Jurassic World: Dominion - What The Title Tells Us
The War For The Planet Of The... Dinosaurs?
The Jurassic Park franchise has been a mixed bag. The original is widely considered to be one of Steven Spielberg's best works, as well as one of the greatest science-fiction films of all time. The critical response to its sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, was noticeably colder, and it was even worse for Jurassic Park III, which landed with a meteoric thud (pun #1).
Things looked promising when the long-awaited Jurassic World roared its way into theaters (pun #2). It broke all kinds of records, and currently sits as the 6th highest-grossing film of all time. But just like the planet after an asteroid impact (pun #3), goodwill toward the franchise cooled drastically, courtesy of the most recent film in the franchise, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. That film currently sits at a cool 48% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Perhaps the newest film can rectify this chilly reception and send the franchise out with the bang it deserves (not unlike the dinosaurs... pun #4). Indeed, the title was recently revealed, and it carries some pretty interest implications. Revealed via Chris Pratt's Instagram, the title is officially Jurassic World: Dominion.
Solid title, right? But what can it tell us about the film itself? Quite a bit, actually. In his Instagram post, Pratt cites the definition of the word dominion as "sovereignty or control", with his example being, "man's attempt to establish dominion over nature."
That is the story of human history, and the entire Jurassic Park franchise - irrespective of the quality of each film - has effectively served as a microcosm of that idea. It's the story of humans trying to reign in nature and bend it to their will, and it has almost always backfired. We see it in our world today, with climate change ravaging the most vulnerable parts of the globe. In a way, Jurassic Park can be viewed as a stylized allegory for climate change; humans seek to exert their short-sighted will with reckless abandon, and it turns around to bite us in the ass.
In case you don't remember, the last film ended with the remaining dinosaurs being set free and fanning out across the globe. "Dominion" could refer to the world becoming the dominion of the newly-freed dinosaurs. Alternatively, it could refer to the struggle between humans and dinosaurs - or, on a larger scale, between modern organisms and displaced, out-of-time prehistoric organisms - over dominion of the planet.
Could we be getting a Jurassic World movie in the vein of the Planet of the Apes reboots - specifically Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - wherein surviving humans must contend with a new dominant life-form and try to rebuild civilization in accordance with their new neighbors? Will wee see dinosaurs taking over cities? Will fishing industries collapse as dinosaurs roam for prey?
Will beach-going (and by extension, economies that rely on beach-centered tourism) come to a standstill, what with the oceans being full of ravenous predators? What about air travel? With massive pterosaurs roaming the skies, will it really be safe to fly planes? How will the world's ecosystems deal with this sudden shift? Or will there even be a shift, at all? Perhaps this movie will avoid post-apocalyptic tones altogether, and instead focus on the struggle to prevent dinosaurs from throwing the world out of whack.
The series is about mankind's unbridled ambition serving as its undoing. What happens when you push nature too far? What happens when you don't stop to consider what effects your actions are having? What happens when you get just what you bargained for and more? We'll just have to see when the movie releases on June 11, 2021.