to tell me. by that time the freight train was not only hurtling down the bridge, but it was actually showing signs that even at train wrecks, it was not the best approach. can't even get a derailment right, it taunted, hurtling down. i could listen to both succulant plant and the freefalling vehicle because my grip on time, allowed me to slow it down subhectively. if you saw it, you would see an immobile plant and a horrible accident, which shall have only one victim. but through the powers of concentration, i can talk to plant and vehicle as they groan and criticize.

that's the thing about inanimate ovjects. they have much to say, but only if you can slow space-time. and then they never shut up.

but i do deserve it. even though the diamond heist was dave's idea. i should've known better than to trust an empty amazon box for advice.

I’ve learned I can technically survive with only 65% of my blood. After about 40%, I’ll go into hypovolemic shock and all of the fluid I’ve lost will impede my heart's ability to pump blood throughout the rest of my body. I may have a limited knowledge regarding the human anatomy, sure, but that should’ve been more than enough information to kill myself.

It sure as hell felt like more than half as the cold that rushed over my body was indiscernible with the river's current. Red and gray shadows danced erratically under the steady current I was half submerged in. I wonder why I’ve chosen this place. Anywhere along Howard Road would have been fine, close enough my parents would know what happened and would not waste their precious time looking for me.

“What.. What was that Morgan? You’re so fuckin’ lucky your mother’s at bingo.” Roberts' eyes met the incessant beep on the hospital machine behind me as he sighed, “Well? Have you got all the attention you need?”

I’d accepted my miscalculations as serendipitous when Laura-Lee’s hand lingered a little too long on my forearm the following week at Burkes Pub. The quiet I sat in the rest of the night proved otherwise, though. I watched as she laughed with a blonde girl I didn’t know. It had to be at my expense. They were laughing at my stupidity.

I discovered next that you can survive up to 24 hours after hanging yourself by the neck. The human body is frustratingly resilient for how trivial life really is. The bruises and boredom forming quickly around my neck trapped me within my own thoughts. I’m sick of hearing myself think. The brunette dressed in black at Shoppers says yellow undertones cover bruises best. I wonder if she knows from personal experience, but I don’t ask. I also wonder what undertones are, but I buy the compact case she hands me and later agree with her aloud in the mirror.

When the brunette who became Tanya turned into the lady who rejected me, I shot myself in the face. Did you know that you can survive a bullet to the face? I educated myself and the inexperienced nurses with shock ridden faces that day. I thought about how the call to inform my parents I’d attempted suicide would ruin their trip this weekend. I have 12 teeth now. 42 surgeries later, I have the right half of my face along with a third of my tongue. I hope they never close the whole in my throat.

There’s thunderous silence in slaughtering. The solitude of my newfound career lets my disfigurements be. I don’t mind Mr. Rideout’s judging eyes, he hired me after all. He doesn’t let his daughter come in the freezer anymore.

The lines of dead carcass full of so much potential reignites my existential crisis. I’m fixated on the tip of the large hook I grip in my left hand, I shift it into my right hand and my only eye follows. I read a magazine article on suicide once. To my own amusement, I found it stashed behind a toilet in my suicide treament facility. ‘Seppuku’ is considered an honorable death among samurai. One by disembowelment, restorative and surefire. The red of my blood in this dark cold freezer is almost black and I feel fear for the first time. Oh god, Mr. Rideout.. Jesus.. No god .. I scramble to hold my stomach in and watch as the blood from my guts bubbles on the icey floor below. My vision blurs and I desperately crawl to the door unable to yell for help. Close enough to strain for the door handle, finally grabbing hold, I realize Mr.Rideout has locked the door to the freezer from the outside.  I wonder if Mom has bingo tonight.

All those pretty horses gallop away, running from the cities of the plain and into the expanse where I cannot see. Before they broke my hold I shepherded them as far as I could, or drove them—whatever the term is for horses. They want a land my borrowed words cannot paint.

I’m abandoned and flatfooted beside my faceless cowboy...

This story had been kicking around in my files for several months before it found the right home: https://lespritliteraryreview.org/2022/06/15/the-title-wouldnt-be-mine-either/ My thanks to L'Esprit Literary Review for publishing my odd little flash fiction.

On my fourteenth birthday, my father took me to a prostitute. When we left, he slapped me on the back and said, now, my son, you are a man. He didn’t ask any questions. So, I didn’t tell him how the woman failed in her attempts to excite me. How she got frustrated then angry then contemptuous. I didn’t tell him how she called me all the same things the boys at school did – the reason he brought me there in the first place, I suspect. I didn’t tell him how I begged her to stop. How I covered my ears as tears threatened to fall. How my hurt and sadness turned to anger when she went to open the door so she could go tell everyone, my father, about my…difficulty. How I jumped from the bed, grabbed her and covered her mouth with my hand to make her stop. How she bit me, so I threw her to the floor, and she hit her head. How I pounced on her, my hands around her neck, while she struggled to free herself. How, as I saw her terror, her weakness to my strength, I was able to do exactly as she'd wanted. He'd wanted. No, I didn’t tell him any of that. I just thanked him for his gift.

The international store was as dim as a cave, dust collecting in every worn crack and crevice, as if it were falling apart from the inside-out. The people matched, cigarette ash on calloused hands and ages of words, conflict, conflicting words, etched into their faces as heavy wrinkles. As a child, the store was a respite from the majority white town my mom and I grew up in, and I would dash through the store as my mom warned me to stay close, run my little fingers through the loose produce-- garbanzos, peanuts, green almonds. I found out that the same people I now worked alongside saw me there when I was a tottling child.

I'll never forget; I've written about this before, at the beginning - April 2020, I was so drunk at 5pm, that while cooking eggs I missed the edge of the pan repeatedly and the eggs oozed all over the stove top. I held a margarita in my hand, number four. My roommate comes in at some point. "Do you really only have eggs and champagne in the fridge?" At the time, I still had a bottle of champagne from some celebratory event that had, obviously, been meant to be celebrated earlier in the year. Maybe my birthday. Who really knows. Who really cares.

On the back stoop, I cried and my roommate asked me if I was okay. This was a different time in April 2020, and I wanted to air quote "Okay", like Chris Pratt does in Parks and Recreation. 'Am I "okay"?' I wanted to stay calmly, while clearly detonating. I opened the text from my sister, the one where she told me she would never forgive me. I read that long paragraph text over and over again. I was stuck to it like it had talons, and opening it again and again was like self-harm. I started telling myself it was okay to start drinking at 3pm. I went down to the corner store and bought supplies to make fabulous dinners, no more eggs. As it turns out, you can definitely f*ck up a steak dinner. The margaritas sloshed around in my glass, and I held it up to the endless sun. A toast to the endlessness of loneliness and regret.

So why did you start writing, this prompt asks. Maybe I should get to that. I sat down at my little kitchen table, in my little apartment, in April 2020, and responded to the Challenge of the Month for Prose. I wrote about running from who I am, and at the same time, hoping to run right into my own arms. I begged my sister for forgiveness while lamenting her selfishness. I was at a crossroads, and writing started putting the pain in perspective.

I sat in my little room in my little apartment and got drunk and wept. I didn't have a boyfriend, I was alone in my apartment with only my lame roommate for company. We interacted as little as possible. I started writing copiously; finding Prose, I think, honestly saved me. I ordered my sister wedding gifts from her registry with little thanks. Half my problem was being jealous she had found someone, someone who loved her unconditionally. I would never have that. She had picked her new family over me, to boot. I later told a therapist what I had done to make her so upset, and she laughed. "I was expecting bottles being thrown," she said. What you did was not bad. I open what she said in my head often, like a tab I want to keep permanently in my mental browser.

I started writing because I was in so much pain, I had little choice but to pour it out. I can remember getting my first 'like' on Prose in April 2020, and I felt the need to keep producing content, to keep pouring it out, just like the margaritas that went so smoothly down my throat. Here, I could find redemption. Here, I could forgive myself.

Writing is like one of those exercises for children, where they have to put the correct shape into the correct slot. With writing, I can match what I felt to how I currently feel. It's a catharsis of sorts, putting the pieces together, making sense of the many shapes my mind takes.

I usually write something and then think: wow, slow your roll, girl. This is too much. But maybe that's my allure. I pick up my journal when I feel most like screaming and start writing. I want to be authentic, and just maybe, someone will think: me, too.

“And if you don’t expect too much from me

You might not be let down.”

--The Gin Blossoms

“Hey Jealousy”

If you turned on a radio in the mid-90s, chances are you recognize the chorus of “Hey Jealousy.” The singer cheerily offers, “Tomorrow we can drive around this town / And let the cops chase us around.” If you listen no further, you bop along to the bright guitar line while you drive down the highway and belt, “Hey, jealousy!”

And for years, that’s all I heard—disposable pop rock glee.

And I was wrong.

The song opens with a request for a place to stay. The singer, “in no shape for driving,” asks if “I can just crash here tonight.” He has a history with the woman he’s asking: the singer declares her “the best I’d ever had.” But he blew it, somehow or another. (Booze seems likely, given the scenario, and another line hints toward infidelity.) Whatever substance-induced screw-up he committed, the speaker blames it for his being alone, looking for a roof.

And then that bright chorus kicks in.

You can’t help but be caught up in it. “Tomorrow we can drive around this town / And let the cops chase us around.” Which of us hasn’t, at least once, daydreamed about the kind of mischief that chorus advertises? The long arm of the law isn’t a real threat here. The chase is a game of cat and mouse starring Barney Fife as the cat. More mall guard than menace. Between this crystal-clear assurance of a Keystone Cops chase and the unmistakable “Hey, jealousy!” it’s easy to miss the line in the middle: “The past is gone, but something might be found / To take its place.”

And that’s the song’s hidden heart. In among the frivolity and the hooks and the playful bassline, there is a hole. The morrow’s mischief— if it happens—wouldn’t be a spontaneous frolic. It will be planned, and therefore fake. Think of the craziest story of your youth. Did you pencil it on your calendar? Chances are, it was sudden, splitting instantaneously from the ordinariness that preceded it. And that’s what the singer is missing here: he can’t manufacture the new joy. The past is gone, he recognizes, but he still wants to bring back a piece of it through force of will. And hijinks aren’t born from determination. Or loneliness.

The song’s second verse is heartbreaking. The first four lines:

“And you can trust me not to drink*

And not to sleep around

And if you don’t expect too much from me

You might not be let down…”

He has broken his first promise before he made it; a man too drunk to drive is asking for confidence in his sobriety. In this context, the promise of faithfulness sounds just as empty. He means to reassure this girl who got away, but with his intoxication having gotten the better of him, his words are more likely reminding her of his past sins. And yet it’s not exactly dishonest because as he stands there on her doorstep, he means every word. He wants so badly to measure up for her and to her, but at least in his own mind, he is destined to fall short. Hence the sad hope that “if you don’t expect too much from me / You might not be let down.” There’s a subtextual question in those lines. He’s a failure; he knows it. But surely, he pleads, he can still be worth something. Right?

The next two lines reveal the full extent of his desperation:

Cause all I really want’s to be with you

Feeling like I matter too

Whether that’s the bottle talking or not, it’s the truth as he feels it.

The song was written by Doug Hopkins, the Gin Blossoms’ lead guitarist. He co-founded the band in 1987 and saw it become a big enough draw in the Tempe area to lure a record deal. “Hey Jealousy” was the first single off the major-label debut, New Miserable Experience. The album eventually went quadruple platinum, but Hopkins never lived to see it: he shot himself on December 5, 1992, a few weeks after A&M Records sent him a gold record for his song. An alcoholic, he had been out of the Gin Blossoms for months. Reportedly too drunk to stand in his final recording sessions, Hopkins was receiving treatment for alcoholism at the time of his death.

A listener’s first impression of “Hey Jealousy” will be of high spirits, both because of the melody and the most audible lyrics of the chorus. That’s the façade. The truth becomes clearer if one more closely examines the intonation of the title. The optimism sounds a little forced, the voice a bit more plaintive than pleasant. A drunken man is trying so very hard to sound hopeful.

But “Hey Jealousy” isn’t really a love song, or even a devil-may-care invitation. It’s a confession.

*According to Wikipedia, the band changed the lyric to “trust me not to think,” but Hopkins originally wrote the version printed here.

Unlike most movies, the villain was perfect. Believable even. And the music! The music alone gave me goosebumps. People actually quit going to the beach for vacations because of this movie.

Jaws was the first “great” movie I ever saw. (My parents didn't take me to The Godfather, and I fell asleep in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid... don't act so shocked, y'all, I was only four!) I was ten years old for Jaws. The perfect age. Young enough that it scared the absolute bejesus out of me, but I still couldn’t look away. I am no movie music expert, and had to look up who did it, but I can remember the cold feeling I got from the Williams’ score, like there truly was ice in my veins, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, bump pa, bump pa, bump-bump-BAA!!! I just knew when I heard it. Hell, everyone did! People in the theater actually screamed! "Something bad is fixin' to come down 'round here, kiddoes!” And everyone stayed seated at the end of the movie! Not to read the credits mind you, but because we were all utterly exhausted.

But my favorite scene was the one with the three heroes getting drunk and telling war stories. Farewell and adieu ye fair Spanish ladies, farewell and adieu you ladies of Spain! When Quint starts telling about The Indianapolis, and being in the water with all of the sharks everywhere. Ohhhhh, but that was amazing fun. Dude sounded like a modern day pirate. I actually had a nightmare, and I lived 3 1/2 hours from the beach.

And the music was perfect, even when it wasn't shaking the theater with that BA-DUMP, BA-DUMP! Forty seven years later I can remember the song the guys sang as they got drunk... well, right up until the stupid shark interrupted them;

Show me the way to go home, bum-bum-bum, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed! Oh, I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went straight to my head...

My wife and I, like most people, had a "classics fest" during the boredom of the pandemic. We watched a lot of great movies. Jaws has certainly stood the test of time with the best of them... maybe not as well as Butch Cassidy, but that's because it looses something on the smaller screen, and with smaller speakers, that Sundance doesn't. Jaws is one of those movies that has to be seen big and loud to really be appreciated.

I'm truly sorry for you youngsters who missed seeing it, and hearing it, in the theater, but I assure you it whooped tar out of Star Wars and ET.