Photo Property Amblin Pictures/Universal Studios
When we first heard the news that they were making a Top Gun sequel a few years back, I was concerned.
Okay, so I wasn’t concerned. It would be more appropriate to say that I laughed, because it sounded like a genuinely unnecessary sequel to a movie that was made for an entirely different generation.
I could not have been more wrong, of course, because Top Gun: Maverick is a fantastic movie that stands on its own while also completing the story arc of the original Top Gun. I’ve written about it once already. And I’ve seen it twice.
Trust me. It’s good.
I have also seen the new Jurassic World sequel, Jurassic World: Dominion, and I am sad to report that I cannot say the same thing about this highly anticipated sequel.
Before we get into specifics, allow me to muse on the nature of unnecessary stories for a moment.
All stories are, by default, unnecessary. They are not food or shelter or any of that nonsense. Stories have to prove their own worth to be considered necessary.
Now an original story, of course, has a pretty low threshold for proving necessity. If an artist has a story they need to tell, a story that is eating up at them to get out into the world, it can be necessary. Art can become necessary by how it touches us and changes us. Stories can become necessary to us by adding to the world.
Even if their only purpose is to entertain.
An original story that fails to entertain or inform or affect can rightly be described as “unnecessary,” sure. There are plenty of bad movies out there that, despite best intentions, fall short of necessity.
Then again, even bad art can be useful. So maybe I’m being a tad harsh.
However, I would argue that a sequel has a much higher threshold for becoming necessary. The necessary sequel needs to have something new to say. It needs to interact with the stories that came before it somehow. It needs to alter our perception of the original art, or perhaps reinforce a lesson of the original that we have somehow forgotten as a culture.
I would even go so far as to say that entertainment, in and of itself, isn’t enough to make a sequel necessary. Now you have to address the original art, too, in a way that matters.
Top Gun: Maverick did that. It created new stories with new characters who had meaningful lives, but it also fulfilled the arc that was originally created in the backdrop of the Cold War, and that’s an impressive feat of storytelling.
“I am good. I’m very good.” - Top Gun: Maverick to the other movies out right now. (Photo by Skydance Studios)
Jurassic World: Dominion did no such thing.
I give them credit for attempting to complete the story, I really do, given that they brought back the original Big 3. While the original Jurassic Park did tell a complete story, the first two sequels implied some unfinished stories. We needed to know what happened to the budding relationship between Drs. Sattler and Grant. What sort of life is Dr. Malcolm going to live now? How is the world coping with dinosaurs that have been unleashed beyond the borders of their islands?
Admittedly, the one thing that Dominion did well — at times — is manage the growth of its main characters. And usually that would be enough for me, but there were so many other issues with the movie that I just can’t deem it a necessary sequel.
Mostly because the execution fell short of necessity.
Ultimately, Jurassic World: Dominion is a messy assemblage of fan-service moments that do not add up to a quality story.
A throwaway character from the original Jurassic Park, Dodgson, has turned into a xenobiological Steve Jobs, with some playfully awkward tics thrown in for good measure. And he has some thoroughly inexplicable plan for world domination and control of the food markets, etc. Dodgson is joined by the real villain of the series, Dr. Henry Wu, who turns in a performance looking like a dying cancer patient with a sudden turnaround. While the previous two Jurassic World movies established Dr. Wu as a menacing figure pulling the strings from the background, he is now suddenly repentant and has seen the error of his ways.
But he’s not fully repentant, I suppose, because he goes along with a plot to kidnap a teenager for science, so there’s that.
Once the six main characters are all in the same place at the same time, for reasons that are somewhat shaky and coincidental at best, we dive deeper into a story of biological intrigue that includes a few new dinosaurs as a backdrop, not a feature. In fact, the primary biological antagonist is a giant grasshopper.
No, I’m not kidding. I really wish I were.
“Those eyes! Those horrible yellow eyes!” -Someone scared of grasshoppers, probably. (Photo by Boris Smokrovic on Unsplash)
And also Dr. Ellie Sattler is an expert on giant bugs now, as well as dead plants?
While there are some satisfactory moments of growth and closure for the primary characters, it ultimately feels like Jurassic Word: Dominion’s biggest problem is that its focus is never in the right place.
A key example of this is the introduction of new character Kayla Watts, played by DeWanda Wise. Hear me very carefully here. DeWanda Wise does an excellent job with her character, and the conflicted pilot Kayla Watts is an interesting character, but she is also a new character introduced about halfway through the third movie in a sequel trilogy that also features a ton of characters we already know and care about. Trying to squeeze a full emotional arc into the second and third acts of this movie for a character we’ve never seen before and didn’t care about five minutes before the movie started is a bad idea.
I’m not saying that Watts shouldn’t have existed. The movie would have been lesser without her. What I am saying is that some of the focus on her deeper backstory is a waste of story economy. Especially at the conclusion when there’s an emotional shot of her getting a new airplane. It’s not played for laughs, it’s just supposed to be a sentimental moment that matches the conclusions of story arcs we’ve known for anywhere from 10 to 30 years now. This movie has no room for her expanded story.
Not that Watts is a bad character or unimportant. It’s just that longtime Jurassic Park fans probably don’t have the emotional room to care about her character as much as Owen Grady, Claire Dearing, the Lockwood clone-kid, and the original trio of Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm.
Of course, there is a strong likelihood that her story is not intended to end with this movie, now that they’ve acknowledged that this movie is only the conclusion to one trilogy and not the conclusion to Jurassic Park movies altogether. Which is another problem all on its own, because now we have a studio trying to establish a new story in the middle of a conclusion. It may not be as obvious as with your typical mid-sequel, but the subtle elements of incompletion are there.
Good genre films have an A-story, the science-fiction or fantasy or horror plot that drives the action, but they also have a satisfying B-story that provides the human drama which makes the plot matter. Typically, a genre film that fails to connect does so because it fails at the B-story. It fails to produce worthwhile human drama. I would argue that Dominion’s failures are deeper in the A-story than in the B-story, making it a special kind of rare bird that hits both of the wrong notes, but hits the obvious one worse.
When I went to see Jurassic World: Dominion, I had the pleasure of seeing it as a double-feature with the original Jurassic Park. Aside from the fact that the projector exploded with 20 minutes left in the original movie (not kidding), the double-feature was a great way to experience the new movie because it allowed us to see how the recycled elements were used. Dodgson’s appearance, especially, worked better with the reminder of his original role.
However, it also starkly reminded me just why the new Jurassic World trilogy, and the original sequels, for that matter, never quite landed as well as the monster that is Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is and always has been a science-fiction horror film. You have terrifying monsters stalking your characters from the shadows. It starts off with a velociraptor eviscerating a dude, for crying out loud. And the big, bad dude with a gun wasn’t going to survive, but the clever scientist would.
At least we protected the dinosaurs from Covid. (Image property of Amblin Pictures/Universal Studios)
And the kids. You still can’t kill kids in a horror film. Even one with dinosaurs selling lunch boxes to kids. Especially one with dinosaurs selling lunch boxes to kids!
Every sequel and follow-up has taken the route of science-fiction adventure, instead, meaning that they are completely different types of movies. The goals are different. The steps along the way are different. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
Dominion is one case where, I’m sad to say, it just didn’t.
But I also referenced Lightyear as an unnecessary sequel, so let’s talk about that for a second. This is the part where I admit that I have not seen that movie, and I really have no intention to, so I am only really going to talk about perceptions of the movie at this point. Feel free to disregard my comments on Lightyear if you find them egregious. I won’t mind.
And no, I’m not really talking about the controversial lesbian kiss in Lightyear. While that event is undoubtedly helping keep some people away, it is hardly the biggest problem with Lightyear.
The reason I would say that Lightyear is an unnecessary sequel is because nobody knows who the audience is supposed to be. Similar to Jurassic World: Dominion, you have a story that largely banks on the nostalgia of a pre-existing character that audiences fell in love with almost 30 years ago.
Unlike Dominion and Top Gun: Maverick, Lightyear opted to recast the beloved title character with a new voice actor. Obviously Chris Evans is a bigger name right now than Tim Allen. Nobody needs me to point this out to them. However, Tim Allen is Buzz Lightyear. Chris Evans is not.
And Buzz Lightyear is Mrs. Nesbitt! (Image Property of Disney/Pixar)
This would be like if Top Gun had recast Robert Downey, Jr. as Maverick and Jurassic World had recast Sir Ian McKellen as Dr. Malcolm or Helen Mirren as Dr. Sattler. Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern originated those characters on-screen and made them famous. You can’t take them out of the game.
The only reason I didn’t mention someone recasting Sam Neill as Dr. Grant is because…well…come on. It’s untenable. Just like recasting Buzz Lightyear.
Admittedly, Dominion did recast Dodgson, but that’s a minor character, and the original actor is kind of in a bit of legal trouble, so…
If Lightyear is meant to be for the adults who grew up loving Buzz Lightyear, you can’t ignore the actor who created that character. If its meant to introduce a new generation of fans to the character of Buzz Lightyear, why does it feel like every bit of marketing is aimed at adults and fans of the original character?
Maybe Disney/Pixar just failed to learn the lesson that Andy learned in Toy Story: As cool as Buzz Lightyear might be, playing with Buzz Lightyear is much more fun when Woody the Cowboy is there, too.
From the word “Go!,” Lightyear was an ill-conceived attempt at cashing in on nostalgia, with none of the actual nostalgia included.
Stories can prove their value in a number of ways, but the bar is admittedly higher for sequels. Especially sequels that nobody really asked for. Just like conclusions that everyone asked for, but where the promises of conclusion went largely undelivered.
“I’ve got a Golden Ticket! Can…can I please use it on a different movie, though?” (Image Property of Paramount Pictures)
I promise I’m not just “hating on” Jurassic World. I really enjoyed the first Jurassic World movie, and I actually loved Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. I may be one of the few people who did, if much of the internet is to be believed. However, if you gave me a free movie ticket and told me to pick between going to see Jurassic World: Dominion or Lightyear, I’d probably just go see Top Gun: Maverick again.
Or The Black Phone. I really can’t wait to see The Black Phone.
NOTE: Apparently I fell victim to my own sin, because this piece turned out to be an unknown sequel to another piece bemoaning sequels that I wrote four years ago for this website…and completely forgot existed. I even made almost the exact same arguments about necessary vs. unnecessary stories.
But of course, as long as Hollywood keeps making unnecessary sequels, there will be someone there to call them out on it. I claim that role, so therefore my sequels are always necessary.