Immediate Response: Jurassic World- Dominion

 After hearing the best and worst things about this, I decided to see it.

Was it $12 well-spent?
Let's see...

The Good

* The Film is big and bold in scale.

* The mix of Practical Effects (people forget how many Dinosaurs are puppets) and CGI is nice here, mostly being quite seamless.

* The mix of JW and JP Actors is nice.  They play well off of each other without falling into the trap of making the original Character seem inferior to the new ones.

* The Film has several good Set Pieces throughout, which breaks up the monotony a bit in a Film like this.

The Bad

* So, I think this might have been a COVID thing (it started pre-shutdown and picked up in July), but they split up the Characters ALOT here.  You need a flow chart by the hour mark trying to keep track of who's where with who!

Seriously, they split up to search for objects/people more times than in a 12-Hour Scooby-Doo Marathon!

* That structure also makes for alot of random things being setup- like a random Allosaurus/T-Rex rivalry or the new big bad Dinosaur- for a much later payoff.  It, again, makes things hard to follow sometimes.

* Speaking of that big bad Dinosaur, the Film feels like they wanted to use every last one in this one (since it is the Finale- so they say).  As such, they appear, get one Scene and vanish.

* Like the Dinosaurs, many Characters either just stop appearing after 2 Scenes- like Justice Smith- or vanish for large chunks of the Runtime- like Jeff Goldblum.  Was that a COVID thing too or are there just too many Characters?

* There's alot of Editing cheats here.  For instance, a Dinosaur is stunned for what seems like 20-30 seconds...which was somehow enough time for 4 people to climb a ladder?!?

* Our last hope having the 'Owen is the kid traumatized with the raptor claw in the first Film by Alan' has been dashed!

* For all of the big 'Dinosaurs mixed into our World' hype, it happens a few times in the Intro Scenes...before they eventually end up at a Facility where their appearance seems natural.

* As always, the giant Dinosaurs are masters of stealth.  Sneaky, multi-story tall, multi-ton creatures.

The Film is big, loud and kind of dumb.  It does manage to work in what you'd hope to see in one of these- just with even less subtlety- though.

If you like the newer Films more than the originals, this one will satisfy.  If you don't, it's...alot of sound and fury signifying nothing.  Good-looking sound and fury though.