It was the conclusion of Jurassic Park week and I took advantage of a public holiday to see the epic final conclusion to Jurassic World in glorious Dolby Atmos.

The Jurassic World trilogy, unlike the previous trilogy, sets out to tell a single story across the three films. When Fallen Kingdom finished, all the building blocks had been laid of a world where human and dinosaur would be co-existing amongst each other and fighting for dominance. No going back. The trailer for Dominion looked to be heading in the direction of extinction but unfortunately the film failed to live up to its own expectations.

Admittingly Dominion was unlikely to go in the direction I was hoping it would – human extinction, with a possible glimmer of hope for survival. Blockbusters tend to avoid such morbid endings but at the very least there could have been some impossible solution to save the day.

Typically in every other Jurassic Park film something happens within the film that by the end, things are no longer the same and effectively changed for good. For the first time in the series Dominion feels to end where it starts off. Leaving everything that happened in the middle mostly irrelevant, which is probably the most disappointing thing about it.

What I enjoyed about the first two Jurassic World films was the idea of building the hybrid dinosaurs and then being used either to be weaponized or for research. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a bad idea that I don’t support but makes for good entertainment with lots of juicy themes to read into. All of this seems to have been left behind in Dominion in favour of a genetically modified locust storyline. It’s an interesting idea exploring the evil of corporations but it was just the wrong idea to close out the series. If the storyline with the hybrids had been fully explored, why make this film? Fallen Kingdom had a great ending and it would have been a nice place to stop.

One of the things I was looking forward to seeing was the progression of Dr. Henry Wu. Last time we saw him, he had almost this supervillain vibe and was involved in a black market sale of the dinosaurs. Admittingly that didn’t end very well but where would he find himself and what would he be willing to do? Yet again we find Dr. Wu behind another new character who is the “bad guy”; Lewis Dodgson. And when we see Dr. Wu he has a more dishevelled look from the last time we saw him. It seems that his actions have finally caught up to him. It would have been nice to see a bit more fleshed out with this character in the final instalment.

Dominion also has the longest runtime in the series and while most of the film paces ok, I felt it took far too long to get into the dinosaur action.

Ok, let’s leave the disappointing stuff there because it’s not all bad and I want to talk about some things that I liked.

I think what most fans are excited for here is the return of the original cast. It’s what made us all fall in love with Jurassic Park in the first place and to have Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum back was a big highlight. I really liked the way the film was structured so that we got to spend time with the Jurassic World and original casts separately, before then combining them all in together. We got to catch up with where they are all at before throwing them into the action as one. I also really liked the pairing off combination between original and newbie.

There are also plenty of fan favourite moments to keep your eye out for. One being the image of a tyrannosaurs walking past a fountain which creates the look of the famous logo of the franchise we all know and love. Very similar to how in the last James Bond film (No Time to Die) has a scene where Bond shoots someone from the famous angle down the camera lens, directly at the audience. Also keep your eyes peeled for the Barbasol can that was used in the first film to smuggle out the embryos. The scene in question really takes it back to the original Jurassic Park film. And while these things don’t serve a purpose to the narrative of Dominion, it’s a nice way of getting to say goodbye after 30 years.

Visually the film looks great up on the big screen, there are some captivating action sequences to enjoy and the performances of the cast are good. The dinosaurs included also looked great, although our favourite velociraptor Blue didn’t have a big on screen role this time around. The bond that she has with Owen however was captured. So this is something from the previous films that has carried across.

Rating:  Disappointment