Why So Blu?

Jurassic World: Dominion (Blu-ray Review)

Jurassic World: Dominion sees a conclusion to the Jurassic World series as well as a capper on the Jurassic Park movies as a whole (til someone makes more). Bringing the original cast into the fold to meet the new characters led by Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt, the film was one of the biggest of the summer and just about nabbed a billion dollars worldwide. Universal put it on 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray, standard Blu-ray and DVD back on August 16th. The film comes with a DTS:X track and extras that include the short prequel film to Dominion, a visual effects featurette and a decent length Making Of doc. You can order yourself a copy of the movie by using the paid Amazon Associates link that follows the review.

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Film

Four years after the destruction of Isla Nublar, dinosaurs now live and hunt alongside humans all over the world. This fragile balance will reshape the future and determine, once and for all, whether human beings are to remain the apex predators on a planet they now share with history’s most fearsome creatures.

Following the super weird (and super cool) bridge film that is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the world had opened up and finally evolved to something more than just dinosaur island movies. Closing a circle with this one, the stage had moved forward but production went back to the original cast and then the original director of the Jurassic World series. With a goal of interlinking the history of the series with what has been done in this new one, it was time to conclude this legacy sequel side of the franchise.

Filmed during a period with lots of Covid restrictions, you have to take your hat off that Colin Trevorrow and company pulled off a blockbuster that feels like a big summer movie and never feels super hampered or obvious with which the time it was filmed. Rather than restrict and limit, it pushes the limits on those restrictions by utilizing technology and pushing it to try and best make digital imagery more believable than it ever had before.

The film isn’t without weaknesses and flaws, but its super watchable and pretty fun. It has some cringe-worthy dashes of nostalgia in trying to do “REMEMBER THE FIRST ONE?!?!?” stuff with the original cast members (Ahem, legacy cast members), including almost all of Jeff Goldblum’s performance. But, it is fun to see them all doing their thing together again. However, the Jurassic Park sequels, for some reason get held to this super high standard that has never been the case and really should only be reserved for the original. Essentially this is “Dinosaurs Eat People: Part 6”, and it truly delivers on those standard and better than.

As a series of action set pieces and sequences of escaping from and fighting dinosaurs with little interludes to get us place to place, this is a pretty fun movie. Yes, this is going by some kind of low leaning standard to stand up for a film I’m giving a 2.5/5, but its really harmless popcorn fun. Its a fine movie overall, and a pretty solid one shot that does something different and goes for broke with the dinos in ways the series hasn’t at this point.

Video

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1

Layers: BD-50

Clarity/Detail: Jurassic World: Dominion arrives on Blu-ray with about as good an image as you could want and hope for on the format. Its a sharp, crisp image with great details all about. Details and texturing is quite strong. Some of the CG is a bit more obvious in some areas than it felt in the theater, primarily something like CG Chris Pratt on a motorcycle, but it works. There is a 4K edition available for those seeking better image quality.

Depth:  Strong depth of field here as the scale showcases well and there’s nice pushback in the interiors, especially in the underground tunnel sequences. Motion is smooth and natural with no discernible distortions with rapid movements and action.

Black Levels: Blacks are deep and about as close to natural levels as you could get on a standard Blu-ray. Good work with shadow, darkness and nighttime sequences. Some nice contrast brings out colors to a good pop. No crushing witnessed.

Color Reproduction: Colors are nice and pretty vivid with good saturation. Its a bright movie and the colors really pop both in fabrics and dino details.

Flesh Tones: Skin tones are natural and consistent from start to finish. Facial features and textures are easily discernible from any distance in the frame

Noise/Artifacts: None

Audio

Format(s): English DTS:X, Spanish 7.1 DTS-HD, French 7.1 DTS-HD, English Descriptive Video Service

Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French

Dynamics: Jurassic World: Dominion rocks all corners of your room with a kick DTS:X track. Its great that they included this on the standard Blu-ray as it help to make this movie burst out. Its loud and well balanced and provides an incredibly engaging journey through the action of the film.

Height: From above you can hear debris, things flying, bullets whizzing, objects and people/dinos hopping over camera and many natural type sounds as well as scoring.

Low Frequency Extension: The subwoofer is booming all through this with stomping, roaring, exploding, gunshots, glass shattering and a lot more.

Surround Sound Presentation: The room is full of sound both quiet and rambunctious. From quiet rooms to raging motorcycle chases through the streets, every speaker has coverage and loads of responsibility to bring it to life. Sound travel rolls powerfully side to side and front to back.

Dialogue Reproduction: Vocals are clear and crisp.

Extras

Jurassic World: Dominion is a 2-Disc set that comes with the DVD edition and a redeemable digital code.

Battle At Big Rock (HD, 10:17) – The short released as promotion a year prior to the film coming out. Pretty cool if you never checked it out.

A New Breed Of VFX (HD, 6:16) – This featurette goes over the visual effects used on this film, how they advanced from the original and how they utilized the original’s designs for this one. It features more dinosaurs than any Jurassic movie before.

Dinosaurs Among Us: Inside Jurassic World Dominion (HD, 47:09) – Here’s your lengthy, involved “Making Of” which goes over the legacy of the series and the whole process with interviews from all key players discussing how they wanted this to feel like it was supposed to be one big story from the beginning.

Summary

For a nice, quick-hit big dinosaur action movie, Jurassic World: Dominion does the trick. Is it some big ceremonious, legendary ending to an endearing franchise? No. But its certainly fine. Universal pops it onto standard Blu-ray with a top of the line presentation and some rock solid extras for a nice package for a new flick on home video.

This is a paid Amazon Associates link