Did Jurassic World Dominion Start A New Movie-Making Trend?
The opening of Jurassic World Dominion did something different and might have kicked off a storytelling trend. In Jurassic World Dominion, dinosaurs are finally roaming freely throughout the world, with humanity doing its best to adapt to the sudden influx of prehistoric creatures. Dominion opens with a style of introduction not seen before in the Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movies.
Specifically, Jurassic World Dominion opens with a Now This news segment covering the world’s dinosaur population and the steps that have been taken to acclimate the world to it. Jurassic World Dominion (and its extended cut) is not the only 2022 movie to employ segments of fake journalism into its story, with the Cate Blanchett-led Tár using a similar but different news element of its own. With Jurassic World Dominion having earned over $1 billion worldwide and Tár releasing just a few months later, it might seem like the former started a new moviemaking trend, but the answer is more complicated.
How Jurassic World Dominion Pre-empted An Oscar Winning Choice
Jurassic World Dominion‘s opening newscast is intended to create a sense of verisimilitude in the movie’s story of dinosaurs being unleashed upon the world of man. Were such a scenario to happen in reality, reports about dinosaur attacks, migration patterns, and their general presence in the world would undoubtedly be all over cable news on a 24/7 basis. Narratively, news segments about the dinosaurs of Jurassic World Dominion are as logical a storytelling device as any for the film.
Tár uses its own journalistic framing device to tell its story, with Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) being interviewed on stage at the New Yorker Festival, discussing several projects in her musical career. While both Dominion and Tár use their journalistic segments for similar narrative goals, Dominion‘s news report was always far less likely to receive the kind of Oscars attention that Tár has gotten. Additionally, the impact the news portions of Dominion and Tár‘s stories have opposite effects on each film.
Why Tár’s Intro Isn’t The Same As Jurassic World Dominion’s
The news report in Jurassic World Dominion is akin to those seen in Starship Troopers, and while they share the goal of adding a layer of realism to their stories, both know they can only go so far in that endeavor. No one who sees Raptors sprinting through Malta in Jurassic World Dominion is likely to come away thinking that the film’s news segment about dinosaurs on the loose is genuine reporting on current events, despite using the real-world outlet Now This. Tár, on the other hand, blurs the line much more between fact and fiction in how it uses its journalistic element.
Lacking any clearly defined fantastical or science fiction elements, Tár‘s interview segment comes across as much more believable, even having real-life journalist Adam Gopnik appearing in the film as Lydia Tár’s interviewer. Because of that, it is much easier to watch Tár and think that the interview on-screen is a genuine interview with a real-life composer, despite Tár not being based on a true story. Essentially, it all comes down to Tár‘s story being inherently easier to present as real than that of Dominion, but the question of whether either film has introduced a new storytelling technique is another matter.
Jurassic World Dominion & Tár Aren’t Doing Anything New
While Jurassic World Dominion and Tár news segments use real news organizations that separate them from predecessors like Starship Troopers, the trick is still not really anything new. Fake news segments have been used in movies since time immemorial, and are a particularly frequent staple of science fiction, with one of the most famous examples dating back to the radio dramatization of War of the Worlds. Tár uses a somewhat different approach in having a real-life journalist appear in the film to create a sense of the story on-screen being real. However, while less frequently seen, this too has been done before in numerous other movies, so despite the realism of the segment and Cate Blanchett’s performance as Lydia Tár, it too is effectively reinventing the wheel as well.
In the end, what is most important with Dominion and Tár‘s news and interview segments is their utility to their respective stories, and each uses them well to that end. When it comes to Jurassic World Dominion, what might make its news segment different is how it impacts the Jurassic Park franchise itself. Aside from The Lost World‘s brief CNN interview with John Hammond, news segments have not been seen regularly in the Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movies, so in that sense, Jurassic World Dominion is setting a game-changer.
More news segments covering the presence of dinosaurs in the world of man could be utilized if the franchise continues after Jurassic World Dominion. They might even take a page out of Tár‘s playbook, with real journalists interviewing Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, and Ian Malcolm in a similar on-stage setting as Lydia Tár’s own interview about her life’s work. With their shared experienced as scientists encountering living, breathing dinosaurs, that could be quite a capstone for the Jurassic Park franchise.
