Jurassic World Dominion Review

Jurassic World Dominion Review

 

It’s finally here, the newest installment in the Jurassic franchise! Dominion has been marketed as the final film, the culmination of the previous Jurassic Park trilogy and this new Jurassic World trilogy, bringing it all together for a stunning conclusion.

Well, that’s what the marketing wants us to think…

Jurassic World Dominion is strangely similar to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, in the way it’s been delivered as some kind of big ending to the long-running franchise, as well as having been co-written and directed by the same guy who made the first entry in the reboot trilogy, even though he stepped back from directing the follow-up. To be clear, here’s the comparison I’m making: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, directed by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, directed by Rian Johnson, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, directed by J.J. Abrams. Jurassic World, directed by Colin Trevorrow, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, directed by J.A. Bayona, Jurassic World Dominion, directed by Colin Trevorrow.

My reaction to Dominion is similar to my reaction to Rise of Skywalker. I had rock bottom expectations, but didn’t hate it. There were some fun moments, but at the same time, I didn’t feel much investment, and the whole thing kind of glossed over me. I’m not going to bother comparing Dominion and Rise of Skywalker any further. Dominion, to me, was more like The Force Awakens in the sense of seeing the characters I loved from the original trilogy make their big return. Jurassic Park was the Star Wars of my childhood, so seeing them all back again really drew my interest. Compared to the previous Jurassic World movie, this one was less infuriating to watch overall, but also more problematic in certain ways.

Let me do a quick recap of my feelings on the previous 5 films. I re-watched them all in preparation for Dominion (because of course I did, the best thing about these new inferior sequels being released is creating an excuse to go back and watch the original (not that an excuse is ever needed)) and I don’t have too much new to say about the original Jurassic Park or The Lost World: Jurassic Park, but I do have to say, Jurassic Park III seems better to me now with the Jurassic World movies to compare it to. Sure, it feels like a simpler and cheaper adventure following the previous two movies, but I enjoy that it’s a 90 minute thrill ride, with some genuinely exciting sequences, visual effects that live up to the previous movie, and Sam Neill as Dr. Grant back in the main roster of characters.

Jurassic World tricked me the first time I saw it. Just like with Star Wars: The Force Awakens in the same year, it was so exciting to have a long-awaited franchise return with a new installment that I overlooked some of the more lamentable aspects of the movie and just had a fun time—and I will give Jurassic World credit for trying to be fun. It hits on that nostalgia and recreates the original movie with some pretty broad strokes, but there’s plenty of dinosaur mayhem and its structure is relatively sound because it lifts so much from the original movie. The thrills come at the expense of logic, though, and the human characters are pretty generic.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, on the other hand, ripped off part of The Lost World with its plot and created some new scenarios that were grossly miscalculated. I was pretty letdown with it the first time I saw it, and I didn’t feel any desire to re-watch it until this new one came out. Fallen Kingdom is simply a bad monster movie. Jurassic World was already more of a monster-on-the-loose movie than a dinosaur movie like the original, and the follow-up went even more in that direction. The dinosaur auction, the Indoraptor stalking the mansion like a boogeyman, and the cloned girl letting all the dinosaurs loose because “they’re like me” (Blah!) which made the whole world overrun in dinosaurs all added up to a really unsatisfying, stomach-upsetting sequel with no heart, no logic, and little in the way of enjoyable moments.

So what kind of movie is Jurassic World Dominion then? It’s still basically a bad sci-fi/monster movie, but at least they got rid of the stupid hybrid concept. I went in just hoping this movie wouldn’t be as bad as Fallen Kingdom, and I can’t really say with confidence it was better, but overall, I enjoyed it more. Here’s the thing, comparing the two movies: Fallen Kingdom is more structured and as well directed as possible given the material to work with, but the ideas in the movie are so dumb that it’s worse overall. Dominion is messier and more sloppily made, but overall more enjoyable.

A word I’m sure many reviews will use for this movie is “disjointed” and that’s very appropriate. This thing is all over the place, in many ways. We get off to a rocky start with the Mosasaurus attacking a boat straight out of Deadliest Catch, then a news report recaps the events of the previous movies and introduces us to the idea that dinosaurs live all over the place now, and it’s just a normal thing. How, exactly, have dinosaurs suddenly spread so far and wide, when only a few of them were released from that mansion at the end of Fallen Kingdom? I guess we’re not supposed to think too hard about it. 

Dominion brings back Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Dr. Ian Malcolm, all of them together again for the first time since the original movie, and all of them again played by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum, respectively. They should have been back from the beginning. Dr. Grant is recruited by Dr. Sattler to investigate some shady stuff going on with the company BioSyn Genetics (which is the company from the Michael Crichton novels that’s a rival to InGen), and guess who else is back? Campbell Scott plays BioSyn CEO Lewis Dodgson. I have to quote Dennis Nedry from the original: “Dodgson, Dodgson, we’ve got Dodgson here! See, nobody cares.” In case you forgot, Dodgson is the guy who gave Nedry the can of shaving cream to smuggle the embryos out of the original Jurassic Park lab. Well, he’s back, and he’s the bad guy, running BioSyn like he’s Steve Jobs, and he’s the most annoying bad guy we’ve seen in any of these movies.

Like I said, the original cast should have been in these Jurassic World movies from the start, because they are great, and seeing them back was genuinely enjoyable. Sure, the dialogue they have to work with is extremely cringe worthy at times (Ellie tells Alan how Ian “slid into her DMs”) and the situations they find themselves in are often just plain dumb, but these actors are true professionals, they sell even the worst material. The plot they are tied to involves BioSyn growing giant prehistoric locusts that could cause a worldwide food shortage, which is not terrible in concept, but the execution is rather flimsy and feels disconnected from the usual focus of these movies. Giant locusts are not from the two novels by Crichton, they aren’t something that was established in earlier movies, this is an idea the creative team just thought would be a good idea, I guess, and they went with it. What was it Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, about being so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should? Oh yeah, that was it…

Even though Alan, Ellie, and Ian are part of this odd BioSyn story line, their parts are the most interesting, and the original cast is the main pillar of what made Dominion more enjoyable, for me, over Fallen Kingdom. The other part of the movie concerns Owen (Chris Pratt), Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and the clone girl Maisie living in isolation at Owen’s cabin. Somehow the Velociraptor Blue reproduced all on her own (a little too Godzilla 1998 for my liking) and is prowling the woods around the cabin with her offspring, Beta. Beta gets captured, as does Maisie, so they go after them both, and there’s almost an interesting theme of parenthood, or something, but any chance of the movie having a deeper meaning is quickly snuffed out by the loud, chaotic action scenes that follow. There’s a part where raptors are chasing Owen and Claire through the tight streets of Malta, and I’ve never been so bored during a dinosaur action scene. There’s hardly any music, the effects look cheap, the camera is unstable, and the stakes are low, because you know Owen and Claire are going to walk away without a scratch in the end.

After three whole movies with them in the lead, I don’t feel like I know all that much about Owen or Claire or have many reasons to like them. They are uninteresting main characters, and some fans might be disappointed that they are separate from the characters of the original Jurassic Park for so much of the runtime, but once they get together, it doesn’t make the movie better. Some of the elaborations on the back story of clone girl Maisie get extremely convoluted and even a little uncomfortably weird. It feels like Owen and Claire just move from one dinosaur scene to the next for the most part, and when all the characters unite for the third act, it becomes clear no one is in any real danger. There are hardly any deaths in this movie—not that a high kill count is needed to make a Jurassic Park movie good, but this has to have one of the lowest fatality rates in the franchise, as well as the least tension or scares.  

I’ll get into some of the specific things I actually really enjoyed. DeWanda Wise plays a new character named Kayla, a tough pilot, and she’s the best new character in the movie. In fact, she’s one of the best new characters from the entire Jurassic World trilogy. She isn’t overly exaggerated, she doesn’t utter stupid lines, she’s cool and played by a good actress. There’s a scene early on with Owen wrangling a herd of Parasaurolophus on horseback, and I thought it was fun. It reminded me of The Valley of Gwangi with an old-school sense of silly entertainment. In Malta there’s an underground dinosaur dealer and we see a bunch of species being traded and put into fighting rings, which is a goofy idea but also kind of fun. There’s a moment when Dr. Grant looks out of a plane at some long-neck dinosaurs grazing as they arrive at the BioSyn dino-sanctuary and he says “Is that Dreadnoughtus?” with the same kind of child-like whimsy he had when he saw the Brachiosaurus for the first time decades earlier. It felt like a genuine Jurassic Park moment. 

Some of the nostalgia they infused into this movie was amusing, some of it was surprising, and some of it was annoying, but what I found funny about it was you can tell the filmmakers already picked all the lowest hanging fruit for the previous two movies, and this time they had to reach way higher into the nostalgia tree to find things to use. This is no more obvious than when the T. rex walks in front of a round window and we get the Jurassic Park logo recreated using the real T. rex. Why is this shot in the movie? Is it supposed to be cool, or creative, or surprising? I just didn’t get it. I won’t spoil all the little nods, but one of the bigger intentional creative choices made to reconnect with fans of the original movies was to use more animatronics. There are several notable moments when you can tell there really is a dinosaur in front of the camera interacting with the actors. Here’s the thing: fans didn’t just want there to be more animatronics used. Personally, I wanted to see more shots of dinosaurs that looked real, like the original Jurassic Park movies. Even using animatronics, they still didn’t achieve this.

The transitions from animatronic creatures to cgi creatures are jarring, and most of the animatronics look too shiny and plastic, are too stiff in their movements, and are not well shot. The baby raptor Beta looks faker when it’s in front of the camera than when it’s rendered as a computer generated image. I knew from the first trailer the animatronics wouldn’t be up to par when that Dilophosaurus opens its frill and hisses at Bryce Dallas Howard, and unfortunately I was right. They tried, but they didn’t try hard enough. The colossal Giganotosaurus animatronic is used for a few shots, but it’s in such a dark environment and moves so slowly it doesn’t look any more or less impressive than when it cuts to the cgi version seconds later. While on this topic, I think this is the worst-looking Jurassic World movie, and that’s saying a lot. The overly saturated, hyper-crisp digital cinematography from Jurassic World looks nowhere near as good as the first three Jurassic Park movies. J.A. Bayona shot Fallen Kingdom a little differently, but like its predecessor, it too suffered from cgi overload (at least Dominion doesn’t have a super fake computer-generated mansion). Still, the cgi is wildly inconsistent, with some truly incredible-looking dinos and some that have less texture and weight than their counterparts from the Jurassic World Evolution video game.

Even beyond the dinosaurs, the way everything is shot is lazy and unskillful. Colin Trevorrow has now clearly proven himself as an amateurish director. The editing is not just choppy, it makes no visual sense at times. Characters teleport around, one scene feels like it’s literally out of place and should have happened earlier, and I don’t think any shot lasts more than ten seconds. We don’t hold on any of the dinosaurs or any of the scenery or any of the action, it’s constantly cutting. The pacing, too, is way off. It feels like nothing happens in the middle of the movie, and there’s no momentum built up to the end, it just drags on to the big finale. I have to comment on the ending, but will do so in a minor spoiler paragraph below. If you don’t want to know anything about the ending, skip the next paragraph.

Minor ending spoilers: just like Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, Dominion ends with a big dinosaur fight. It should come as no surprise that it involves the new Giganotosaurus and the old favourite T. rex, but there’s a third dinosaur involved, too, which was a little surprising, but what surprised me the most (in a negative way) was how this final fight is essentially a remake of the final fight from Jurassic World, but not as good. It’s as if they said “what if we just do the same thing we did before, only make it look worse?” It is shot in the dark, the camera moves so clumsily and confusingly it made me actually have to look away from the screen and rub my eyes, and it’s so dumb that it’s not at all satisfying. It also relates to that weird pacing issue; the Giganotosaurus attacks the main cast earlier, and it feels like that could have been the big ending, but then there are many more scenes that follow, and it makes the whole third act feel more drawn out than necessary. By the time it got to the final fight I was ready for the movie to be finished. Spoilers over.

The last thing I need to touch on are the dinosaurs, of course, because that’s what drew me to watch this movie in the first place. I said it in my review for Fallen Kingdom: I realized it would take a lot for me to truly hate one of these movies, but it also seemed the direction they were going for with the next one left few options, story-wise, that would intrigue me, so I just hoped for good dinosaur action at the very least, and I was mainly disappointed even in that regard. The dinosaurs weren’t really the main antagonists this time. They weren’t protagonists either, which was good, but they were just…kind of there, in the background a lot of the time. The new big bad, the Giganotosaurus, is barely in it, and the T. rex even less so. I was surprised how little Blue featured in the story too (not that I was upset, I don’t care for Blue), but there are some new species that were neat to see, though none of them factor in to the plot in very intricate or interesting ways.

For the first half of the movie it felt like there were two different movies happening at the same time, and I was only really interested in one of them. I could have done with a whole movie of the old cast and would not have missed Chris Pratt or Bryce Dallas Howard in the least. There were a lot of ideas (the majority of them not great) and there was a lot of content crammed into this thing, but I didn’t feel a sense of conclusion. There could easily be more movies to follow this one. Many of the reviews I’ve seen from critics and fans have been incredibly harsh, but some of the criticisms confuse me. The last two movies weren’t very good, so why did anyone have any kind of expectations for this one? It’s as if this movie being bad is a big surprise. It was pretty consistent with the previous two Jurassic World films, so I can’t get all that upset about it, or be that disappointed. Jurassic World is a fun monster movie, Fallen Kingdom is a dumb monster movie, and Dominion is more like an Indiana Jones-style adventure mixed with an off-brand Michael Crichton sci-fi techno thriller with some dinosaurs thrown in for good measure.

I’m sure the more I think about Jurassic World Dominion the less I’ll like it, but with this being my initial reaction to it, I’m in that pleasant space of existence where it’s still fresh in my mind as a new movie-going experience, and the fact that it wasn’t worse than Fallen Kingdom was enough that I at least left the theater with my hands in my pockets, not with my face in my hands. I didn’t leave feeling angry or frustrated like I have for other unnecessary entries in long-running franchises, but I definitely left feeling like I’ve had enough of these movies for a good long while. No more Jurassic World movies, no more Jurassic anything please. It’s time to let it rest again.   

Top 10 Jurassic Park Dinosaurs: CCC Issue #88

Top 10 Jurassic Park Dinosaurs: CCC Issue #88

 

After counting down the top ten dinosaurs in all of cinema, I realized it would be easy to count down ten dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park franchise alone…or would it be? Which ones are the best? I set out to rank the top ten terrible lizards from one of the most successful dinosaur-driven movie franchises in Hollywood history, and was surprised to discover the results. It’s always fun to make lists that match up with a new movie that’s coming out, which wasn’t something I was able to do for the past two years of the pandemic pretty much, so in preparation for the new Jurassic World Dominion, here are the top ten dinosaurs from the entire Jurassic franchise!

 

Honourable mentions: Pteranodon (Jurassic Park III), Mosasaurus (Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom). These two species aren’t dinosaurs, but they shouldn’t be neglected just because of that. 

The Pterandon of Isla Sorna were frightening winged demons that emerged from the fog and terrorized Alan Grant and company. Even though the real animal wouldn’t have had teeth in its beak or been so inclined to feed a whole person to its young, they are still well-designed, scary, cool, and impactful in the third film. Though they later appeared in Jurassic World (and one previously made a cameo in the final shot of The Lost World) they were at their frightening best in Jurassic Park III.  

I’m not a big fan of the new dinosaurs from the Jurassic World movies, but I have to give it to the Mosasaurus for being the one new creature I actually kind of enjoy watching. It isn’t overused and doesn’t do that many dumb things, so I actually get a kick out of seeing the colossal marine reptile when it pops up, whether it’s eating a great white shark, or a Pteranodon, or a person. The way it takes out the Indominous Rex at the end of Jurassic World is also very awesome and satisfying.  

10. Pachycephalosaurus (The Lost World: Jurassic Park) 

 

This bone-head has only a small part in the second Jurassic Park movie and a tiny cameo in Jurassic World, but I always enjoyed seeing the Thick-Headed Lizard and how much pizzazz it brings to the roundup sequence. The Pachy is part of the mixed herd the InGen team are chasing after, and paleontologist Robert Burke describes how it’s able to use its domed head like a battering ram–moments before it head-butts a guy right through a jeep. When the dinosaur is captured shortly after this, we get to see it closer up, and briefly glimpse the neat colouring on its face. The close-up shot is one of Stan Winston’s animatronics, and it’s pretty realistic looking, though maybe not the most realistic out of all the in-camera effects in the film. The Pachy is one of the more aggressive small herbivores in the franchise, and stands out for this reason—not to mention it’s used in a better way compared to the similar Stygimoloch from Jurassic Word: Fallen Kingdom. Don’t expect a lot of love for the Jurassic World dinosaurs throughout most of this list…   

 

9. Stegosaurus (The Lost World: Jurassic Park)

 

The most-requested dinosaur for the sequel was the plated lizard, which had often been inaccurately portrayed in the past as a stupid, tail-dragging brute, but the Stegosaurus herd of Isla Sorna is an awe-inspiring sight. The characters marvel at them as they graze, but when Sarah Harding gets too close to a baby, the parents charge and swing their deadly tail spikes at her. It’s a sequence that, like the best parts of the original movie, begins with a sense of wonder that quickly switches to one of danger, without stooping to cheesy monster movie mayhem. The Steg is a force to be reckoned with. Regrettably, its return in Jurassic World was a regression, showing it with less correct posture and the ability to gallop, which it would have been unable to do in real life.

 

8. Spinosaurus (Jurassic Park III)

 

Even though it acts more like, in the words of Dr. Grant himself, “a genetically-engineered theme park monster” than a real animal, the Spinosaurus is still a fan-favourite of many, despite also being responsible for the brutal murder of the star of the previous two films. The Spino was designed to be a replacement for the T. rex as the big bad meat-eater, and it suffers more from poor writing than anything else. Visually, it’s a fearsome creature, with a great sail on its back (from which its name is derived), long crocodile-like jaws, bigger arms and hands than T. rex, and a greater overall size. It dispatches a Rex in mere seconds, chases Dr. Grant and company all over Isla Sorna, and is adept at hunting on land or in the water. Spinosaurus isn’t as awesome or as scary as T. rex, but is still both of those things in its own right, and rose to the challenge of dethroning the Tyrant Lizard King.

 

7. Baby Rex (The Lost World: Jurassic Park)

 

In the original Jurassic Park the only infant dinosaur the characters meet is a freshly-hatched Velociraptor. Before we see a Tyrannosaurus rex in The Lost World, Sarah Harding theorizes the Rex was a caring parent, and she is proven right, when hunter Roland Tembo baits the male T. rex (the prize he’s after) with the infant, which he finds in the nest. The little Rex has a broken leg, though we don’t see how the broken leg occurs, and Sarah, along with Nick Van Owen, takes it upon herself to rescue the infant and set its broken leg. Not the brightest idea, but their hearts were in the right place. The baby Rex was a fully animatronic creature, with a whipping tail, biting jaws, and big, blinking eyes. Its pain-filled cry for help, which it utters over and over, builds the unease, until the inevitable happens: its parents show up to save it. The Baby Rex gets one more awesome moment at the end when its dad lets it make its first kill, and it pounces on Peter Ludlow, the villainous nephew of John Hammond.

 

6. Compies (The Lost World: Jurassic Park)

 

Steven Spielberg subverted everyone’s expectations with the opening scene of The Lost World. In the original film, the first dinosaur audiences were shown in full was the massive Brachiosaurus. In the sequel, a bush rustles, there’s a bird-like chirp—you wonder if maybe a Velociraptor might jump out—and then a tiny little thing that looks like a chicken crossed with a lizard leaps out. It’s as small as the baby Velociraptor, if not smaller! Identified as Procompsognathus in the novel, the film version is identified (incorrectly, mind you) as Compsognathus triassicus, and is easy enough to fend off alone, but when numerous Compies make a swarm, they become deadly despite their small size. Later in the film, Dieter Stark gets lost in the woods and is pursued by a swarm of Compies, which manage to overwhelm him and eat him. The Compies get a fun little cameo in Jurassic Park III, but the only thing that gets eaten by them is a mosquito, ironically enough. The creature that helped them come back to life through cloning is nothing more than a quick snack.

 

5. Spitter (Jurassic Park)

                         

Almost every dinosaur from the original film has come back in at least one of the sequels. Even though it became so famous, the Dilophosaurus has never been in another Jurassic film—that is, until Dominion, finally! Nicknamed “The Spitter” by Stan Winston’s team, the Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park is one of the most fictionalized creatures, but that doesn’t stop it from being creepy, funny, and terrifying. It was specifically made to be smaller than the real animal so it wouldn’t be confused with the Velociraptors, but it was also given a huge frill that extends when it uses its venom glands to make it even more unique. In total, it’s only on-screen for maybe a minute at most, but the animatronics are extremely impressive, and its combination of features and behavior made it really stand out. Why, exactly, it decided to leap over Dennis Nedry after blinding him with its gooey-black venom, climb into his jeep, and wait on the passenger seat for Nedry to climb back in and close the door before killing him I’ll never know, but Nedry deserved it. I still think about that shaving cream can that fell from Nedry’s yellow rain jacket and wonder what happened to it, or what happened to the Dilophosaurus.   

 

4. Brachiosaurus (Jurassic Park, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom)

 

“It’s…it’s a dinosaur!” Dr. Grant exclaims, pointing up into the sky at the tiny head atop the thirty-foot neck of Brachiosaurus. One of the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the earth does so again for the first time since the Jurassic period, and its introduction is incredible. We get to see everyone’s individual reactions to it, which helps sell the realism of the creature. It was the first time audiences saw a fully computer generated animal that looked real, and in the later scene with it we get to see it up close, but the head interacting with Dr. Grant and the kids in the tree is one of Stan Winston’s animatronics. The Brach was given a little cameo in Jurassic Park III, but it really tugged at everyone’s heartstrings in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, when Isla Nublar erupted into a devastating volcano, wiping out all that remained of the old Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. The Brach didn’t make it onto the boat, and is last seen in silhouette among the volcanic ash cloud. Despite being one of the most peaceful dinos in the franchise, this Long-Neck evokes many reactions—awe, laughter, a little unease, and sympathy.

 

3. The Big One (Jurassic Park)

 

Game warden Robert Muldoon warns the first group of Jurassic Park visitors that the raptors are lethal, “especially the Big One.” In the first scene of the movie, the raptors are being put in their enclosure and attack and kill one of the workers, but we don’t get much of a look at them. Muldoon gives some background on these Cretaceous killers, explaining the Big One killed all but two other raptors when they introduced her, she had the others attacking the fences when feeders came. After a long stretch in the film with the T. rex having been the main threat, we see the twisted, broken fence of the raptor paddock, meaning they got out. The suspense built up to the big reveal in the compound will make you sit on the edge of your seat, and when the raptors attack it’s scream-worthy. Of all the raptors in the Jurassic franchise though, the Big One has always been my favourite. Forget the anti-hero antics of Blue in the Jurassic World films or the inner conflict of the Isla Sorna raptors from The Lost World, The Big One was the smartest and deadliest of the all raptors, even boldly taking on the T. rex, though she stood no chance against the Tyrant Lizard King.

 

2. Rexy (Jurassic Park, Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom)

 

You might have expected the Tyrannosaurus rex from the original Jurassic Park (and the Jurassic World films) to be in the number one spot, but it’s eked out by only one other individual. I’ve written plenty about the horror of the breakout scene, the amazing special effects, and the lasting legacy of the resurrected tyrant, but all the scenes from the original movie with her have become among the best T. rex moments in all of cinema. The jeep chase is one of the most exciting bits of action, with the classic Ian Malcolm line “must go faster” and the oh-so-Spielbergian shot of the Rex in the side view mirror. Later, after the Gallimimus herd nearly tramples Dr. Grant and the kids in the field, the Rex ambushes the herd and kills one, reminding us that “it doesn’t want to be fed, it wants to hunt.” And, of course, right in the final moments of the film, when it seems like our heroes might be eaten by the raptors, the Rex lunges in and kills one of them, inadvertently saving the humans from a grisly fate, and after it kills the final raptor, the banner “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth” falls from the ceiling as it roars in triumph. After returning to fight the Indominous Rex at the end of Jurassic World and making a few fun appearances throughout Fallen Kingdom, it seems dinosaurs finally do rule the earth again, in Jurassic World Dominion. So, what dinosaur from the franchise beats Rexy? One of her own kind.

 

1. The Buck (The Lost World: Jurassic Park)

 

The T. rex in Jurassic Park was incredible, but it also left audiences wanting more. Spielberg more than delivered just that for the sequel, introducing a mated pair of Rexes and their infant. The whole family makes the trailer scene tense, and both adults attack the camp later that night, making multiple kills in both instances, tearing Eddie Carr in half, stomping on Carter in a puddle, and devouring Robert Burke in the waterfall. But then, just when it seems the adventure is over, the characters leave Isla Sorna and return to the main land, where the male Rex breaks out from the ship and rampages through San Diego. He’s like a modern Godzilla, only without the atomic breath, and a little shorter, but no less awesome. Like the original movie, every scene in The Lost World with a T. rex in it is iconic, but there are even more scenes, and it isn’t just a mindless rampaging monster, it’s a pissed-off dad trying to get his kid back in a world completely foreign to him. Getting the dinosaurs off the island was something from the novels upon which Jurassic Park and The Lost World were based, and the Jurassic World movies have finally worked toward revisiting that premise, but thanks to Spielberg’s direction, David Keopp’s fun screenwriting (some of his best work), and Stan Winston’s/ILM’s even more ambitious special effects, The Buck gets top honours as the best dinosaur in the whole franchise.