Jurassic World Dominion's first batch of reviews are quite negative, earning the movie the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the Jurassic Park franchise. While most of the movies in the franchise have been poorly reviewed, they still tend to draw a large audience and see a fair amount of success at the box office.
Jurassic Park's 1993 release was met with rave reviews and a huge run at the box office making it the highest grossing movie of all time until it was passed by Titanic in 1997. Jurassic Park's reception gave it a reputation as one of the most popular movies of all time, but its success set a high bar the rest of the franchise has always struggled to live up to.
So far, the majority of Jurassic World Dominion's reviews have been negative, but with a 39 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, that means nearly four in ten critics gave it a positive review, so there's still at least some support in smaller pockets. When it comes to the criticisms, the writing is one of the primary complaints, citing simplistic character beats, a lack of emotion, and an over-reliance on nostalgia.
"Orchestrating two bland, wholly disconnected plotlines, Jurassic World Dominion reduces all of its legacy characters into blank sheets of paper walking through plot developments..."
- Guardian
"Overwhelmingly mediocre and pointless, contrived and lifelessly convoluted to the point of gibberish."
"Jurassic World Dominion is ultimately an unsatisfying ending to both new and old franchise fans with a weak script, an unspeakably long runtime, weird structure, and pacing issues while awkwardly ignoring the Stegosaurus in the room."
It's common for legacy sequels tasked with tying up multiple generations of franchise storytelling to get criticism for being over-stuffed or distracted by the many characters and plot-lines they have to juggle, so it may not be a surprise to see the same criticism for Jurassic World Dominion. Obviously character and story is important, but the real sell for much of the audience is in the scary dinosaur mayhem; unfortunately, it seems like the epic dinosaur action and special effects may not be enough to save the movie. Some negative reviews admit the action is enjoyable, but maintain that it doesn't outweigh the movie's other issues, while others claim even the action itself is boring and unimaginative.
"The ultimate failure of “Jurassic World: Dominion” is not only that it relies too much on action, but that the action is lousy."
"The action is perpetual, and perpetually in need of a better director, and editing that heightens and sharpens our pleasurable excitement instead of dulling it."
"Dominion mostly seeks to drag us along for its indulgent 150-minute run in the hopes that it will exhaust us into thinking we’ve been served a rich, satisfying meal."
Despite the thrashing the movie is taking from some critics, a number of reviews defend the movie with more than just lukewarm enthusiasm. While most of the positive reviews don't attempt to exonerate the movie's "messy" writing, most positive reviews say the returning characters and the dinosaur action are enough to make it a fun crowd-pleaser with enough nostalgia to keep fans happy.
"Jurassic World Dominion is a messy but fun end to the Jurassic Park sequel trilogy, bringing franchise themes, characters, and nostalgia full circle."
- CBR
"An improvement from the last Jurassic World installment, with the highlight still being the dinosaurs. Getting to see them in all the situations of Dominion is a treat."
"Jurassic World Dominion is scattershot but entertaining, delivering fun, familiar set pieces."
"The film’s successful marriage of hardcore nostalgia and new challenges works in its favor, and I can’t wait to see what the franchise does next."
The massive success of the first Jurassic Park movie made it hard for any of the sequels, including the Jurassic World movies to compare. Based on the reviews so far, it seems fair to say anyone hoping for the franchise to meet that same level of quality will be disappointed in Jurassic World Dominion, but for anyone simply hoping to see a movie with a lot of dinosaurs and some callbacks to the other movies, some critics say there's still a lot to love in the conclusion to the Jurassic franchise.
