Jurassic World Dominion's Dinosaurs Create 1 Huge Action Problem

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Jurassic World Dominion.

Jurassic World Dominion is the final chapter in the Jurassic World film series, but its action sequences cause a huge problem for the franchise. The latest Jurassic Park movie hinges on the premise that dinosaurs have run amok in the modern world, and so aims for a strong sense of realism relative to the franchise. Yet while Steven Spielberg's original Jurassic Park movie did an excellent job of making what was on-screen feel plausible, the latest installment, Dominion, is arguably the worst Jurassic movie to date.

Dominion picks up from where Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom left off - with dinosaurs roaming the world side-by-side with humans. The cast and creators of Dominion promised that the movie would be all action from the beginning, making it unique from the other Jurassic Park films that focused more on building suspense. And while this all-action makes sense given the chaotic idea of dinosaurs freely walking the Earth, there is an issue with how Jurassic World Dominion delivers it.

The huge problem with Jurassic World Dominion's action sequences is how the speed at which the dinosaurs move constantly changes to conveniently fit the narrative. The worst offending scene was the movie's chase sequence in Malta, where the trained Atrociraptors in Jurassic World Dominion try to hunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt). Two Atrociraptors manage to keep up with Owen, who is riding a motorcycle, but the one chasing Claire, who is on foot, fails to outrun her. Changing the dinosaur's speed in such a jarring way makes Jurassic World Dominion's action less real-feeling and immersive because the movie's heroes are never truly in danger - with every death-defying stunt ringing increasingly hollow.

This is not the only time that Dominion starts an action sequence with its dinosaurs being fast, only to have them move slowly at certain moments to avoid one of the lead characters dying. In the Biosyn Valley, the group finds a safety outpost that they need to climb a ladder to get to. Maisie (Isabella Sermon) is one of the first to climb, and it takes her around a minute to do so. But after an attack by the Gigantosaurus, one of Dominion's fiercest dinosaurs, the remaining five members of the group climb the ladder in less than 20 seconds combined. It's the type of detail that makes the action in Dominion superficial because the dinosaurs are constantly presented as unstoppable threats right until the moment they might actually harm one of the main characters.

At times, Jurassic World Dominion does make an effort to explain why the dinosaurs are slower. During the footrace in Malta, Claire purposely takes sharp corners because the Atrociraptor is clumsy around turns, so it takes them longer to navigate than a human. Those occasions help bring a level of realism to the action sequences of Dominion, which could be the last Jurassic Park movie, but the speed issue still arises in that same scene because Claire is able to outsprint the notoriously fast raptor when they are running down straight paths. Jurassic World Dominion offers blockbuster action sequences, but they are let down when the dinosaurs start to move at convenient paces right as they are about to devour the movie's main characters.

Next: Jurassic World: Dominion's Biggest Failure Was Lying To You

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