Is ‘Jurassic World Dominion’ the Next Woke Blockbuster?
Variety's interview with three female stars suggests so, but is it accurate?
Franchises fail for any number of reasons, from creative burnout to stories well past their expiration date.
They can collapse under different circumstances today, something studios rarely see until it’s too late.
Woke.
Consider “Terminator: Dark Fate,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Men in Black: International” and “Ghostbusters.”
All four films failed to varying degrees. Each represented a step in Hollywood’s woke evolution. “Dark Fate” hung its marketing campaign on its female leads, for example, not the aging superstar who embodies the franchise.
“Charlie’s Angels” jettisoned the sexuality and silliness of the source material for stern empowerment beats. Even Slate.com noticed the difference.
Might “Jurassic World Dominion” learn this lesson the hard way?
![Jurassic World Dominion | Trailer 2 [HD]](https://www.hollywoodintoto.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-youtube-lyte/lyteCache.php?origThumbUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FDtQycgMD4HQ%2F0.jpg)
The June 10 release marks the sixth film in the mega-franchise, and box office experts predict it will soar past the $400 million mark stateside, at the very least. The franchise’s new players, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, are joined by the trio who anchored the 1993 original – Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum.
That’s enough star power and nostalgia to fuel any Hollywood success story. Except Variety wants everyone to know there’s much more to “Dominion” than old friend and new dinosaurs.
The far-Left site’s “cover story” on the sequel details all the ways “Dominion” is feminist to the core. You have three strong, empowered starlets (Dern, Howard and newbie DeWanda Wise (TV’s “She’s Gotta Have It”), for starters.
The feature focuses on that trio, pushing Neill, Goldblum and Pratt to the periphery. That’s just the start of the feminist lectures, both in the article itself and, in theory, “Dominion.”
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The headline does a neat peek into the future, declaring the film’s three female leads “Summer’s Breakout Action Stars” weeks before the movie opens.
The woke lectures have only begun.
We learn far too much about a single line Dern uttered in the 1993 “Jurassic Park” (“Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth”). That feminist riposte that gets more than a dozen paragraphs in the article.
Director Colin Trevorrow, the man behind the franchise’s recent sequels, previously showed his woke side via a teaser photo from the film’s set.
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(Did Chris Pratt get paid the same as the guy who becomes dinosaur food in Act II?)
Now, he’s teasing Variety that Wise, a black actress playing a bisexual character in the sequel, may be the franchise’s new face.
“It was very important to introduce a new hero who could potentially define the future of this franchise,” director Colin Trevorrow says of Wise’s character. “We’ve had the opportunity to hopefully make someone that young girls are going to be dressing up as at Halloween for years to come.”
Couldn’t they dress up like Dern or Howard? And is Trevorrow going to hand off a massive franchise to Wise without any sense of her character connecting with audiences (yet)?
Next, we’re told the new generation of “Jurassic” women could be a Mary Sue invasion — flawless females ready to bore audiences with their perfection.
Ellie laid the groundwork for the “Jurassic” women who’ve followed — who are as compassionate as they are capable; desirable yet never the “sexy scientist” trope; and, above all, quick-witted, clever and not afraid to get up to their elbows in dinosaur dung.
Next, Variety gives us a lecture on why it’s important her character is bisexual but not part of the “strong black woman trope.”
Does this sound like an exhilarating summer movie or a Gender Studies assignment?
We even get the expected finger wag at anyone who recoils at all this wokeness.
But there have been haters. A small but vocal group of trolls criticized the casting [of Wise] as “woke.”
“As soon as you put a woman, a Black woman, a woman of color, or a person of color on screen, it has, to whomever, a connotation,” Wise says. “Whether they know the story yet or not, I’m inherently politicized. I know that.”
Remember when trolls lashed out at Billy Dee Williams in the “Star Wars” saga? Or Samuel L. Jackson? It didn’t happen. Audiences recoil at woke machinations, not the color of an actor’s skin.
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Just don’t call any of this “woke,” Variety and Dern warn us. The actress, who famously dressed down the most charismatic hero in “The Last Jedi” for no good reason other than, “Patriarchy Bad!,” won’t have it.
Emily Carmichael, a co-screenwriter on the film, then shares more of the film’s woke intentions.
And all the women got their chance to shine. “There’s a moment where Ellie has to grab [Chris Pratt’s] Owen and pull him up, so it’s her saving him,” Carmichael says. “I was standing next to Bryce by the monitor, and she nudged me and said, ‘Let’s normalize seeing this on screen.’ And I was like, ‘Bryce, you’re looking at the future, and I see it with you.’”
Two questions remain.
One, will a woke “Dominion” hurt the film’s box office tally? Almost nothing will stop the sequel from crushing the competition. But we’ve seen woke sequels come up short of expectations, even those that don’t officially torch their franchises.
The perfect example is “Star Wars.” The 2015 film “The Force Awakens,” which brought the saga back to the big screen, earned an astounding $936 million domestically. The woke sequel, “The Last Jedi,” generated $620 million.
Two, just how woke is the film itself? Actors routinely talk up the wokeness of their work, but it doesn’t always reflect the material itself.
The perfect example? “No Time to Die.”
The 2021 Bond adventure found the cast and crew blasting the “Bond girl” conceit, extolling the “new” 007 and describing the super spy as reborn for a new age.
The actual film avoided most woke pitfalls, however. (It also underperformed stateside).
The crew responsible for “Jurassic World Dominion” may not care if the woke flourishes impact the box office receipts. They’ve got a culture war to fight, and that matters as much as the bottom line.
If not more.
What is wrong with deliberately promoting strong female leads? Would you rather a world where the only role models that young girls see in movies and on television are bimbos whose only contribution to society is looking pretty, cooking, having sex, raising children, and cleaning? You mentioned James Bond and you only need to look at the earlier films (which are great) to see how women were portrayed. They were good looking, mostly stupid, and only useful as ornaments for James when out in public and for sex in private, and always needed a man to save them.
This outlook on women was prevalent in movies and TV when I grew up. If a girl wanted to be a tradesperson, police officer, in the army, work on a farm, etc, they were discouraged. Girls were also discouraged from studying maths and science, for why would they need these things when their man will be supporting them.
I would rather grow up in a world where young girls are presented with a variety of strong role models who teach them that they are equal to men and can do anything a man can do (other than obvious things which require brute strength).
Anyway, “woke” seems to be the buzzword of the last 10 year. It gone from being a term to describe the lunatic fringe who espouse ridiculous ideas, like firing a counsellor from a mother’s group for stating that only women can breast feed, which of course is true. It has now been politicised as a pejorative term to describe anyone who doesn’t support right-wing causes.
Care for the environment, you’re branded as woke. Fight for animal welfare, you’re woke. Believe that humans are impacting the climate, you’re woke. Believe in gay marriage, you’re woke. Promote equal rights for women, you’re woke. Say that emerging from poverty is difficult and not just about working harder, you’re woke. Suggest we should be kinder to immigrants, you’re woke. Suggest that it is more difficult to be successful if you are from certain minorities, you’re woke. Suggest that crime is often linked to poverty, you’re woke. The list goes on.
The word ‘woke’ is now a political weapon used to create arguments, often of the strawman variety, to scare the population and denigrate opponents. Oh, watch out for the woke supporting transgender people or we’ll soon have free sex change operations for 2nd graders. Watch out for the woke who support gay marriage or we’ll soon have 3rd graders turning gay. Watch out for the woke who support prison reform or we’ll soon have murderers and rapists wandering freely around the neighbourhood.
Your woke as can be your fragility is astounding
(Sigh)…. This is all so analytical and political. Can’t I just buy my ticket and popcorn and enjoy the movie? I have to be analytical all the time in real life. The idea of going to a movie is to escape this for a little while and just enjoy myself. And I intend to do just that.
Got eye cancer fron reading this. Anyway cant wait for june to see some dinosAUrs
I blame both sides. The left will ignorantly settle for anything positive no matter how disingenuous or even possibly offensive it could be. And the right keeps having extremely ego fragile triggered reactions to it which triggers the ego fragility of the left’s and reinforces their belief in woke culture.
Only woke thing on this world is the liberals the cry my body my right but they want us all to take the shot y aren’t u killing them in that republicans
Sounds like Prehistoric Cultural Appropriation to me.
Well, Dern is certainly doing her part to poison the franchise with her ridiculous remarks about her characters hinted at relationship with Neill’s character in the first movie.
Can’t wait for this “woke” trend to die out. It consistently takes from the story to the point shows and movies are unwatchable. Hopefully it won’t completely ruin the Finale.
Hopefully being kind and inclusive won’t just be a dad 🙂 there are many kinds of people in the world and they all deserve to be represented.
Dominion in the title of the movie screams Woke.
How? Lmfao make that make sense
Absolute trash article, just another excuse to trot out morons favorite buzzword dujour, “Woke”. What to do when you have no enemy but need to fire people up anyway? Invent one! This article pretends to have something to say, while saying nothing. Oh no, they’re promoting female stars – must be “Woke”! Meanwhile, movies promoting male leads are glossed over and ignored because that’s been the norm for decades.
This artificial outrage culture pushed by low iq idiots is just embarrassing. Stop creating straw men just to keep faux outrage burning.
Nobody said that casting female leads was “woke”. What makes it woke is when it’s done to shove a political message down our throats. My problem with it is this: why is DeWise bisexual or gay or whatever? Why does that have to be a thing in the movie anyway? Why does that define her character? We’re not even looking at the fact that she’s a black woman anymore. Being gay is her defining attribute? I don’t care one bit about that. Why do I need to know that about her? If she’s gay then fine but why must it be trotted out there? It does nothing for the movie itself. It’s simply for the movie makers to say, “Look everybody, we created a marginalized character to address the whole “inclusion” thing!”which is totally political and that’s where the woke comes into play.
Exactly the type of imbecile who roils against anyone who points out this kind of factual evidence against your sh**y agenda to turn the world gay and feminist and weak. Like your ideology. F*** off and cry to someone who cares.
LOL must not have read the article at all. We’re not talking about chracters or inspiration to tell a story. The creators themselves are obsessed with gender and other BS first. Movie comes second. That’s definition of WOKE
What to do when you have no enemy but need to fire people up anyway?
I guess irony is not in your vocabulary all you progressives this is 2022 not 1960 so stop acting like revolutionaries your generation sucks its just a bunch of whiny self righteous hive mind thinking drones
This article is stupid. Why not just dress up as Dern? I’ll tell you why. Growing up there were never any heroines that looked like me. They were all white and mostly bombshell blondes. They were male fantasies.
It was refreshing to have new characters that were treated like people and not shoehorned in for diversity points.
I don’t see how Dewise’s dialogue in the movie was woke either. She literally has a throw away comment that she liked redheads. It looks like this person is trying to get Hollywood back to its roots of excluding anyone who isn’t white and cis, and discourage people from going to see the movie themselves and enjoying the movie. I’ll just let the sheep applaud.
Sounds like these people commenting were dug up from the 50’s with their bellyaching that women and POC have screen time. Pathetic.
I just want to watch dinosaurs, not feminist messages.
Woke Blockbuster….well there’s an oxymoron.
After reading this article, I’m rooting for the dinosaurs.
Ha, same. But if that were true, the dinos would only kill off the make stars…
Sigh. This is why most of the modern movies I watch are smaller-budget indies. All the major studios have gone so hopelessly woke that stories have been replaced with box-checking.
Eh, the line in the first move I thought was kind of funny. Tongue in cheek.
And the funny thing is, as a girl who likes non-girl movies (Star Wars is my fave of all time and I saw it in the theater when I was barely 6 years old), I liked the female characters of old, like Princess Leia. She was pretty, but had a mouth, but wasn’t in your face about it. She took charge because she was a leader not because she was a WOMYN. It was all organic. That is what is missing – organic characters. Instead it’s all in your face and that’s what makes it annoying.
You make an excellent point. We used to get strong female leads that were totally organic. Leia was certainly one. So Was Ripley in Alien. Ripley kicked much ass in an “action” sense and male fans adored her precisely because it was organic. She wasn’t foisted off on the audience as a “strong feminist character.” she was simply Ripley, a strong PERSON that figured out how to survive in extreme circumstances. They even added other strong females in Aliens to go along with her. The ladies in the colonial marines detachment. Broke my heart when Vasquez died. She was straight up awesome without being “in your face” about it. But hell, at least she went out with a bang and took a bunch of the aliens with her.
I love Jurassic Park, but even I’ll admit, I didn’t get Laura Dern’s line either.
Spot-on , thank you.
I know humans can be stupid but there really is no way we would lose a war with dinosaurs. A single A-10 could probably end the battle in a couple of days.
Dinosaurs have rights. And excessive force is not acceptable. long live the dinos. So there.
Yep! You are right an A10 can kill any metal tank with reactive armor that walks over to he face of earth. But remmember this is The Spilbergrian Hollywood… so Dinosaurs are as smart as Einstein, and 30 mm depleted uranium ammunition has nothing on them !!!!