Fans Seem To Be Divided Over The Dialogue In Jurassic World Dominion
There are very few 2022 movies that have been preceded by the same level of massive global anticipation as "Jurassic World Dominion." After all, this is the final entry in one of the most successful film trilogies of all time. Both 2015's "Jurassic World," directed by Colin Trevorrow, and its 2018 sequel "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," helmed by J. A. Bayona, became billion-dollar box office smashes and earned a place among the world's biggest box office movies. With movie theaters still recovering from the pandemic slump, expectations are high for "Jurassic World Dominion" to follow in the footsteps of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Top Gun: Maverick" to help bring large scale blockbuster entertainment back.
Beyond that, this new "Jurassic World" film is being hailed as a can't-miss cinematic event for the fact that it brings back the three main actors from the original films: Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm, together again for the first time since the 1993 original.
As such, "Jurassic Park Dominion" isn't just the conclusion to one cycle in the franchise. It's also a long-awaited legacy sequel, which explains why Universal Pictures would choose to promote the film with a relatively simple, character-focused clip of Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler reconnecting after all these years. However, fan reception to that snippet has been polarized — particularly in response to the writing of the two characters' dialogue.
The clip of Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler's reunion was originally met with skepticism
In late May, promotional channels around YouTube posted a clip of "Jurassic World Dominion" titled "Sattler Invites Grant to Come Along." Fans of the "Jurassic Park" franchise reacted with a mixture of joy at seeing the characters back in action after nearly three decades, along with a healthy measure of confusion at the way they were behaving in the clip.
On the r/JurassicPark Reddit thread dedicated to the video, most of the comments expressed concern that the characters' conversation didn't sound natural. The most-liked comment, by u/invaderism, noted, "Not a fan of the scripting, thankfully we have Dern and Neill's gravitas to make up for it." Fellow Redditor u/Karjumi agreed, noting that Sattler and Grant's stilted, generic exchange of words about Sattler's family "sounds like how they teach english via roleplay to middle schoolers."
Further on, u/CJFury observed, "Another conversation on this thread about it not 'feeling' like Ellie Sattler. Could be rooted in the script." u/philomaxik lamented, "That didn't feel natural at all. Grants reaction to Ellie's divorce felt off..." Another commenter, u/SlowRiot4NuZero, went even further and asked point-blank, "Wow you have these great actors and give them this wooden dialogue to work with? Oof."
Of course, as with any promotional campaign that big, fan response wasn't uniform. Not long after, another Reddit thread was started in defense of the clip, prompting some more measured takes on it.
Some fans dig the clip's sense of real-life awkwardness
On May 24, the same day "Sattler Invites Grant to Come Along" was released, Redditor u/Toxicity-F3 wrote a post titled, "Can I be honest? I'm not really too bothered by the dialogue from the Grant and Sattler clip." In the post, they elaborated, "Granted, it's nowhere near JP/TLW levels in terms of how natural it sounds, but it was by no means terrible."
The post had dozens of upvotes and several comments that concurred with the point being made. u/MasterDoot wrote, "That's literally how a conversation would go in really [sic] life lol, I don't get the hate." Further down the thread, the feeling was echoed by u/koola_00, who pointed out, "I mean, from the looks of it, Grant and Ellie haven't seen each other in a while, so it makes sense if you ask me."
Some fans went further and actually praised the scene's less sensational slant, with u/FatherUnderstanding arguing, "For me it actually sounds like two people who haven't search [sic] other for years." Meanwhile, u/eeljar wrote, "If anything it's refreshing to see two characters in a JW movie just talking to each other like adults with real adult lives. The dialogue wasn't riveting, but at least it felt believably human, something I feel is largely lacking from the new movies."
In other words, "Jurassic World" fans appear to be divided on this brief sample of the film's dialogue — which isn't new for this series.
Dialogue has been a point of contention since the start of the trilogy
Despite their massive financial success, the "Jurassic World" movies are not unanimously beloved among fans of the "Jurassic Park" universe, and one point of particular contention has always been the dialogue.
Even in the aforementioned defensive Reddit thread, the original poster granted that "I wish [director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow] would stop writing his own dialogue and get somebody competent to write good conversations for him." The most-upvoted comment by u/Inevitable-Flow-9661 noted, "One of my main gripes about the JW series is the lackluster dialogue at some points."
The original screenplay for "Jurassic World" was written by Trevorrow and his habitual collaborator Derek Connolly with contributions from story writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (via IMDb). That film featured such controversial lines as "We'll always be brothers" and "Probably stick together, for survival." Other famously awkward bits of dialogue include "They're dinosaurs, 'wow' enough," or Vic Hoskins' (Vincent D'Onofrio) bizarre explanation about why raptors are better weapons than drones. Some felt those lines were true to the family-friendly sincerity of the original franchise, while others deemed them corny and unconvincing.
"Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," written by Connolly and Trevorrow, faced similar critiques on Reddit, especially over the villains' cartoony, mustache-twirling manner of speaking, and Maisie's (Isabella Sermon) climatic line about the dinos being "alive, like me." Still, the money keeps pouring in — so maybe audiences aren't going to these films for dialogue.