Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Jurassic World: Dominion 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 18, 2022

Few film properties have enjoyed the staying power and box office guarantee of Jurassic Park. The film series, based on the original novel of the same name by the late Michael Crichton, made its big screen debut in 1993 with Steven Spielberg's visionary and envelope pushing original. Now five films later, and the franchise's name changed to Jurassic World, nothing has equaled the splendor, suspense, and sophistication of that original film, though certainly 2015's Jurassic World did well to recapture the magic in a way that both respected the original story while plotting its own forward trajectory. Here, finally, is the sixth film in the franchise, Jurassic World: Dominion, and it is the latest in the recent cinematic trend of bringing back a gaggle of past characters and returning plot lines within a new film. The results here are tepid at best; the film can't find many reasonable excuses to exist and return so many familiar faces. It's an exercise in doing something because it can, not necessarily because it must. It's a watchable film, but it is also deeply flawed, overlong, and frankly not all that interesting.

The film's wayward plot involves a reasonably natural, but less cinematically magical, course of action following several decades of man's modern day co-habitation with dinosaurs. The dinosaurs freely roam the earth, causing problems big and small and accounting for no small number of deaths. However, there are efforts underway to make the best of their stay. A biotech firm called Biosyn Genetics is involved in building a dinosaur sanctuary to facilitate the study of their immune systems for future medical breakthroughs and massive profit gains. Meanwhile, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) are secretly raising a the genetically engineered teenager Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) while still actively pursuing various dinosaur-related personal enterprises. Meanwhile, Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Dr. Allan Grant (Sam Neill), and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are reunited when a new, invasive species of locusts threatens to devastate the global food supply. They quickly discover that a conspiracy is afoot with far-reaching repercussions.

This is more Thriller than Thrill Ride and it is a much lesser movie for it. Dominion aims to evolve the story, so to speak, from a place where dinosaurs were a marvel of science but also a terrorizing anomaly to, now, an everyday integrated part of society, albeit a dangerous and unpredictable one. Now, the franchise has evolved to explore how the phenomenon has been monetized in a different way. Gone is the draw of the attraction, and here is the time for study and profit in the much larger, and more profitable, but apparently no less containable, medical industry. Rather than hold to the formula that brought the franchise here, the film branches out to something different to negligible dramatic impact. The result is a tired film that meanders through characters and plot elements and sacrifices spectacle and majesty for rote action and predictable story lines. Characters from the first trilogy feel shoehorned in for little payoff beyond their presence on the screen, and the familiar faces from the World films seem to be only going through the motions. There’s no draw to the movie, no sense of spectacle and grandeur, just a tiresome romp through a failed story supported by various scenes of man and machine versus dinosaur action.

While the film lags behind the original, and all of the sequels, for sheer sense of awe and wonder and fun, it does outpace all of the films for visual effects complexity and magnitude. If audiences thought that the dinosaurs looked real in the original film, they're going to be in for a treat here; the creatures are insanely complex and their interactions within the environment are second-to-none. Of course, that means very little if there's not a good support structure around them; Spielberg made them blend in, allowing the awe to hit on the first dinosaur sighting with Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm and allowing plot to determine their presence and the audience's engagement with them later in the film. Here, everything seems to be about how great the dinosaurs look, leaving what thin story and bland characters there are behind. The end result is a borderline stinker of a movie considering the excess length, laborious plot lines, and action that doesn't really engage the senses. While the action is fast and fierce, movie action has reached a saturation point where another motorcycle chase just doesn't excite anymore, and such is the case here. This is a perfectly good movie for technical merits and more than serviceable as a time killer, but it's a far, far cry from what made the original special and the franchise enduring.

Jurassic World: Dominion 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

Universal releases Jurassic World: Dominion to the UHD format with a very good 2160p/Dolby Vision UHD presentation. The picture quality is impressively stout and confident, offering good, obvious gains over the companion Blu-ray in all areas of concern. The picture at this resolution is notably sharper and clearer; these are the expected areas for resolution gain, and they do not disappoint. While intimate shots reveal the most readily evident improvements to sharpness and definition on things like skin, clothes, and complex environments, it is in some of the distant establishing shots where the picture proves its resolution worth. Look at a sprawling West Texas landscape at the 25:30 mark, the start of the sequence which introduces the oversized locusts. The sharpness gains on even the massive wheat field are striking, allowing for individual clarity even a fair distance from the point of focus. Of course, those bigger gains are the most obvious and welcome, but the small gains make a big impact, too. The Dolby Vision color grading is just as impressive for the added brightness, depth, and vividness. The palette springs to life with greatly improved saturation and color accuracy, bringing again both large color splashes and fine point color elements to newfound life and vitality. The image is constantly impressive for either color punch and vividness or for the quality of the lower light details and black level depth, which is very much improved here. Also, whites dazzle and skin tones look perfectly healthy. The image is free of any obvious source tinkering and absent any serious encode flaws. This is a very good image from Universal.

Jurassic World: Dominion 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Universal brings Jurassic World: Dominion to the Blu-ray format with a DTS:X soundtrack. The presentation dazzles from the start, revealing the sort of prodigious, yet still contained and balanced, bass one would expect from the film (this is the extended cut; the theatrical cut starts with a sequence that is less bass-intensive). Throughout the film, low end extension dominates every time a dinosaur steps, stomps, bellows, does anything that sonically defines its size and scale. Additional action cues offer equally delightful low-end support. The bass is supported by seamless stage engagement. Every channel is utilized to seemingly maximum output effectiveness, including overheads, which are more finely integrated than discretely engaged. Still, the net effect is large, powerful, and full. Lesser ambient elements, such as a rattling cargo plane interior heard later in the film, pull the listening audience directly into the location. Dialogue is clear, well prioritized, and centered for the duration. This is absolutely the track one would expect of a new film in the Jurassic universe.

Jurassic World: Dominion 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This UHD release of Jurassic World: Dominion contains a short film, a featurette, and a lengthier multi-part feature (the latter two extras are in 480i for whatever reason on the Blu-ray but 1080p here). A Blu-ray copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover. Note that two cuts of the film are included: Theatrical (2:26:57) and Extended (2:40:40).

• Battle at Big Rock (2160p/Dolby Vision, 10:17): A short film following a family in the midst of a dinosaur battle.
• A New Breed of VFX (1080p, 6:16): Exploring the process of how some of the film's most incredible visuals were made.
• Dinosaurs Among Us: Inside Jurassic World Dominion (1080p): A five-part feature that explores the making of the film in great detail. Included are Together for the First Time (5:26) which looks at the meeting of the new and legacy casts. Underground Dino Market (4:59) explores the purpose behind and the making of the Malta sequence. Mayhem in Malta (4:32) focuses on making a big chase scene in the film. Scary Real Animatronics is a five-part feature that explores, yes, the use of animatronics in the film. Included segments are Spit Take: The Return of Dilophosaurus (5:26), Inside the Dimeetrodon (4:38), Creating a Plague (4:30), Passing the Beta...N (4:19), and Giga-Bite (6:26). Finally, the last segment of the larger Dinosaurs Among Us supplement is Final Night (6:52) which takes audiences into the last day of shooting.

Jurassic World: Dominion 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is the first Jurassic movie that is a complete letdown. None of them beyond the first are perfect, but they've all ranged from excellent to enjoyable. This one is just a bloated yet also still flat film with little going for it. There's no draw, no sense of wonder, no feeling or excitement and danger. It's very mechanical, technically and at the script level, delivering what is easily the worst film, yet also easily the biggest and most elaborate, of the six. Universal's UHD does offer excellent video and audio as well as a few extras. Worth a look.