Opening Night: Jurassic World Dominion

Good day CrewMembers and welcome to “Opening Night: Jurassic World Dominion”

The purpose of the “Opening Night” feature is to give newcomers the foundations and basic information to be able to enjoy the program more fully. We work to avoid probable spoilers and speculation to allow everyone to enjoy “THOSE” moments together. We take our focus from the trailers and on-the-record news confirmed by the cast and crew.

Let's get caught up on the franchise "65 million years in the making."

As you probably know, Dominion is the third movie in the Jurassic World trilogy which is a sequel to the Jurassic Park trilogy, so let's break down the JP Trilogy first.

This whole franchise began in 1993 when Steven Spielberg released his widely successful adaptation of Michael Crichton's widely successful novel, Jurassic Park. The movie sequel, The Lost World was released in 1997 and the original trilogy ended in 2001 with Jurassic Park III.

Jurassic Park was a lead by an ensemble cast of characters featuring John Hammond the original face of InGen/the Walt Disney of Biological Attractions, Dr Alan Grant Paleontologist/'Raptor Lover, Dr Ellie Sadler Paleobotinist/Inheritor of Worlds, and Dr Ian Malcolm, Chaotician/Group "Bad Boy." While splitting up after the first adventure, these characters would carry the original franchise and are set to join the new trilogy in Dominion.

After JPIII, the franchise consisted of comic books, video games, and toys. Then, in 2015, Jurassic World imagined a place where John Hammond's dream HAD come true and tourists were able to visit genetic recreations of long-extinct reptiles. Sounds cool for a real life destination, but you aren't looking for a documentary at the moment, right? Right, so some people got greedy, dinosaurs escaped, people got eaten, dinosaurs got blamed.

Here's where we take our first scenic detour that not many people may know about. Back in 2019, before COVID shut down the world, "Jurassic World Live" was a traveling live show set in the Jurassic World franchise. The plot of the show started at the same time as Jurassic World was running into trouble, and there are very tight connections to JW. While the human cast is all new, they do name drop other franchise characters and dinosaurs specific to the franchise show up "in person." The show team consulted with Spielberg, writer/director Colin Trevorrow, and series producer Frank Marshall to be sure the live show was written to be within the franchise canon.

Sadly, COVID stopped the tour short and it appears to be on a permanent hiatus at this time. (Editor's note: between writing and publishing this feature the tour has announced new dates for 2022/2023!!) There are a few videos on YouTube you can watch to get the story line, but none are official recordings. At this point, I wouldn't expect Jeannie the Troodon or her human friends to show up in Dominion, but it sure would be cool to get an update on them!

Before getting to the next film, we're also going to talk about "Camp Cretaceous" on Netflix. The story line here also begins like "JP Live" with the events spinning from the end of Jurassic World. This series focuses on a group of Jurassic World Camp Students that are left behind forcing them to fend for survival. 4 Seasons of 37 total episodes have been released with the 5th and final season set to premiere in July 2022. This is also a fun little side-series to explore, but like "JP:Live," not one that will likely cross over to Dominion. Except that this series does seem to take a major premise from JW and previews what could show up in Dominion. This is probably one of those times when it's not quite required viewing, but will add some nice flavor to the future.

Getting back on track with the theatrical films, we have arrived at Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. This is where the transition from the premise of the first 4 movies of the Jurassic Franchise to Dominion really takes precedence. There's also more in-universe history revealed and more new characters to add to the family.

Before jumping into Dominion and there is another fun sidebar to take with two short films. "Battle at Big Rock" is a short film that takes place between Fallen Kingdom and Dominion. It also gives us the first look at how dinosaurs have been integrating themselves into the world. Jurassic World: Dominion: Prologue was originally set to be the opening of Dominion itself, but was ultimately cut from the final product. However, Universal and Trevorrow wanted to experiment with releasing it on its own. The film originally played before F9 (aka Part 9 of the Fast and the Furious franchise) in theaters, but was subsequently released online. Trevorrow likened this short film to an origin story that you'd see in a superhero film.

And that brings us to the present, and to a checklist!

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Opening Night Checklist

JURASSIC PARK (1993)

JURASSIC PARK THE LOST WORLD (1997)

JURASSIC PARK III (2001)

JURASSIC WORLD (2015)

"JURASSIC WORLD LIVE" (2019)*

"CAMP CRETACEOUS" (2020)*

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (2018)

"BATTLE AT BIG ROCK" (2019)

"JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION PROLOGUE" (2021)

JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION (2022)

*Fun, but not required.

Do you think that we've seen our last of the Jurassic Franchise?

~Until then, enjoy the show!