Jurassic World Dominion Prologue Review

Hello, and welcome to Mesozoic Mind! Today, we are making our first foray into pure fiction in months. Yesterday, a teaser trailer for the latest and [apparently] last Jurassic Park film was released, Jurassic World: Dominion, after a while with the fellow Universal film Fast and Furious 9 in select Imax theatres, but been known to the users of Paleo Media Central, a Discord server run by one Kingrexy I am part of. Let me start off that the last two films, Jurassic World and Fallen Kingdom, I don't like them too much, due to both the undercooked and bland story and how compared to the well made original trilogy's designs, theirs are very inaccurate in many ways, with FK's Baryonyx being an infamous offender with taking its "Dino-Croc" image way too far. However, from  what I can tell, Dominion will actually try for better accuracy, helped by having Stephen Brusatte as scientific advisor (way better then 2000's era Jack Horner), .

The Prologue itself will not actually be in the film, and be more of a short film, so we'll treat it as such. Anyways, let's get started!

It begins with this beautiful shot of a sunrise, with these odd trees framing it. They are actually Dragon Trees from the african island of Socotra. Despite actually being fairly recent evolutionarily, their appearance alone does set the tone of the short: an alien, primordial world reminiscent of classic palaeo-works of the 20th century, like Fantasia's The Rite of Spring segment. I admit I'm not a fan of this kind of thing (long story, but you can find some reasons why in this blog post by T.K. Sivgin at his Manospondylus blog, and it has to do with our failure to understand evolutionary history), but whatever, it's good for what it is.

We then get our first big shot of the short. It begins with a herd of sauropods walking through a mudflat and doing their best brachiosaurus impression. In fact, they're actually apparently modified from the Brachiosaurus' CG model. They're meant to be the south american Dreadnoughtus, and they're imposingly great both physically and in accuracy, though they have the inaccurate elephant feet that plague most sauropods in popular culture.

As we pan left, we see a flock of Quetzalcoatlus striding in a lake and feeding on fish, and in one case, a mosasaur carcass, frightening off some other pterosaurs scavenging it. While fishing and scavenging weren't the main food of them and most azhdarchids, their design is still very great, even having the filaments known as pycnofibers on them, and I like the tails of them being downright mammalian instead of just a scaley rod or bump. And hey, anything's better then.... the gargoyles called Jurassic World's "Dimorphodon"

There a shot of Ankylosaurus drinking afterwards, but since I don't like them due to not being as flat as they should be and being the same as their modern counterpart, we'll pass on discussing them.

Next is shot of a river canyon much like one in Argentina, where pteranodon have made a rookery. Its pretty nice all things considered, and contains several touches like different coloured ones and one diving for prey as Pteranodon is hypothesised to have actually done (and actually utilised in JW).

Then we see a cave with some nests in it with eggs. Who should show up but a stereotypical Oviraptor, cracking one open and eating them. While it could use a bit more feathers and not have pronated hands, I like it just for having the most feathers seen in the entire film series so far. Also, I admit the fact its seen in nigh-silhouette makes it hard to discern details, but its a decent stylistic choice.

We have another panning shot, this time of a herd of Nasutoceratops crossing a river, buffalo-style. It's a nice shot and a nice design to go with it too.

However, things go downhill come the next and final Mesozoic segment. We start off with what' is apparently meant to be the early cretaceous tyrannosauroid Moros, but small as a turkey and not mule-sized. The only thing that keeps it from being any worse are the bare minimum of feathers.

Its scavenging from the mouth a rough contemporary of it, Giganotosaurus. Ever since it was leaked online, its savaged for the weird choice of giving it these armoured scales and a weird hump/sail. At least its gurgling vocals it makes are nice, akin to what many birds do.

In rising up, it casts a shadow over a nearby Iguanodon. It's pretty good all things considered, if so small in role its superfluous.

Who should then show up but Tyrannosaurus, seeming to have been tarred and feathered instead of evolving them naturally, as so many faulty feathered dinosaur depictions are. A fight breaks out, because of course. Its pretty decent, and reminiscent of the great Ray Harryhausen's style of making monsters fight, something another Jurassic Park film, III, did. It ends with the Giga victorious, biting down hard (but IRL its jaws and head weren't built for that kind of thing) throwing the rex around and dropping it into a river and killing it. A mosquito buzzes in, just as it did for one Dreadnoughtus at the start, and sucks the blood. Anyone remotely familiar with the franchise knows what's gonna happen.

And then we cut to the present, where THE T. rex is being pursued by a helicopter, and into a drive-in movie theatre. Chaos ensues as the T. rex tramples through the cars and against the backdrop. I like how she's not trying to attack, but getting the hell out of there and trying to scare humans off.

So with that over, what do I think of the JWD Prologue? It's... a pretty good short film.

The first and best thing about the short is the atmosphere: the yellow sunrise/sunset feel of it really gives off an ancient, primordial feel, helped by the scrubland/desert setting and the plants. In fact, I think it's actually meant to be a dream one character is having, hence its dreamlike setting.

The visuals are astounding. The way light interacts with the models and the details on the models themselves are all excellent.

There isn't much of a story to the short in the first half, being more of a series of very short vignettes of moments of each dinosaurs' lives, though there's just enough to make one wonder about their lives, like asking where the Nasutoeratops herd is going. The Giga vs. Rex and modern sequence has more of one, the implication being the Rex we see is the ancestor of the one we know and love. Finally, the chase scene that concludes it is fun to watch, especially with people being unaware of the chaos and dinosaur around it.

This is something straight out of a commercial for a movie theatre chain, for better or for worse

As for music... well there isn't any, whether a total lack in the Mesozoic scene beyond a few notes, or merely digenetic in the present up until the end. This isn't a bad thing at all, though. Its makes for much more naturalistic feel, as though someone had gone back and actually shot footage. Helps the soundscape is already impressive on it's own.

Course, the biggest problem with the Prologue is inaccuracies. Admittedly the franchise has always had it's problems with that. It doesn't help back in the first World movie, they tried to justify inaccuracies, like lack o feathers, by saying through Wu that the dinosaurs INGEN has made and genetically modified don't resemble the real things at all, but lo and behold they're more or less the same (whether for returning dinosaurs like Rex or Nasuto, or new ones like Giga, which will also appear in present).

However, I can admit I can forgive the blatant anachronisms of the Prologue, as I honestly think it' meant to be a dream someone is having.

The worst part is as seen with the Velociraptors, Dilophosaurus, and Spinosaurus from JP films of yesteryear, the public just eats it up and assumes this is what is was like when it's far from the case. This is honestly my biggest frustration with the franchise: the fact that the only big dinosaur-centric franchise still going and practically synonymous with the whole clade, it has way too much sway over how the public sees dinosaurs. This is why many people get mad that there are no feathered dinosaurs: how many of you don't like the way feathered dinosaurs look? Blame in part the franchise's reluctance to have feathered dinosaurs in the name of brand recognition. But that's enough ranting for one post (and I may save it for another one).

I admit I didn't care for the present day scene at the end. I came for the Mesozoic and stayed for them. Doesn't help Rexy's size seems to be a bit inconsistent in the sequence.

If I were in charge of it (and didn't get any interference from those dumb Universal execs), and admittedly being separate from the film itself, I'd make it as accurate as I could, even more so then it already is while still maintaining a stylised quality. Non-pronated hands, lips on the big theropods, complex feathers. More importantly, it would be a bedtime story told by the Fallen Kingdom character Benjamin Lockwood to his daughter Maisie about the rise of the Tyrannosaurs. And it would be in two parts: the first set in a fictional version of the Early Cretaceous, where we see a baby Moros and its mother trying to survive in the wilds of it, having to dodge the giant Acrocanthosaurus, who perishes to represent the extinction of its kin the allosaurs, allowing for the tyrannosaurs (at least in most of the northern hemisphere) to take over the apex . They escape using their long legs allowing for fast speed compared to the acro, and while it can break its jaws just on a mere log, we see Moros can bite right through bone of a turtle. We then see an adult T. rex millions of years later, walking through the land in search of prey (passing the animals seen in the short) and ending with it hunting Triceratops and giving us the Rex vs. Trike fight the films have oddly strayed away from. It would end with the T. rex saying her name and lunging, only to reveal it's just a dream Maisie is having in between events of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. We get one last thing dinosaur related, and then comes the logo.

Overall, the Prologue is an excellent short for what it is and one of the most artistically beautiful things the franchise has made, though not without its baffling creative choices. I really do hope Dominion is as good as this Prologue, if not better.

• Accuracy - 5/10
• Aging - too recent to age, but 6/10
• Presentation - 8/10
• Visuals - 9/10
• Music - 5/10
• Storytelling - 7/10
• Rewatchability - 8/10