The Sunday Mail
Film Review
Tinashe Kusema
A common gripe that old school movie enthusiasts, like myself, have with Hollywood’s fascination with reboots, remakes and belated sequels is that in most cases they tend to adversely undo the great work of the original.
It is a trend that dates back to yesteryear classics like the 1974 slasher movie “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.
The film brought with it a new level of gore, suspense and terrified audiences.
But it took me something like six months to force myself to watch the 2003 remake.
And guess what? I am still of the opinion that I made the wrong decision to watch it. The remake did not make the grade!
Over the years, I have watched with sadness and horror as more and more of my childhood favourite flicks and franchises get “spoiled.”
Can you believe that a “Face/Off” sequel is currently under works, some 25 years after the original?
That is not all.
Current rumours suggest that Nicholas Cage and John Travolta are expected to reprise the roles of Castor Troy and Sean Archer, respectively, of the 1997 classic.
I do not have to go into detail on what dumb decision this is. However, there are a couple of lessons that Paramount Pictures, assuming they are the people behind this braindead idea, can take from the just wrapped up Jurassic Park reboot.
“Jurassic World: Dominion”, released on demand a fortnight ago, was announced to be the last instalment of the reboot that began back in 2015.
Dominion takes place three years after the events of the last film “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”. The movies see dinosaurs, recently freed from the Lockwood estate and the fall of Isla Nublar, living together with mankind.
Bryce Dallas Howard’s Claire Dearing, guilty-ridded for her part in resurrecting these once extinct creatures, sets about to expose the people who are capturing them for profit and wild experiments.
She does this while taking care of Massie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), the clone child of the late Benjamin Lockwood. Dearing does this together with fan favourite Owen Grady (Chris Pratt).
In the process, we also see the return of Jurassic Park originals Laura Dern, Sam Neill’s Ellie Sattler and Alan Grant.
They set out to investigate a swarm of genetically modified locusts that are going through the food supplies of humans.
When Lockwood’s child is kidnapped, it seems every clue Grady and Dearing find, together with mysterious locusts, points to Biosyn Genetics’ compound, established in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.
The place conducts genomics research, ostensibly seeking ground breaking pharmacological and agronomic applications.
Under normal circumstances, this would have made for a compelling story were it not for the fact that “Jurassic World: Dominion” was announced to be the last instalment in the franchise.
In such cases, there is always the need to create a compelling story and give the franchise a satisfactory conclusion.
Sadly, the writers Emily Carmichael and Colin Trevorrow try to do too much with very little ideas, resources and not enough time.
We all knew that Neil and Dern would always make an appearance in the film, at some point, and their story feels a little shoehorned into the narrative.
They end up being nothing more than fan service devices.
The same can be said about Jeff Goldblum’s Dr Ian Malcolm and BD Wong’s Dr Henry Wu. A host of new characters like Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), Rainn Delacourt (Scott Haze) and Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman) did not liven things also.
Haze and Lachman are the biggest victims of the poor writing and lack of character development.
Likewise, dinosaurs do not really have that much screen time, which also affects the overall production. The movie seems to revolve around the four main characters played by Dern, Neill, Pratt and Howard.
Rather than tell a story, or wrap up one, they spend way too much time running around and away from a string of forgettable dinosaurs.
There is a Quetzalcoatlus that makes a single appearance as it destroys a plane and disappears. Then there are fleeting appearances by a Therizinosaurus and a Pyroraptor.
The only time the creatures get to shine is at the tail end of the movie when a three-way battle between a Giganotosaurus, Therizinosaurus and a returning Tyrannosaurus rex occurs.
But I consider the film’s only highlight to be Campbell Scott’s splendid performance as Biosyn Genetics chief executive officer and the movie’s main antagonist, Dr Lewis Dodgson.
Scott nails every facet of the characters from speech patterns and mannerism to his general demeanour that screams slimy bad guy.
He even gets to go out in a blaze of glory as he gets trapped and killed by three Dilophosaurus.
