“Jurassic World Dominion” has finally stomped its way into theaters.
The sequel to 2018’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” was originally slated for release last year, but like so many other big screen tentpoles, was delayed until now due to the pandemic.
The sixth film overall in the “Jurassic Park” franchise, which began with Steven Spielberg’s classic back in 1993, will close out this current “Jurassic World” trilogy. The story takes place four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar and the dinosaurs escaping the Lockwood compound. Dinosaurs now live freely alongside people all over the planet, challenging humanity’s status as the apex predators of Earth.
But what humans will try and corral this potential upheaval while also protecting these very special animals? Read on to find out.
Here is who is returning to the franchise and who is new in the “Jurassic World Dominion” cast.
Owen Grady (Chris Pratt)
Owen Grady, the animal behaviorist hired by Jurassic World to train velociraptors, is the main character in the trilogy. He’s brash and lovable and does this thing with his hands when training the dinosaurs that every zookeeper in the country was doing the summer “Jurassic World” came out (we all remember it). In the two earlier movies we watched his relationship with Claire Dearing, former business operations manager of Jurassic World, get rekindled as the Jurassic World operation falls apart.
In this installment, he and Claire serve as surrogate parents to Maisie Lockwood, the little clone girl introduced in the previous chapter, “Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom” (more on her in a minute). Pratt is known for roles like Peter Quill aka Starlord in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” films as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He also starred in “Parks and Recreation” as Andy Dwyer.
Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard)
Claire Dearing leads the Dinosaur Protection Group, which aims to safely ensure that the animals that escaped from the Lockwood compound aren’t hunted or exploited. She formerly served as the park operations manager of Jurassic World before her science project, the Indominous Rex, escaped, leading to widespread disaster. After the closure of Jurassic World, she became radicalized and is now passionate about animal rights. Dearing has gotten back together with Grady, her rascally former flame, and together they watch over Maisie Lockwood. Bryce Dallas Howard played Hilly Holbrook in “The Help” (2011) and Gwen Stacey in “Spider-Man 3.” (2007)
Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern)
Ellie started out as Dr. Alan Grant’s personal and professional partner, a paleobotanist recruited, like Grant, by John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), to assess the safety of Jurassic Park. After the first film, she ended up marrying Mark Degler, who works for the State Department and they had children together. (This is briefly covered in Joe Johnston’s “Jurassic Park III.”) Later they get divorced. In “Jurassic World: Dominion,” it’s Sattler who recruits Grant when she uncovers a potential worldwide ecological catastrophe caused by the return of some very ancient locusts that may also have a connection to Jurassic World and their old friend Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong).
Dern has along line of projects in tow, some more recent ones including the television adaptation of “Big Little Lies,” Marmie in Greta Gerwig’s rendition of “Little Women” (2019), Norah Fanshaw in “Marriage Story” (2019) and Bibbi in “Wild” (2014).
Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neil)
Grant was one of the main characters in the first 1993 film, a gruff paleontologist who creates a surrogate family with Sattler and the kids visiting Jurassic Park. Hammond invited the paleontologist to his park, in an effort to get his sign-off on the park’s safety and scientific viability. Of course, when things went to hell, he sprung into action, helping the survivors maneuver amongst the out-of-their-cages creatures. Along with his partner Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Grant worked to save the kids from velociraptors, a rampaging T-Rex and a very electrified fence. In “Jurassic Park III,” Grant gets conned into returning to Side B (the second island) in an effort to locate and rescue a missing child. He manages to survive that ordeal too.
In “Jurassic World: Dominion,” he’s recruited by Sattler to help her solve a mystery involving ancient locusts. Together they travel to the campus of Biosyn and are reunited with chaotician Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). Sam Neil is most well-known for previous “Jurassic Park” films but also starred in Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.”
Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum)
Dr. Malcolm was introduced as a rock star mathematician in the original “Jurassic Park,” recruited by Hammond to join the rest of the team in analyzing the soon-to-be-opened theme park’s readiness. Well versed in “chaos theory,” the black-leather-clad Malcolm tried to be heroic and wound up nearly dead. (In the Michael Crichton novel he actually dies.) Steven Spielberg’s sequel, “The Lost World,” saw Malcolm return to the dinosaur-infested fold by traveling to the second island (Isla Sorna), to help rescue his girlfriend (Julianne Moore) and bring back vital information to Hammond. He survived (barely).
In “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” we briefly see Malcolm as he warns a congressional hearing about the dangers of dinosaurs and genetic tampering (much of his dialogue was lifted from Crichton’s original novel). As we catch up with him in “Jurassic World: Dominion,” he has become the in-house chaotician for Dodgson and Biosyn and teams up with his friends Sattler and Grant to uncover a larger mystery. In addition to many iconic roles, Goldblum has also appeared as The Grandmaster in “Thor: Ragnarok” (2017) and Deputy Korvacs in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014).
Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise)
A new character! Watts used to be a pilot in the Air Force, but she dropped out for unknown reasons. Both brash and brilliant, she now works as a smuggler, picking a ragtag assortment of gigs, primarily transporting illegal cargo. Biosyn hires her to work for them to smuggle their contraband items by plane. Some of that cargo includes dinosaurs that need to be transported to their nature preserve, just outside their corporate campus. Watts becomes the unlikely companion to Owen Grady, as he makes a desperate bid to get to the Biosyn preserve and rescue both his makeshift daughter Maisie and Beta, Blue’s baby velociraptor. This plan is all well and good, as long as the flying dinosaurs don’t strike first … Wise has appeared in “Someone Great” (2019), “Fatherhood” (2021) and “The Harder They Fall” (2021).
Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott)
This is a deep dive, but some “Jurassic Park” superfans will probably remember the name. “Dodgson! We’ve got Dodgson here!” Dodgson, the head of Biosyn, sent Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) on his ill-fated odyssey of corporate espionage, which ended with him getting brutally poisoned and then eaten. Dodgson returns in “Jurassic World Dominion,” this time played by Campbell Scott (original actor Cameron Thor was sentenced in 2016 to six years in federal prison for sexually assaulting an underage girl). He is still head of Biosyn and is still after that dinosaur DNA (he’s obsessed, really). And his manipulation of ancient locust DNA along with his thirst to uncover the truth about both Maisie and Beta’s unique genetic make-up makes him a straight-up villain this time around. Scott has recenty appeared in “House of Cards” and “WeCrashed.”
Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie)
Another new character! Ramsay Cole serves as Biosyn’s head of communications. And we first encounter him when Sattler and Grant visit the campus, just outside the gates of the Biosyn “nature preserve” that serves as the home to many of the escaped dinosaurs from the Lockwood complex (from the end of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom”). Cole reconnects Sattler and Grant with Malcolm, but his allegiance remains cloudy and unclear – is he going to help them uncover the mystery within Biosyn’s walls or will he thwart their every attempt? Athie has appeared in Netflix’s “The Get Down,” “The Circle” (2017), “Black Box” (2020) and “Underwater” (2020).
Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon)
Maisie grew up in Lockwood Manor, home of Sir Benjamin Lockwood (played by an extra-grandfatherly James Cromwell) in Northern California. Lockwood worked with John Hammond as a business partner, but was ousted due to his compromised morals. Those compromised morals gave birth Maisie, literally! Maisie is a clone of Benjamin’s daughter Charlotte Lockwood, who had a disease that she corrected in her genetic duplicate that she carried in her womb. (She literally gave birth to herself! Weird!) Charlotte died of the disease but she saved Maisie from it by cleansing her DNA appropriately. In “Jurassic World: Dominion,” Maisie is basically Grady and Dearing’s daughter, with the three of them living in a remote cabin. When she ventures out into the unknown, she finds herself kidnapped, leading Grady and Dearing to mount a desperate rescue operation.
Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong)
Can we just pause for a moment and talk about how weird it is that Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong), a genial and seemingly helpful minor character from the original “Jurassic Park,” was turned into an oversized villain in the “Jurassic World” trilogy? Even in the first “Jurassic World” film he seemed like an okay guy, maybe a little twitchy and questionable, but as far as highly paid corporate employees go, safe enough. Nope! After helping to create the Indominus Rex in the first film, he worked for Lockwood’s company to develop more toothy monstrosities and sell them on the black market. (This included the Indoraptor, born out of the Indominus rex, a glitchy “prototype” for an eventual dinosaur that gets loose and eats a bunch of people, stalking around the Victorian mansion like Dracula.) In “Jurassic World: Dominion,” he’s working for Biosyn on several top secret projects and finally – hopefully! – has a crisis of conscience.
Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman)
Yet another new character for “Jurassic World: Dominion!” Lachman, a veteran of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” and “Dollhouse,” plays a mysterious character that has become a subject of interest for the CIA’s new division devoted to dinosaur-related crimes (yes this is 100% an actual plot point). When Grady is recruited to help bring her down during a deal at an underground dinosaur market (again: real), all hell breaks loose, leading to Grady being chased through the streets of Malta by several very nasty raptors. “Jurassic World: Dominion” director Colin Trevorrow has hinted that, should there be further entries in the franchise (and we’re pretty sure there will be), Lachman could factor in heavily. Lachman also recently appeared in “Severance” as Ms. Casey.
