Jurassic World Dominion 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray Review

THE MOVIE — 1½/5

Jurassic World: Dominion is supposedly the final feature film and brings together the Jurassic Park OG with Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum with the Jurassic World cast of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. There’s no doubt 1993’s Jurassic Park is a classic, not only had incredible practical effects to go along with a suspense-filled story and unique and fun characters. It was a true achievement from Steven Spielberg. Unfortunately the follow-ups within that trilogy couldn’t live up to the original though I appreciate some aspects of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

Then came Jurassic World in 2010, an attempt to reboot the fledgling franchise that floundered with Jurassic Park III that managed to make $370 million (off of a $93 million budget) but that was a far cry from The Lost World’s $620 million take. So 14 years later we get the soft reboot and bring in Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard to headline and while I thought it was only okay, leaned a bit hard on the “memberberries”, but revitalized the franchise with an incredible $1.67 billion worldwide haul and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom made another $1.3 billion. I might not have cared much for Fallen Kingdom, or its predecessor but clearly it was fun popcorn entertainment for audiences.

Now comes Jurassic World: Dominion (which took in $988 million worldwide) and even though I disliked Fallen Kingdom I guess it had some stupidly fun entertainment value (I mean you had an illegal dinosaur auction happening underneath a mansion for Pete’s sake), Dominion was just annoyingly dumb with zero life to it. Even with bringing back the original cast members together for the first time in nearly 30 years, it was a slog to sit through (I did choose the 160-minute “Extended” version), especially with a cast who seemed to be phoning it in at times, not to mentioned straddled with bad dialogue and listless one-line jokes that even the great Jeff Goldblum could pull off.

In terms of story, the Jurassic Park movies haven’t really had a whole lot of depth to their plots, in fact in the case of The Lost World, probably overstuffed. However, Dominion is one of the thinner of the bunch and involves agriculture, genetically modified locusts and cloning (the end of Fallen Kingdom the Maisie Lockwood character was one). Sure there are a variety of dinosaurs and a few deaths, but the core plot was pretty laughable and not in the fun, entertaining sort of way.

Jurassic World: Dominion was once again adeptly helmed by Colin Trevorrow and did an okay job I suppose as a director, however he also has story and screenwriting credit. But in terms of his direction, maybe it’s just I’ve become more cynical, maybe I’m just not as impressed with CGI creatures fighting other CGI creatures (see the Transformers movies), but I found the bulk of this to be pretty tedious and not for one second I felt any sort of thrills or terror, unlike Jurassic Park.

SPECIAL FEATURES – 3½/5

This release comes with a slightly embossed slip cover, inside is a redemption code for the Digital HD copy.

Battle at Big Rock (10:17) is a short film that’s actually 8 minutes without credits. Just a side story involving a family witnessing the battle between two dinos.

A New Breed of VFX (6:16) looks at the advancements in effects utilized in this film.

Dinosaurs Among Us: Inside Jurassic World Dominion (47:09) is a lengthy, 5-part, making of featurette with interviews by members of the cast and crew with behind-the-scenes footage.

4K VIDEO – 5/5, BLU-RAY VIDEO – 4¾/5

Universal unleashes the dinosaurs onto 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray where it’s presented with the now seemingly standard, for streaming audiences anyway, 2.00 widescreen aspect ratio and given 2160p and 1080p high-definition transfers respectively. Given I watched the entire movie in 4K that will be the focus here, but suffice it to say, the Blu-ray still held its own. In any case, the picture here looks great, detail is sharp and well defined and considering there is a fair portion that takes place in the dark or at night, there was some nice balance going on, no signs of artifacts or aliasing that I could discern.

AUDIO – 4¾/5

Both discs comes with DTS:X tracks (DTS-HD MA 7.1 for those without the capability) and while I wasn’t terribly wowed by this, there is still much to desire. Along with the clear dialogue that mainly comes across the center track, the dinosaur roars gives this some respectable depth along with the various action sequences, particularly at the end. I don’t think this is one to show off one’s surround system, however it is still pretty expansive.

OVERALL — 2½/5

Jurassic World Domination seems to be the end of the feature film franchise and instead of going out with a roar, it went out with a thud. I loved Jurassic Park, appreciated some aspects of The Lost World but the rest were either meandering entertainment or downright were turkeys. And here, even getting back the core cast couldn’t help the thin plot and uneven pacing.