I was in the theater opening night in 1993 for Jurassic Park’s debut, and what I remember about that movie is the wonder, mystery, and magic of seeing dinos up on the big screen, more realistic and believable than ever before. Similar to how he handled Jaws, Spielberg showed his digital (and practical) dinos somewhat sparingly, using what you heard off camera and just caught glimpses of to keep the tension and making the moments with the dinosaurs that much more exciting. 

Since that movie, it seems the filmmakers have come to rely on the dinosaurs and visual effects as the crutch, and in Dominion we have dinos of all types and sizes everywhere and in nearly every scene, with almost all ready to attack. Perhaps I’m jaded, but 30 years after the original film, the wonder of seeing dinosaurs on screen has passed, and I now expect them to be wrapped in a compelling and somewhat believable story. Just giving me some new, bigger, faster, meaner genetically modified apex predator isn’t enough.

With Jurassic World: Dominion, the sixth entry in the franchise, we have the stars of the original Park—Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and everyone’s favorite chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)—united for the first time with the World cast of Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard). If that sentence alone suggests Dominion has a lot going on, you’re right. 

Trying to bring all of these sub and side stories and plotlines together leaves Dominion jumping around a lot, and trying to pack as much as possible into its 146-minute runtime. It also features a franchise-low Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 30%, dropping from the original Jurassic Park’s 92% and reboot Jurassic World’s 71%. On the flip side, it is nearly tied with the second highest audience score of 77%, just a nick behind World’s 78%, and with some nice, nostalgic call-back moments to the first film, you could say director Colin Trevorrow gave the people what they wanted. 

Taking place four years after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the opening documentary-style footage tells us dinosaurs are now freely roaming the world and people are “learning” to live with them. This has created some obvious issues, and in an effort to control the dinosaurs, a company called Biosyn Genetics has been assigned global collection rights and created a dino sanctuary in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains where they are studying dinosaur DNA to look for ways to improve human life. 

In one major storyline, Grady and Dearing are living together in a remote cabin, where she works to save dinosaurs from a growing black-market industry and he wrangles and relocates stray dinos. They’re also hiding and secretly raising 14-year-old Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), a genetic clone of Charlotte Lockwood, the daughter of Jurassic Park’s co-founder, who scientists want to study for her DNA.

And in the other, Sattler is investigating a series of devastating mutant-locust attacks that are wiping out crops around the globe, except these super-sized locusts are sparing any Biosyn-enhanced crops. When one of the locusts is captured alive, she takes it to Dr. Grant and asks for his help. They decide to visit Biosyn in Italy, where they meet CEO Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), who gave me a very Apple CEO Tim Cook vibe, and are reunited with Dr. Malcolm. (You might recall that Biosyn and Dodgson—played by a different actor—had a brief but important role in the original Jurassic Park, where he recruited Dennis Nedry [Wayne Knight] to steal dino embryos from rival InGen and deliver them in a special Barbasol shaving can.) These stories develop separately until about 105 minutes into the film, when they almost literally crash into each other and the casts are brought together to save each other and ostensibly the world.

My daughter Lauryn best summed up the film about halfway through by saying, “I’m equally bored and excited.” To me, Dominion is really a series a great-looking and -sounding demo scenes with a thin filament of story binding and stringing them together. My guess is that after the initial viewing, you’ll be more likely to turn to one of the six pre-bookmarked scenes on the Kaleidescape download to wow guests than to actually rewatch the movie from start to finish. 

The technical specs show that Dominion was filmed on 35mm and 65mm stock, along with Red cameras at 8K for some scenes. The home transfer is taken from a 4K digital intermediate, and for most of the movie, the images are reference-quality. There’s some light grain present from the film stock in some scenes, but it was never objectionable.

For the most part, what I noticed was tons of sharpness and detail, with clean, clear images. There was also a lot of depth to images while still retaining sharp focus. Closeups revealed loads of textures, such as the scales, claws, teeth, and scratches on the Velociraptor Beta or the grain and stitching in Malcolm’s black leather jacket. You can also see fine facial detail in actors’ faces and clearly see individual strands of hair.

One of the more visually compelling scenes was the bright, gleaming sun-drenched outdoor vistas of Malta. Here, long establishing shots show beautifully clear and razor-edged rows of buildings and roofs, with closeups showing the stonework and mortar lines, letting you appreciate the fine cracks and weathering in the stone blocks and floors. 

There are loads of dark scenes, whether at night or creeping around inside of caves, giving the HDR grade plenty of room to deliver. Black levels are dark and clean, with nice shadow detail for natural images with lots of depth. There are quite a few instances of bright headlights and flashlights probing the dark, or bright, red-orange fiery torches lighting a cave system, and other fiery, burning objects, and bright glowing buttons and screens that all receive extra pop from the HDR pass. 

Other than a brief, almost blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, scene near the beginning shot underwater where a bit of banding is visible in the water layers, the video was impeccable. There were several scenes—one where multiple shafts of light are over a forest and another with bright lights and flames in a cave—that could have easily been video torture tests but looked terrific. Visually, Jurassic World Dominion will make your home theater shine.

Another interesting “nerd fact” is that the original Jurassic Park was the first theatrical film to feature an audio mix from DTS, a competitor to Dolby Digital. To this point, none of the Jurassic films released to the home market have included an immersive Dolby Atmos mix, instead opting for the DTS:X surround mix. But for Dominion the Kaleidescape download does have a Dolby TrueHD Atmos mix. (Whether that will be the audio format featured on the disc remains to be seen.) 

I found the mix immersive, engaging, and exciting, with near constant use of the surrounds and height speakers for either ambient sounds that open and expand the listening space, or big, dynamic sounds during the action. Frequently you’ll hear sounds of dinosaurs growling, skittering, or making other noises from all around the room, alerting you to danger, or have the sounds of soft blowing breezes rustling leaves, with birds and insects off in the distance in jungles and forests, or city street and traffic sounds. Height speakers are frequently called into play, such as when dinosaurs fly and roar past overhead, leap over vehicles, or during a locust swarm that engulfs the room, when characters are plunged underwater, and during a plane crash.  

Bass is also quite deep, room-filling, and tactile. Whether it’s the thundering herds of running dinosaurs, the collision of vehicles, or dino growls and roars that will hit you in the chest with authority, expect Dominion to give your subs a workout in the best way. Even with all of the sonic mayhem, dialogue remains clear and locked into the center channel.

One of the best audio demos is during a chase in Malta involving vehicles, a motorcycle, dinos, and a plane. There are engines revving, tires squealing, dinosaurs leaping overhead and charging, collisions with impacts and debris spilling and crashing all around the room. It’s exciting, intense, and a little ridiculous, but it looks and sounds great. And that kind of sums up the film—go in expecting to have a big, loud, fun time with your family and friends, where you’re wowed by the picture and sound, and you’ll likely enjoy it. 

I’m a fan of the franchise, and even though this film had its flaws, Jurassic remains the surest bet for a big summer blockbuster featuring a spectacle of big VFX, a killer surround mix, and the best digital dinosaurs you’re likely to see. Even though they didn’t share much time on screen, it was great to see the old Park crew united with the new World bunch, and if they decide to return for another, I’ll surely come along for the ride.