Explaining ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ To My 1993 ‘Jurassic Park’ Fan Self
Thanks to advances in our patented Cracked Time Phone technology, I was able to contact my past self in the year 1993 for a brief discussion of the Jurassic Park franchise, and the recent Jurassic World: Dominion …
Hi JM, how’s everything going in 1993?
Great. I just saw Jurassic Park at a birthday party, and next week I’m going to see it again at another birthday party. Life just keeps getting better and bet –
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That’s great, kid – but I really wanted to talk to you about the newest film in the series; Jurassic World: Dominion, which is the fifth sequel to Jurassic Park.
Wow! How amazing was it?
It was definitely not amazing.
Really? Usually, Steven Spielberg is pretty great.
Yeah, but he only made the first two. This one was directed by some guy who made a quirky Sundance comedy and was bafflingly handed over the reins of this multi-billion dollar franchise in 2015.
Oh. Well is everybody back? Grant? Sattler? Malcolm?
Yup, for the first time since the original they’re all back!
Great!
Yeah, but their part of the story mainly involves investigating genetically-engineered locusts.
(long pause)
What?
For some reason, the dinosaurs take a bit of a backseat in Dominion and much of the plot involves an evil tech company using locusts to make a killing in … the grain industry, I guess? It’s not even a mystery, really, the villain trains the locusts not to eat crops grown from his company’s seed – so Laura Dern figures the whole thing out in roughly 20 seconds.
That’s … disappointing.
Super-disappointing. It kind of seems like the producers weren’t 100% sure that they could get all three original actors to come back, so they wrote their characters into a pointless story that could be easily scrapped if need be.
Well, it must have been nice to see Jurassic Park again.
Sorry?
Isla Nublar? You know, the island with all the dinosaurs?
Oh, no, that was all destroyed by a volcano in the previous entry.
John Hammond built his park next to an active volcano?
Yeah, it sounds pretty dumb when you say it out loud. Most of the last movie took place in some guy’s mansion. That’s where we met Maisie, the clone girl.
The what??
Yeah, apparently Hammond had a partner that he never mentioned for some reason, whose granddaughter is a clone. And in this movie, she’s kidnapped by the bad guys because her genetic make-up could seemingly cure almost any disease known to humanity. Had her creator told someone, or jotted down that seemingly pretty earth-shakingly important information somewhere, they could have spared everyone a ton of grief.
This is a lot for me to process.
I’m sorry.
I’m literally wearing Jurassic Park pajamas right now.
Look, the original movie is still great. But at this point, the franchise is just beating a dead brachiosaurus. With the exception of one or two spirited action scenes, this movie is just a limp, dull, sweatily desperate attempt to exploit our already-strained nostalgia for Jurassic Park.
I still want to see it.
Of course, you do -- in a few weeks' time, you’re going to be proudly extolling the comedic virtues of Weekend at Bernie’s II and the nuanced emotional drama of Rookie of the Year.
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Top Image: Universal Pictures
