Something New, Something Old, Something Borrowed, Something Blue (A Zone Filled With Danger...And Dinosaurs)

This episode of Nick Nack Goes to the Movies takes one the newest entries in some late 80's and early 90's classics.  The 6th and potentially final movie end-capping the second dynamic dinosaur trilogy, Jurassic World: Dominion, and the sequel that nobody anticipated ever coming, Top Gun: Maverick.  

So, the theme of this episode quickly became how different franchise have come back to make a sequel entry.  For Jurassic Park World, it was the end cap of a second trilogy, for Top Gun, it was, becoming a franchise adding a sequel entry a bit under 30 years after the original took flight.  Let’s see the if this is a flight simulator of success or if we are entering danger zones.  Are these franchises prehistorical and need to be extinct, or are these movies breathing new life into them!  These movies have some big name actors including Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, and Sam Neil to name a few.  And of course the hit track, Danger Zone. 

But what do you think, did these movies move the needle for you?  Did Top Gun need a sequel and will we ever see another Jurassic Park movie?  Let me know that and your favorite dinosaur on social, @NickNack_IC or @NickNackMovies on Tik Tok, Instagram, Letterboxd, and Twitter.

Transcript

Nick Nack Goes to the Movies Pod S3E11

-Intro/Jingle

-What is good loyal listener or first-time subscriber.  It is me, Nick, saying how do you do?  Nick from this podcast you are listening to right now, Nick Nack Goes to the Movies.  You like movies, I got you, TV shows, I still got you, random life stories or overcoming grief and trauma exploration, weirdly enough that happens more often than not. 

-But not on this episode, I don’t think at least.  And that brings us to what we are talking about, which you might know from the episode title and description.  But honestly, it was pretty hard to come up with this week’s episode.  I knew I was seeing the latest Jurassic Park World Park movie, and while I had talked about waiting and waiting until the Top Gun sequel came to a streaming service, probably Paramount Plus in like mid-August, but somehow Joidon from @Couth Careers, follow her on Tik Tok, got me to go, and not even on 5-dollar movie night at Marcus Theaters here in Wisconsin. 

-So, the theme of this episode quickly became how different franchise have come back to make a sequel entry.  For Jurassic Park World, it was the end cap of a second trilogy, for Top Gun, it was, becoming a franchise adding a sequel entry a bit under 30 years after the original took flight.  Let’s see the if this is a flight simulator of success or if we are entering danger zones.  Are these franchises prehistorical and need to be extinct, or are these movies breathing new life into them!

-Actors

- As we always start these off, who is in this movie, starting with the dinosaurs one.  The better question might be, who isn’t in this.  Because it is stacked, the new kids on the block with Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard is to be expected, but I was hyped for the big three to be back on screen together in more than just cameo roles, like Jeff Goldblum had in the last movie, but to see him with Laura Dern and Sam Neil was everything I could have hoped for.

-Outside of that, BD Wong is back, which after the first movie he has been in all the latest sequels, and Omar Sy, remember when he was in the X-Men movies as Bishop for a spell and we hoped we would get more from that franchise?  As for new adds, I can’t say I knew much about Mah-mah-doo Aye-thee outside of his role in one of those Amazon spooky movies, Black Box, but I enjoyed him in this movie, and he was probably the only new character that did anything for me in this.  Also he is in that Netflix show, The Get Down, which I have thought about time and time again to start, there are a few Jurassic actors in this with Justice Smith too, but outside of him, Yahya- Abdul Mateen the second (who we talk about on here time and time again), Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa and that season 3 baddie in Dexter), and Giancarlo Esposito, who, let me preface this with some The Boys Season 3 spoiler warnings.  While as an actor he needs no introduction, Breaking Bad, The Boys, Revolution, and so many other things.  Hopefully he is back in the Boys soon enough in season 3!  So mark that down as a show to watch on Netflix for you and me sometime soon.

-Jurassic World: Dominion

-With Dominion, not sure if this is the final entry or if there will be more, pretty much everyone was back who you would have thought of.  I know people don’t care for Jurassic Park 2 all that much, I really do feel better than most about it.  But sadly, there is no Vince Vaughn reappearance in this movie.  But what this does have, while not the same actor, is the same character from the first one.  When Wayne Knight, the scientist from the first one with the virus tried to get the Barbasol can of dinosaurs out, he met with a blonde guy with sunglasses.  This man was named Lewis Dodgson.  And this time he is played by a different actor, Campbell Scott, so there is a nice touch of a payoff of some sort of master villain or a closed circuit on a storyline from the first that never had been solved from the original 1993 movie.

-So, I remember liking the 4th movie, quite a bit actually, seeing dinosaurs wreck a live and active park with people at the park was super fun, like the first hunger games movies, but when the dinosaur parks are kinda empty or the hunger games aren’t happening in movies, there is always gonna be this feeling of something is empty and/or missing.  And this is kind of the case in this one.

-We have dinosaurs bopping around in the real world after the 4th and more so 5th movie’s conclusions.  And while this is going about as well as expected, the movie jumps you in to sci-fi animal hijinks, shutting down illegal dinosaur breeding groups, which is led by Dallas-Howard and doing cowboy ish with dinosaurs running on the range being lassoed and such, well when they are not watching their clone by not clone girl they picked up last movie.  That may not sound too Sci-fi, but what about crazy locust massive dinosaur hybrid swarms.  I don’t like big spiders, or just bugs overall, so this was close to being not my scene, thankfully they are not so bad, they are gross, but I got over it enough, more dinosaurs than bugs in this movie, rightly so.

-Now more exciting, is Blue the raptor having a baby raptor to hang out and run around with, 10/10 cute and fun.

-Now in this franchise we have had a few evil companies, the first movies had InGen, and now we have Biosyn, they all just want dinosaur things, money, and like all the power in the world, somehow based on that dinosaur thing.  So Biosyn was the company that was trying to and eventually did steal dinosaur stuff from the first park and InGen, corporate espionage is a part I feel like we forget is in this franchise, not unlike Star Wars and political stuff.  But it is wild that this company comes out and hires some people to straight-up kidnap a child.  Also, the baby dinosaur which leads to more questions of Chris Pratt being a raptor-trainer in the first park and how weird it got trying to assess their relationship.

-And while I don’t care for big mutant locust storylines, seeing Laura Dern, who needs character names when you have actor names like these, back in action was exciting enough as its own thing.  And not just sitting and talking like Goldblum did in the last one.  And pretty quickly seeing Sam Neil, who I also watch a ton in that Daybreakers vampire movie on loop, but seeing them together after all this time was super good for me.  Especially with how little together time they had in their last Jurassic outing, that super bad third one with the guy from Fargo, William H. Macy.  Also, random memory thing, if they brought back Alan Grant’s, the Sam Neil character, assistant from the third one, Billy Brennan, that would have been neat.  I know this movie was loaded, but even a cameo of him at the dig site when Neil goes off with Dern would have made me smile a bit and would have helped bring every movie together a bit more with that shared universe, with an amount of movies probably no one thought they would have.

-But the flirt and so close relationship between Dern and Neil is so much fun to watch again, they really do have the chemistry together down pat!

-I have to say, at times this movie is just a bit all over a place, and I come to these movies for cool dinosaur stuff, and the whole looking for this girl part, I just didn’t care as much for globe-trotting Taken-lite without Liam Neeson.  

-Now that I have said that, and I didn’t need this tripe to Malta for a different kind of black market, with dinosaur stuff of course.  The action and chaos was fun, seeing dinosaurs eat people, and cause chaos is cool, like Chris Pratt did his best batman interrogation while a guy had both his arms being eaten by different dinosaurs, that was fun.  The weird gun tech of laser sight dotting people so dinosaurs can attack them is still goofy because a laser makes you think you can just laser sight shoot someone, that was so weird in the last movie.  But seeing the controlled dinosaurs take out CIA agents was kind of fun, and raptors chasing after people through a populated city was a fun backdrop for it instead of the usual jungle stuff.  This whole sequence is full of plot armor and cool looking things, but none of it made me feel like it mattered.  And a lot of things happen in this scene and movie overall that just need to happen and do because they need to no matter how unlikely.  Having a pilot have a change of heart to help two stranger parents only felt so believable to me.

-I really came into this movie wanting to like it more than I did, maybe my expectations were too high and my vision was clouded with nostalgia hope.  But to be fair, those three oldies but goodies really ate it up when they were on camera, Goldblum will always be fun on camera, it makes no sense to have him work at this dinosaur research city with his history of not liking that stuff, dumb choice for this big company to have him work there and have all this clearance.  But having the rivalry of Neil and Goldblum seen again is fun, and even having Dern and Grant sneak into this facility and work together, all of that was the kind of stuff making me smile, even with locusts scenes were not exactly the thing I wanted to see over and over again.

-Also, it is kind of funny that BD Wong is always kind of behind so much stuff with dinosaurs even though he is never really like a villain.  The fact they made a joke about it in the movie itself was super funny.

-Like I said clone kid being not a clone but having cool DNA from a mom we never met who did cool science stuff.  I don’t know, things like this I just was so whatever about it all.  The dinosaur movies need to be about dinosaurs, that is all, come on people.  It is like Indiana Jones having Aliens, like knock off these weird ideas to freshen up franchises!

-There was a cool villain plot of using these locusts to like make themselves the monopoly on food supplies, but the whole nothing dinosaur wise ever works the right way thing, after a few movies, or stories in this fictional world, you think people would get a hint.  Like at a point, stop going to Crystal Lake if you don’t want to get got by Jason Vorhees.

-The Italy snow mountain base is a cool setting for chasing people around in nature and a building and like old metal pipework stuff.  Now the plane crash and no one being hurt continues the plot armor of saving everyone, and actually, not one important non-bad guy dies in this movie.  And that is fine, but you kind of expected someone to die right.  I am pissed, Scream 5 spoiler here, that one of the big three had to die.  Especially with who they killed of, Dewey who was the heart of the series, but it had a good impact of people not being un-killable.  But once everyone got to the island, the dinosaur chasing was fun, but the stakes only really ever felt scary once.  I thought they were gonna kill Goldblum taking one of the big dinosaurs, thankfully he made it out, he was the one I never wanted to die but they could have justified it the most being the single one, isn’t that weird?

-I don’t know all the dinosaur names, there is A t-rex so that is cool enough for me.  My favorite less-main stream dinosaur is a Plesiosaurus, like a brachiosaurus long neck one but it has flippers.  Weirdly those are not featured in any of the 6 movies, cancel the Plesiosaurus erasure.  Caleb, if you’re listening, I hope you like that Mudkip joke.

-But this movie has so many crazy big and feathered dinosaurs running around causing trouble, well that and the locusts on fire thing.

-While the group is just running around trying to fly out of there, and it is a massive group of people to get out, there is something funny about the guy Nedry was working for in the first one dying the same way he did 5 movies later with the venom spitting dinosaurs that eat him up.  There are some random dinosaur teamup fights that belong in one of those Godzilla or Kong movies, and you know my take on that franchise.  But while this movie was fun enough, it never really did anything wild to make me stoked like the first entries of both trilogies did.  And I have to say, while the romance blooming between Dern and Neil was great, if not a bit too unearned at times, I am not sure how I feel about the message being pushed at the end, of dinosaurs living in harmony in the world and just flying dinosaurs flying with birds and other ones roaming with cattle and horses.  The end is just weird, I don’t know if they needed a world altering end and things could have been more personal, I just remember leaving and was a bit whatever about the end and honestly the movie as a whole a bit.  So maybe this franchise should be extinct, but the question is can this next old bird of a franchise take flight once more and capture a new audience decades after.

-Actors

-Before I get to Top Gun: Maverick, I have to say, I have seen the first one, I think it is funny, cheesy, and that Danger Zone song is fun along with the shirtless volleyball part.  That is about it.  I don’t have a deep love affair with the first Top Gun.  So the idea of a sequel never really did anything for me.  Drones replacing pilots maybe is a neat idea, but not a going to the theater’s enough idea, for me at least.  But I did it, so here we are talking about it.

-So, if you want a ton of nostalgia with actors in this sequel, you are not in luck, it is pretty much Tom Cruise and a bit of Val Kilmer, which makes sense, we will get to that later.  No Meg Ryan, no Kelly McGillis, and no Anthony Edwards, which makes sense because Goose died, but you never know if they would have done some death vision or flashback or anything like that.  The Kelly McGillis one is probably the one that I was confused about the most, but we will get into it.  Also, unrelated, the best callsign in the first movie is Hollywood, and nobody will change my mind, it is the best in the second one too.  But who is in this second movie since it is mostly new people.  

-Jennifer Connelly is the new love interest, Miles Teller is the son of Goose, his name is Rooster, and John Hamm is in this, which I love obviously!  He doesn’t do much here, but I do love him as an actor.  I just get more from him in The Town or Bad Times at the El Royale.  Miles Miller, who plays the funn enough Bob, was also in that movie, fun fact!  I really thought it was Paul Dano, the latest Riddler, for a good chunk of the movie.  While I don’t know all these actors, the alleged new MCU Falcon is in this with Danny Ramirez.  And they actually have a few women pilots in this movie, the most notable role going to Monica Barbaro, seemingly one of the best of the whole best of the best class of Top Gun!  

-Also, Ed Harris is barely in this, kind of feels like a waste of his talents, but hopefully this next season of Westworld is fun enough, not too abstract, and I hope he has more to do there.

-I really want to focus on Glen Powell.  He was the new Iceman substitute here, and he did a great job, maybe he was more of a jerk than he needed to be, but I enjoyed his presence here, but for the longest time I could not place where I knew him from.  Was he Tom Hopper from Umbrella Academy and Resident Evil?  Was he someone else?  But no, he was actually the guy from Scream Queens, Chad Radwell.  And apparently The Expendables 3, the one I remember the least.

-Top Gun: Maverick

-Like I said, the idea of drones being the way of the future and pilots maybe being obsolete is a neat idea, especially with Maverick being older himself, you could say he is a relic too.

-Now Maverick before getting his whole thing shut down lives up to his name and does the cool good stuff to be the best pilot ever, but he of course does too much and gets the ship crashed and all sorts of messed up.  Classic Maverick.  And while the whole time it appears that it is up to a now sick Iceman to pretty much save him in the career world the entire time post the end of the first Top Gun.  So once again Maverick is sent off to Top Gun, this time under Jon Hamm, as the no-nonsense military guy who has to keep the best of the best Top Gun people and have Maverick prep them for a mission!  An actual mission, thank goodness.

-The first one was fun enough, but I never really remember it feeling like a ton of it mattered to me.  Most was school with just a bit of it feeling like a semi-mission.  Stuff was just missing from it overall for me, so this one has that going for it that off the bat there is a clear mission they need to do and a reason it has to happen and needs the best of the best pilots.

-Now, when Maverick gets back to Top Gun you would think the love story with Kelly McGillis would be a part of it, but instead they opted for a younger woman to fill that void in the plot, which without an in-world explanation, is weird.  They kill off meg Ryan’s character as Gooses wife to not have to have her in this either, which once again, feels weird, right?

-But the new romance with Connelly gets the job done of some romance, it is just weird to not have it be any wrap up to the first one, just really weird.

-So the mission at hand is something something uranium, something something mountains, hard to blow it up, you won’t come back alive, flying.  It is kind of generic military stuff, but it works well enough.  

-The characters are there, you have the son of Goose and the new bully, so it all kind of makes, a bit of comedy relief with Bob, and after that it never becomes too exciting. 

-Some of the same beats are here, training montages with everyone losing to this older ace, in this Maverick, and some are twisted up a bit.  Shirtless volleyball became shirtless football on the beach.  There is a great balls of fire singing with a piano thing, which is a fun introduction to the son of Goose, same mustache and all.

-I think that is of course one of the best parts of the movie, the conflict and issues with Rooster and Maverick.  I don’t think the younger cast storyline is all that wild and out.  The rivalry with Hangman is maybe a bit too nasty at times, but still interesting to a degree.  But the best has to be all the conflict and getting in the way.  Maverick wants to and promised he would keep rooster safe, and that fight between that and the mission is actually really good.  And there is something fun about the occasional Maverick wild things working out and helping the team and young guns as a whole.

-I did think it was funny that they decided to omit Hangman for being a bad team player pretty much, because he seemed good at flying and stuff.  But the fact that they had a whole mission and we got to see it, that was so much fun, and the drama and tension was there in spades.  You didn’t know who was gonna make it out alive.  And having Maverick save Rooster, and have Rooster do the same, all while making it out of the enemy base with an ancient plane from the first movie, it was fun as all getup to see.

-Now so many endings keep happening, first with two planes that they make it out of, and after that, they handle those, but one more, and it is too good of a plane, and they actually get saved by Hangman, thankfully he had something to do.  

-I don’t know how I feel talking about Top Gun: Maverick, it is fine, but you can tell I am just not as overall invested in the movie, even if I know it is a better movie than I can say.    The end is good enough giving happy endings to Maverick and Rooster, clearing up family issues of the past and kind of resolving things for them both, and letting Maverick settle down, even if it is not with the lady from the first one.

-But to some fun things, so Val Kilmer, Batman, Iceman, among other roles, lost his voice back in 2015 due to throat cancer.  But they were able to in this movie make it all work.  They had first his moments come in texting and such, but later they had some audio manipulation and sampling to get his voice back even for a brief moment.  The way they honored and respected his character, and the actor behind it, I was really all about that, and that did make me smile and get a bit emotional.  That and the redemption storyline of, you guessed it, grief and trauma exploration with Maverick and Rooster, those two things had me hang my hat on along with the action sequences.  So a fun movie.

-So I was a bit late to the movie, and apparently I missed the super early usage of Danger Zone, I know I was not thrilled to discover this.  But to have it no be in the main bits of the movie is just bad bad.  That song needs to be a staple of the movie, has to be, can’t believe I missed it.  I guess that is one thing I will need to re-watch on the digital streaming service release.  

-Letterboxd Reviews

- Jurassic World: Dominion – 3 Stars

- Top Gun: Maverick – 3.5 Stars

-wrap/call to action

-So that is it and it is the episode, so here we go.  I am a bit bummed out Jurassic World ended on a bit of a low note, and I am pleasantly surprised that Top Gun had a sequel and it was actually pretty good and fun, even if I don’t think I will ever feel the burning desire to see it again, outside of this alleged danger zone beginning part.  So those were some newer takes on some older movies, and we will have to see if either of these move on from here.  I don’t think they will continue either of these franchises, but what do you think?  Also, what is your favorite dinosaur?  Let me know that and more on Nick Nack underscore IC and Nick Nack Movies on Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, and more.  Well that is all for me so cheers, and as always, until next time cinephiles!