Thanks to COVID-related delays in production and visual effects work, Hollywood’s blockbuster release pipeline has slowed significantly. So it makes sense that valuable billion-dollar hits would be recycled, with a spate of extended editions reminiscent of the 2000s DVD boom. Two particularly distinctive extensions are now available. The big hit of 2021 Spider-Man: No Way Home returns to theaters with 11 minutes of new footage subtitled The More Fun Stuff Version. And an extended version of Jurassic World Dominion with an additional 14 minutes of footage is available for streaming on Peacock, digital rental and Blu-ray. So many extended editions can be categorized as an attempt at repair or a money grab. It is suitable for Jurassic World Dominion‘s kitchen sink quality the newly puffed version works as both.
It certainly has more potential fan mandate than a longer one No way home. The Spiderman Sequel gets some extra character comedy in its longer version, but it was also a widely loved film; a longer version is really just a lap of honor. dominationhowever, received more mixed reactions from both critics and audiences: it is both the lowest-rated Jurassic film on Rotten Tomatoes and the highest-grossing of the Jurassic World trilogy in the United States.
Jurassic World Dominion is the longest law Film by nearly 20 minutes as it both takes credit for closing the Jurassic World trilogy and serves as a reunion/supplement to the first three Jurassic Park films. Essentially, it’s two unwieldy films fused together. It’s a warmly performed but sallow continuation of the Jurassic Park legacy, in which older scientists visit another dinosaur sanctuary and research facility that’s less controlled and less altruistic than it looks. Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum reunite in the same Jurassic film for the first time since the 1993 original Jurassic Park
It would take more than 14 minutes of footage to bring these two films together into a single cohesive, well thought out project. Despite this, almost everyone tends to watch both again domination or watch it streaming, you can also opt for the extended version. (For a penny, for a 160 minute pound!) It’s a de facto Director’s Cut; says Colin Trevorrow This was his version of the film before being asked to cut it back. “It really wasn’t like I went back and did a director’s cut, it’s just that we’ve honestly been given the gift of being able to share the original film,” he says. Like so many director’s cuts before it, this longer version isn’t physically different from a film, but it makes slightly more sense.
There are two main categories of new material in the expanded edition: new dinosaur scenes and expanded versions of puny human scenes. Rather than re-contextualize this crowded monster mush, the additions play on the film’s strengths and weaknesses — meaning the dinosaur stuff is fun, and the human stuff is a bit half-assed. Trevorrow expects character crumbs and fan service to support fans looking for some form of human connection.
The dino scenes are preloaded in the first hour of the movie. The main novelty is the film’s reopening, which won’t be brand new to everyone who sees it. This five-minute sequence – which begins by observing the animals in their natural habitat, nature documentary style, before moving on to “65 billion years later” as the cut point t rex trudges through a drive-in cinema – was available on YouTube since 2021. (It also played as the long opening credits to the film on IMAX screens in 2021.) Perhaps repurposing this teaser as the opening seemed too old, too slow, or too derived from the 22-year Disney disappointment dinosaur.
Regardless, it’s much more elegant than the abbreviated one mosasaur Attack that opens the theatrical version, which appears to be one of the few sequences from the original version that is cut off in the extended version. The beginning of the extended version also ties more closely to the film’s thematic concerns: the folly of assuming that humans rule nature. The transition from a series of dinosaurs in their world to the news footage of dinos in our world emphasizes how their resurrection upsets the status quo for nature and human society. There’s also a kind of serenity in seeing those beautifully rendered dinosaur effects applied to something more naturalistic than a fun but tiring constant motion monster movie.
Nothing else in the domination The Extended Cut is just as worthwhile as that beginning, but there are other fun additions, particularly in the section detailing the lives of Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), and Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). The new cut extends the western vibes of an early scene in which Grady lassos and a Parasaurolophus with a follow-up where Grady is held at gunpoint by poachers (or thieves, actually) who take the dino away from him.
These are the same people who eventually kidnap Maisie, which explains an odd moment in the Theatrical Cut where Grady remarks after the kidnapping that he’s “seen around” her before, making him seem oddly ineffective. (“Oh yeah, some shady guys have been hanging around my secluded cabin and my secret hidden clone daughter, so I made a note of it.”) There’s also a scene where Grady’s beloved raptor Blue kills a hunter, which does more sourdough the sentimentality surrounding the creature; In the theatrical version, Blue apparently avoids killing someone by accident. The Extended Version also features a brief, non-essential but welcome fight between two tiny dinos on the Maltese black market.
The more human new material is harder to spot. Much of this expands on existing scenes. For example, Ellie Sattler (Dern) and Alan Grant (Neill) have a lengthy conversation during their first reunion. This is preceded by a moment when two younger women in Grant’s dig describe the uncovering of dinosaur bones as “accidental” while playing on their smartphones, another sign of this trilogy’s indifference to natural wonders. Later, Grant gets a moment where he gently convinces a hesitant, fearful Maisie to accompany him and Sattler into the tunnels beneath the headquarters of the opposing company, Biosyn.
Grant and Maisie’s exchange is one of only a few to be recreated in the latter half of the film. The other notable extension is a longer version of a tense conversation between main villain Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott) and his disaffected right-hand man Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie). These dialogue scenes were probably cut and shortened for pacing reasons, and it is significant that the last hour of domination feels limp with or without them. The film is caught between the ruthless momentum of the typical blockbuster (which Grant’s encouragement to Maisie unwittingly emulates: “It’s better to go forward than stand still,” he advises) and the desire to give eight or nine main characters the right to what is theirs. Neither the human lines nor the dinosaur action can be cut down enough to give this film enough room to breathe. Even in the longer cut, the filmmakers are forced to rely on listless jokes and filler lines, like Ian Malcolm (Goldblum) describing a bit of giant locust mayhem as “bananas.”
Really, the movie and its plot aren’t bananas enough. This is the first Jurassic film to be cut significantly longer. The network TV version of The Lost World restored some deleted scenes but cut other footage to fit in a network timeslot. And even a version of Jurassic World Dominion approaching the three-hour mark is not a work of glorious, visionary excess.
It’s more of a post-release souvenir of a certain brand of contemporary blockbuster filmmaking, where genuine affection for the material, a confidence in satisfying the hardcore fans, and an ever-present concern for the end result converge into something equally alluring and ponderous. Jurassic Park is an elegantly constructed thrill, and its trilogy of rebooted sequels is an overcrowded theme park. That domination Ultimately, Extended Edition feels like a drawn-out trip through the gift shop.