Weekend Watch: Jurassic World Dominion, For All Mankind Season 3

Massive creatures and giant leaps

Image Credit: Universal International Pictures

Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, dinosaurs run rampant and astronauts race to the Red Planet. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite

How much you enjoy Jurassic World Dominion may depend upon your tolerance for call-backs and a busy, sometimes trying narrative that attempts to cram in both the Jurassic World duo of Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) and the attendant characters from their previous two movies, plus Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and some nods to their veteran franchise.

There’s certainly no shortage of dinosaur action which, if we’re all honest, is why we really come to these movies. But it does have the disturbing impact of short-changing the humans, even given the charisma power of the legacy cast. True, it’s fun to see Owen and Claire meet the holy trinity of Jurassic Park, but aside from one or two entertaining moments, it feels like a corporate mandate, with little of the sheer, story-justifying power of, say, Han Solo’s re-introduction in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

And while the plot, like life, does find a way, co-writers Emily Carmichael and Colin Trevorrow (the latter of whom also directs) are so preoccupied with what they could do in this instalment, they didn’t think to stop whether they should – especially when it comes to weirdly unsatisfying narratives such as the giant locusts that are chowing down on plants in America’s agricultural heartland. It’s hard to care about something on that level when you really want to be out in this Jurassic World, a place where humans and dinosaurs must live alongside each other, and the attendant problems.

It's the spur for some of the story, but rarely enough impact is felt as the movie rushes breathlessly from one action set piece to another. Trevorrow’s driving ambition here appears to be, “remember that bit from Jurassic Park that you loved? Imagine if it was… bigger! With more dinosaurs! Or different dinosaurs!”

Pratt and Howard continue to be short-changed by their characters and mostly seem to be going through the motions, while it honestly feels like Blue the raptor gets more of a story arc than Claire.

It’s certainly gratifying to see Neill, Dern and Goldblum share screens again, but they, like everyone else get swallowed up by the spectacle. There is a continued, commendable drive for practical dinosaur effects where possible, but ultimately this ends up feeling like a re-tread more than a bow-tying conclusion to the second trilogy. I certainly had a better time with it than many of my fellow colleagues, but like the characters at the end of Steven Spielberg’s never-matched (even by him in The Lost World), it’s not an experience I can wholeheartedly endorse.

Jurassic World Dominion is in UK and US cinemas now.

Image Credit: Apple TV+

I may have mentioned this in a previous Weekend Watch column, or elsewhere on this site, but I am a ginormous space nerd. Growing up, I had cross-sections of space shuttles on my walls before hormones pushed me in the direction of beautiful pop stars or actresses. The times I have been to the Kennedy Space Center rank among my favourite experiences in my life and as I write this, I’m drinking from a Hidden Figures promotional mug that I swiped from the junket (okay, not really “swiped” – I was in the same hotel covering The Martian and the PR team, knowing my obsessions, let me take the mug).

Talking of The Martian, it’s one of my favourite movies of all time, one I’ve re-watched countless times and the idea of smart people doing the right thing truly appeals. Which is all to say that I’m also an avowed fan of Apple TV+’s For All Mankind.

Co-created by Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica alumnus Ronald D. Moore alongside Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert, Mankind is an alt-history drama that kicked off with the compelling concept of Russia winning the space race, conquering the Moon ahead of the US. That leads to all sorts of branches from the established timeline as America struggles to catch up, accelerating the contest to score other victories beyond the bounds of Earth. Weaving in between all the astro-goodness are the personal and political stories of how humanity changes in the face of such a shift, and the effect on NASA staff and their families.

Primary characters here include astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), who is always driven to be first, even if it ended up causing the end of his marriage to Karen (Shantel VanSanten). Margo Madison (Wrenn Schmidt) is still running NASA, making the big decisions and some dodgy ones to keep her organization’s flight plans on track, while also clashing with the chief of the Astronaut Office, Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger). Ellen Wilson, meanwhile, is in politics and still hiding her homosexuality alongside her husband Larry (similarly closeted), played by Nate Corddry.

I won’t go into the plot specifics too much, but Season 3 opens after the usual time jump between seasons and an effective montage catching us up on world/NASA events in the years that have passed. It’s now 1992 and the big target for everyone is Mars. Russia and America are fixated on the Red Planet as the next huge milestone and while we know someone will reach it (a flash-forward at the end of Season 2 revealed that), the big question is who will be first and what will be the challenges along the way?

A big wrinkle this time (mirroring the situation of today) is that private companies have their eye on space travel too, between a fancy space hotel and a challenger on the Mars front.

Moore and his team do such a magnificent job of balancing the space drama with the interpersonal, and if the Earthbound stories sometimes edge towards melodrama (one Karen-focused story, in particular, comes across as less convincing) and the ageing make-up on the cast is hit-or-miss, none of that takes away from this show’s power. Walger is the standout among the cast, but there isn’t a weak link in the ensemble. Oh, and the show has always been spot-on with its needle drops but entering the time of grunge left even more of an impact on me – the use of Black Hole Sun stirred my heart. Finally, and still skipping around the matter spoilers, there’s a moment later in the season that completely feels like a stealth shout-out to Moore’s history with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

It’s tough to fly in the same atmosphere as The Right Stuff (the movie, not the TV version), Apollo 13 and The Martian, but For All Mankind does that with style while keeping you in its gravity well.

Mankind Season 3 launches today on Apple TV+ with one episode. New episodes will arrive weekly for a 10-episode season. I’ve seen the first eight.